Luke 4:13-30
Scandalous Grace
James Sledge January
30, 2022
Jesus Preaching in the Synagogue at Nazareth
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.
14th century fresco,
Visoki Decani Monastery, Kosovo
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.
