"When Is Good News Not So Good?"

 

Luke 4:21-30

 

     Barbara Brown Taylor shared a story about a weekend retreat she attended.  For the opening exercise people were asked to tell a story about someone who had been a Christ in their lives.  One person talked about a friend who had stayed with her through a long illness when everyone else deserted her.  Another talked about a neighbor who had taken the place of a father who had self-destructed.  Everything was going positively, there was a warm feeling in the room until one woman stood up and said, 'Well, the first thing I thought about when I tried to think who had been Christ to me was, "Who in my life has told me the truth so clearly that I wanted to kill him for it?"

 

     This is a side of Jesus that we often overlook.  The Jesus we like to think about is the one who comforts and saves us.  The Jesus who said, "He who is without sin cast the first stone."  Or the Jesus who told the parables about the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.  But the truth of the matter is that the Jesus who comforts and saves people is also the Jesus who challenges and upsets people.  He tells them the truth so clearly that they become angry, try to find ways to shut him up and eventually put him to death. 

 

     We see Jesus in people who help us.  Maybe we should also see Jesus in people who we consider a thorn in our flesh.  Maybe God is also trying to reach us through the people who upset us and challenge us.  Most likely they are the people who help us see God in new ways.

 

      We just read an episode in Luke in which Jesus upset the crowd.  That was after he had first amazed them by the way that he spoke.  Basically all that he did was remind them that God's sense of community was larger than theirs.  He told them two stories of how God had passed over them in order to minister to Gentiles.  It was like telling them that God had healed an ailing Muslim while passing over a Presbyterian elder or that God reached out to Cubans while ignoring worshippers at a local church in Kingsport, Tennessee. 

 

       Jesus was not telling them anything new.  The stories of the feeding of the widow in the land of Sidon and the healing of Naaman the leper were right there in their Scriptures.  A few moments before they were talking about what a great speaker Joseph's son was.  Once he denied their special status they were ready to form a lynch mob and put him to death.

 

       For some reason we cannot get God to respect our boundaries.  We build fences but God plows right through them, challenging us to follow or get out of the way.  The issue is not that we are loved less.  It is that God loves people we do not like as much as God loves us.

 

      When is good news not so good?  When we discover that it is not only for us but for all people, when God's grace is not only extended to me but also to my enemy. 

 

       Parker Palmer is a Quaker theologian who has written a book titled The Company of Strangers.  For him the word "public" contains a vision of our interdependence on one another.  In public parks, public libraries and public schools, we come together as strangers who share common resources.  We do not have to see eye to eye on everything.   We do not even have to like each other.  But in order for our public life to work, we do have to respect each other's dignity as human beings.  If you and I are walking toward each other on a public sidewalk, our differences do not matter.  We make room for each other.  We may even nod and say hello. 

 

     Parker suggests that public life in this country has broken down largely because we have begun to regard strangers as enemies.  Parker wrote this before 9/11.  It has probably become even more true since then.  In a world that grows scarier every day, many of us have retreated to well defended private lives.  We do not go out in public unless we have to.  We are suspicious of people who are different.  The variety of human life has become a threat, not a blessing, and the whole body suffers.

 

      The church is not immune from this.  But we have been taught better.  We know about Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Zarephath.  We know about Jesus who hung around with misfits and cared for strangers and prayed for his enemies.  It may be that our differences are God's best tools for opening us up to the truth that is bigger than we are.

 

       Jesus own people tried to kill him because he tried to get them to realize that God's idea of community was larger than theirs.  But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.  How did Jesus get away from the angry mob when they ganged up against him?  We are not told.  But I think the message is clear.  If we will not listen, he will pass through our midst and go and proclaim the good news to people may be more open to the largeness of God's community.

 

       When is the good news not so good?  When we hear it and choose not to listen because we do not like what we hear.

 

       May this be a place where we not only hear the good news, but choose to follow.