Challenged By Our Story - Sermon for the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany (February 2, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Jeremiah 1:4–10 | Psalm 71 | 1 Corinthians 13:1–13 | Luke 4:21–30 

“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Last Sunday, as we explored the first part of this episode in Luke Chapter 4… the story of Jesus’ first sermon in His hometown of Nazareth… we spent some time reflecting on the importance of remembering our story…the story of the Good News of God’s saving love in Jesus Christ our Saviour King… especially when we are facing times of great confusion and distress. And we looked at how, as Christians today, it is essential that that we keep the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s saving love at the forefront of our minds, and that we stick to this story ourselves in our day to day lives. 

This morning, we get to see a bit more of the story of what happened that day in Nazareth: we see that this same Good News that Jesus announces offers us not only great comfort… but profound challenges as well… confronting all of those who will listen with the life-changing implications of God’s Kingdom, and what it means for us to share in it. 

This story takes place, we are told, in Nazareth, our Lord’s hometown, where He would have been well known to many. This was where Jesus had grown up. Where He was surrounded by people who had known Him all of His life. And He knew them too. He knew their stories… what made them all tick, and how they saw the world, and their place within it.

And so, when Jesus stood up in the synagogue that day, He really knew His audience, and what they needed to hear… the Good News of God’s saving love that He had come to share.

Luke 4:16-22, “He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
because he has anointed me 
to bring good news to the poor. 
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives 
and recovery of sight to the blind, 
to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 

They all spoke well of Him. They welcomed His words of comfort… reminding them that their pain and afflictions were well known to the Living God… that the Lord had not abandoned His people, and that the long awaited time of deliverance was at hand. He had given the hope and apparently greatly impressed His hometown crowd.
 
And if He had just stopped there… there would have been no problem that day, as far as the people of Nazareth were concerned. I mean, He had said what they wanted to hear… stirring up their hope, and reminding them of God’s great compassion and mercy. What a perfect place to stop. 

But Jesus didn’t stop there. He went on to seriously challenge their assumptions about God’s Good Kingdom… in short, that it’s not just for them!

Luke 4:22-23, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 

He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 

Now this first part of Jesus’ response deserves a few words before we press on. I mean, what happened? We just heard that everyone spoke well of Him, and were greatly impressed by His words. One minute He’s talking about proclaiming Good News to the poor, then He’s putting words in their mouths. Why does it seem that Jesus suddenly turns on them?

The key seems to be that Jesus knew they did not really believe the words He had spoken… that is, His bold claim that Isaiah’s words were about Jesus Himself, and His mission. 

Sure, they had a place for Isaiah’s promises in their hearts, but even as they praised His presentation, and welcomed the comfort Jesus offered them, they only saw Him as Joseph’s son… the boy they saw grow up… one of their own. And as the old saying goes, “familiarity breeds contempt.” They thought they already knew all about Him, and so their hearts were not open to what Christ claimed God was now doing in their midst through Him. And so, even though they spoke well of Jesus, in their hearts they were already rejecting His message.

And again, Jesus does not stop there. No instead, He shines a big spotlight on part of the story of God’s people, that it seems they’d much sooner forget. 

Luke 4:24-30, “And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” 

Now I’m really thankful that none of you here at St. Luke’s have ever responded that way to one of my sermons… especially as there’s a pretty big river right over there that you could easily throw me into. But think of that for a moment. Think of how drastically… how violently these people reacted to Jesus’ words. Just a moment ago, they were all speaking well of Him. Now they were filled with rage, and ready to take His life! What in the world was going on in the synagogue that day?

Well, in a word, Jesus was challenging their story… their understanding of the world, and their place within it. But He was doing so by reminding them of two well known episodes from Israel’s past… from the days before the Exile, when many of God’s people had turned away from the Lord’s ways, and instead were following the desires of their own hearts.  

He reminds them of the widow from Sidon… whose son had been miraculously rescued from death by the prophet Elijah. And He reminds them of the story of Naaman the Syrian… an enemy general, struck with leprosy, but miraculously made clean again as he humbled himself, and heeded the words of the prophet Elisha.

These two stories were well known, and found in 1 Kings Chapter 17, and 2 Kings Chapter 5. But why did Jesus bring these stories up here? What was He seeking to show the people of Nazareth?

