Rev.
Debbie Cato
Luke
4:21-30
Fairfield
Community Church
February
2, 2025
God of
all days holy, as a groundhog emerges from its winter dwelling
and
assesses the light, may your Spirit emerge through our hearts to
understand
your scripture. In hearing these words, regardless of the
accuracy
of our interpretation or the length of winter’s frozen clutch,
may we be
transformed by your loving presence and reminded that
we are
your people. Amen
You Can’t Go Home Again
“You Can’t Go Home Again.” That’s the title of a 20th century
American novel by Thomas Wolfe. “You Can’t Go Home Again.” The
novel tells the story of George Webber, a fledgling
author, who writes a
book that makes frequent references to his
hometown of Libya Hill
which was actually Asheville, North Carolina. The
book is a national
success but the residents of the town, being
unhappy with what they
view as Webber's distorted depiction of them, send
the author
menacing letters and death threats.
“You Can’t Go Home Again” is also an appropriate
title for this week’s
Gospel story, a story in which Jesus returns to
Nazareth, preaches in
His childhood synagogue, infuriates his old
friends and relations, and
almost dies when they try to shove him over a
cliff. Apparently, it's
true: you can’t go home again. Sometimes, the hometown boy won’t
make good.[1]
Last week we read about Jesus’ return’ to
Nazareth, his hometown. He
read from the Prophet Isaiah. He was proclaiming what
he was going to
be about.
He was starting as he intended to go on. Today we are
finishing that story. We are at the end of the book so to speak.
The story Luke tells is a strange one, full of
emotional twists and turns.
Within the space of ten verses, everything goes
south. Curiosity turns
into contempt.
Delight gives way to hatred.
Worship morphs into
violence.
Why?
What went wrong? After all, when we left Jesus
last week, things were
looking pretty good. He was center-stage amidst an admiring
congregation, reading a beautiful passage from the
prophet Isaiah
about good news for the poor, freedom for the
prisoner, sight for the
blind, and justice for the oppressed.[2]
Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him,
impressed by his gracious
words and his authoritative mannerisms. Wasn’t this Joseph’s boy?
The carpenter’s kid with the iffy birth
story? Who would have thought
he’d grow up to become a healer! A preacher!
A miracle worker! Their
very own rising star.[3]
It’s not difficult to imagine our way into the
townspeople’s point of
view. Who
knows how long they’d been waiting to welcome Jesus
home? To
see for themselves the wonders they’d heard about through
the grapevine?
The miracle of the heavens opened up in Jesus’s
presence. The
rumor that he turned water turned into wine.
The news
that diseases disappeared and demons scattered to
oblivion. Surely,
they must have thought, if their boy was willing
to peddle miracles to
perfect strangers “out there,” he’d do a hundredfold
back here at home.
He’d stay right here in Nazareth. Among his own family. His insiders.
His favorites. [4]
But they were dead wrong. As far as I can tell,
the story turns precisely
when Jesus refuses to go home in the ways that
people expect him to.
He refuses to be at home. To stay at home. To allow his home to define
yours. I
don’t belong to you. I am not yours to
claim or contain.”
He does this by citing God’s long history of
prioritizing the outsider, the
foreigner, the stranger. Elijah was sent to care
for the widow at
Zarephath, he reminds them. He wasn't sent to the widows of Israel.
Elisha was instructed to heal Naaman the Syrian,
not the numerous
lepers in Israel.
In other words, God has always been in the business of
working on the margins. Of crossing borders. Of doing new and
exciting things in remote and unlikely
places. Far from home. Far
from the familiar and the comfortable. Far from the centers of power
and piety.
The same thing happens today. Preachers stand up and preach the
Gospel.
Jesus’ Gospel. A Gospel that hasn’t
changed. A Gospel that
says we are to proclaim good news to the poor, proclaim
freedom for
the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed
free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[5] A gospel full of mercy
and grace and compassion. But, people get upset. They get angry.
They say the preacher is being political when the preacher
is really just
preaching the Gospel. The Gospel that has not changed in the thousands of years since it was written. The Old Testament which hasn’t changed in nearly three thousand years.
As I prayed about the Gospel reading this week, I
realized that if Luke’s
account is accurate, then Jesus is the one who
pushes his own people
away in this story. He is the one who rejects
their version of welcome,
who refuses to abide by the tribalist claims of
their hospitality. He is the
one who overturns their notions of home and of
God’s place in it. “You
can’t go home,” he basically tells them. “You
can’t hunker down and
stay where you are, expecting God to hang out with
you. God is on the
recognize as sacred. Raising voices you are not
interested in hearing.
Saying things that will make your ears burn. Can we handle it?
Can we hear the truth?[6]
What does this mean for us? Maybe it means that if the Jesus we
worship never offends us, then it’s not really
Jesus we worship.
Remember, the Jesus Luke describes pushed so hard against
his
listeners’ cherished assumptions about faith, they
nearly killed him.
They tried to push him off a cliff. They turned fast.
When was the last time Jesus made you that angry? When was the last
time he touched whatever it is you call holy —
your conservatism, your
progressivism, your theology, your denomination, your
Biblical literacy,
your prayer life, your politics, your awareness — and
asked you to look
beyond it to find him? To be faithful in a world filled with
opposition.[7]
We — we the Church — are the modern day equivalent
of Jesus’s
ancient townspeople. We’re the ones who think we
know Jesus best.
We’re the ones most in danger of domesticating
him. We’re the ones
most likely to miss him when he shows up in faces
we don’t recognize
or value.
What will it take to follow him into new and uncomfortable
territory?
To see him where we least desire to look? To leave home?[8]
Barbara Brown Taylor, an ordained Episcopal priest
and author writes
that disillusionment, even though it stings, is
essential to the Christian
life: She
says, "Disillusionment is, literally, the loss of an illusion —
about ourselves, about the world, about God — and
while it is almost
always a painful thing, it is never a bad thing,
to lose the lies we have
mistaken for the truth.”
Luke’s story this week calls us to
disillusionment. It calls us to leave
home and find Jesus. To choose movement over stability, change
over
security.
So I wonder: how do I refuse to let others in my
life grow and change?
When do I box them into identities that are narrow
and constricting?
Where in my life do I try to "kill" the
new and the unfamiliar, instead of
leaning into newness with curiosity and
delight? Do I allow the people
I am close to, to become? Do I allow myself to become? Or do I cut
myself and others off with expectations that the
world says we should
have.[9] Do I believe things the world says I should believe
or do I follow
Jesus?
In this text, Jesus shows us that you can’t go home again. You can’t stay. Why? Because God is on the move. God is busy at the margins. God is doing new things. And God invites us to join him on the journey. Are you ready? Are you afraid? Because that’s okay. Are you willing to try, anyway? That's good enough. Let’s go.[10] Amen.
[1] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2067-leaving-home. Published: 27 January 2019. Debi Thomas.
[2]
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2067-leaving-home. Published: 27
January 2019. Debi Thomas.
[3] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2067-leaving-home.
Published: 27 January 2019. Debi Thomas.
[4] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2067-leaving-home.
Published: 27 January 2019. