Sermon: Scandalous Grace

 Luke 4:13-30
Scandalous Grace
James Sledge                                                                                     January 30, 2022

Jesus Preaching in the Synagogue at Nazareth
14th century fresco,
Visoki Decani Monastery, Kosovo

In the fall of my last year at seminary, I preached during Sunday worship at my home church. It was a strange experience. It is odd to stand up and preach to people with whom you used to share the pews. It’s a little unsettling to have your pastor serving as a worship leader, reading a scripture lesson, praying the prayers, and so on.

I still have vivid memories of that day. I sort of fumbled through the children’s message. I remember catching glimpses of familiar faces, trying to gauge from their expressions whether they thought I was making sense or not. I also remember the kind comments after it was all over, people telling me how much they enjoyed my sermon, and especially a compliment from my pastor. 

Of course they had to say such things. After all the session of that church had voted to recommend me as a candidate for ministry, one requirement for becoming a Presbyterian pastor. People had told me how wonderful it was that I was going to seminary. The church had even contributed several thousand dollars to help pay for tuition. They certainly weren’t going to let on that it had all been for nothing.

Besides that, many churches take pride in being able to claim pastors from out of their membership. Congregations that have produced a number of pastors sometimes display their names and pictures like merit badges. They’re a kind of validation, a symbol that a church must be doing something right. Pastors at such churches enjoy the validation as well.

  It’s not just churches that like to take come credit for the success of their own. Families and towns like to brag about those who’ve made it big, whether making it big means the first one to graduate college or becoming a movie star. Families and hometowns usually expect a little windfall, a little secondhand prominence, when their own are big successes. No one appreciates a hometown boy who goes off, makes it big, then forgets where he came from.

My mother was from a small town in the Florida panhandle, the part that is in central time zone beneath Alabama. She told me that they had one famous product, a pop singer of the 60s and 70s named Bobby Goldsboro, whose family ran the local florist shop. But when Goldsboro became famous, he told people that he was from Alabama. That really burned my mom, as I imagine it did lots of other folk from Marianna, Florida.

In our scripture for today, Jesus makes a visit back to his hometown. A version of this visit is told in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but Luke’s telling is quite different. Matthew and Mark place the visit well into Jesus’ career as teacher, preacher, and miracle worker, but Luke puts it at the very beginning. In Luke, Jesus looks a little like a politician who has just burst onto the national scene, and who returns to her hometown to announce she is going to run for president.

They didn’t have news media in Jesus’ day, but nonetheless his arrival is big news. Word has filtered back to Nazareth that Jesus is attracting a lot of attention, all of it good. Luke mentions only that Jesus is teaching in the synagogues throughout Galilee, but you get the impression from Jesus’ own words at Nazareth that he’s been doing a few miracles as well.

And so when Jesus came home to Nazareth, everyone was there. Who could blame them? No one famous had come from Nazareth. It was the boondocks, the backwater. But now one of their own was making a big name for himself. Who knew what he might do when he came back? Surely he would do something special or make some big announcement. 

On the Sabbath, being the good Jew that he was, Jesus went into the local synagogue. A young rabbi, returning to his home church, as it were, he is invited to read scripture and teach. The attendant gives him the scroll containing the words of Isaiah, and Jesus unrolls it, looking for a particular passage. He finds it near the end of the book, a part that scholars now call “Third Isaiah,” words written after Israel returned from exile in Babylon, hoping that God would restore them to greatness and power. Instead they had languished, but this prophet had called them to hold fast to faith, that God would indeed bring a new day. 

Jesus reads the words of this prophet, rolls the scroll back up, and sits down. That’s what rabbis did. It was like a preacher coming into the pulpit. It meant Jesus was going to teach, and everyone focused their gaze on him. Every eye was on him in rapt attention, as they waited expectantly to see what he might say.

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The rumors were true! Jesus had come back to his hometown to announce his run for president, or in this case Messiah. This was too good to be true. A great rabbi, the leader of a religious movement coming from their little town would be wonderful enough, but the Messiah. This was more wonderful than anyone dared dream. Imagine, the Messiah from little, ole Nazareth. There would be a museum and gift shop and everything. The buzz made the whole synagogue hum with excitement, but it didn’t last long. And it was Jesus who threw cold water on the celebration.

No sooner than he declares himself the fulfillment of ancient prophecy, Jesus offers a self-fulfilling prophecy of his own. He insists that no prophet is accepted in his hometown, and then he rattles off a list of times when prophets performed miracles for non-Israelites rather than the hometown folks. And Jesus gets exactly the reaction one would expect. The people are angry.

What to make of those hometown folks…? It’s easy to to assume that they did something to set Jesus off. Maybe they doubted that Jesus was really the one. Perhaps Jesus saw something small and petty in their hearts. Problem is, Luke says nothing of the sort. They were just hometown folks like hometown folks everywhere. They were excited that Jesus was one of them, but then Jesus fairly assaults them with the scandal of grace, and they become enraged.

I know, it’s hard to think of grace as scandalous. It’s such a nice sounding thing. But you might want to talk to the prodigal son’s older brother, who stood outside seething as he watched the party his father threw for his no-account brother just because that younger son had returned home. Talk to religious people who tried very hard to live by God’s rules only to have Jesus say that thieves and prostitutes enter the kingdom ahead of them.  Talk to those who hear Jesus say, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

By definition, grace goes to those who don’t deserve it, which can be a real problem for people who think they do. Grace in scandalous and offensive because it is offered to those who have absolutely no right to expect it. But it is also scandalous and offensive because it demands that we entrust ourselves entirely, not to our own goodness or effort or religiousness or insider position, but to the goodness and mercy of God.

Martin Luther, the priest who sparked the Protestant Reformation, once wrote, “The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ and must take matters into our own hands.”

I think all of us struggle with this to some degree. After all, we live in a culture that tells us anything of real value needs to be earned. But faith is about trusting in something completely outside ourselves. It is about being able to receive the gift of God’s love in Christ that cannot be earned because it is truly a gift. As a gift, we do not deserve it more than anyone else. All we can do is receive and embrace that gift, and then live lives that show our thanks and gratitude.

God loves you. Of that you can be sure because it is not about who you are or aren’t. God loves you because of who God is, and God is love. Receive that love, that grace, and from God’s love and grace in Christ, learn the way of love that shows Christ to the world.