These two Gentiles, the Sidonian widow, and Syrian general, serve as clear representatives of the typical enemies of God’s people! They belonged to those ‘godless outsiders’… and were threats to Israel. And yet, God reached out to them both in mercy… touching and transforming their lives by His saving love.
 
Both received mercy, and healing, and hope, even though they were never a part of the people of Israel… even though they were the “so-called bad guys” of the story. 

But as all of Scripture reminds us, the Living God’s mercy and saving love cannot be bound by our borders, or walls, or divisions. Which is something that God’s people, including many of us Christians today, really struggle with.

Jesus knew that His own people in Nazareth did not really believe in Him, and so they would not receive Him… just as their ancestors had turned from the Lord all those long years before in the days of Elijah and Elisha. And so, by reminding them of their whole story… of God’s great compassion and rescuing love, not just for them, but also for those they despised and saw as their enemies…  Jesus was intentionally challenging them to change… to repent, to believe, and to return wholeheartedly to God’s holy ways… which also meant to let go of their prejudice and hatred for their neighbours… even their hostile ones… and to learn to love like the Living God does.

The scholar and theologian Miroslav Volf makes this strong and challenging connection between receiving God’s grace and love, and sharing it, even amid the messiness of our all too often strained and broken relationships with our neighbours: 

“Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us. Having been embraced by God, we must make space for others in ourselves and invite them in – even our enemies. This is what we enact as we celebrate the Eucharist. In receiving Christ’s broken body and spilled blood, we, in a sense, receive all those whom Christ received by suffering.” [Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2019), 130.]

These words arise from Miroslav Volf’s considered commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in the context of his reflections on the devastation experienced by his fellow Croatians, and neighbouring nations as a result of the brutal 1990’s civil war in the Balkans. As a Christian, caught up in the very real conflicts tearing our world apart, learning how to live God’s way by loving our enemies is no minor thing. All too often, we might rather take offense, like the folks did in Nazareth long ago, at the mere notion that God might love “those people” too… whomever they might be… or even worse… that if we’re to follow Jesus, that He might just be calling us to learn to do the same.

Who is it that we find it hard to imagine God caring about today? Who are the people who shake up our stories? Who seem to see the world so differently, and act in ways that make us anxious, alarmed, or outright angry? How can you and I possibly begin to learn to love our enemies at a time like this? To not fall in line, and just pick a side, but to actively seek to share God’s love with everyone?

Well, it certainly won’t be easy.

Remember that Jesus’ friends and neighbours responded to the Good News of God’s love for everyone by trying to throw Him over a cliff. And His deep commitment to the Good News of God’s love for our broken, divided world would lead Him straight to the cross.

But remember as well that the same saving love of God changed everything when Christ Jesus rose again… revealing that true life flows from God’s self-giving love, through the power of God’s Spirit now at work in us… and that all of our sad divisions and hatreds don’t stand a chance in the light of God’s Kingdom. 

When we really remember our story… which is Jesus’ story…when our minds, and hearts, and actions are recentred around what He has done for us all, once and for all at the cross… it challenges us. It changes us. It calls us to repent of our prejudices… and hatreds, and hand over our hard hearts to the Lord, to be renewed and remade to be like His through and through.

And in our second reading today, in the famous passage from 1 Corinthians 13, we get a glimpse of the new way of life that the Risen Lord has opened up for us:
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends… And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13).

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the crucified and Risen One challenges us to love those we find it really hard to love. To do good to those who make our lives so much harder. To bless those who deliberately vilify and even attack us. And to pray for those who seek to misuse and manipulate us. This doesn’t mean going along with what they are up to, or stepping aside while they hurt us or others in our world. Far from it. But it does mean that even when we have to stand up against others, we must remember that they too are beloved by God, who longs for us all to turn from our sins, and learn to love... to live alongside one another without contempt, suspicion, and hatred in our hearts… offering all those around us what we have all received at the cross: God’s great saving love. 

And when we struggle to do so, let us return to the story of Jesus Christ our Saviour King… and in prayer, let us remember that God’s own Holy Spirit is at work in us and that it’s Him that makes it possible for us to live and love like our Lord. 

I’ll end now with one more quick word from Miroslav Volf: “We who have been embraced by the outstretched arms of the crucified God open our arms even for the enemies – to make space in ourselves for them and invite them in – so that together we may rejoice in the eternal embrace of the triune God.” [Miroslav Volf, Ibid., 132] Amen.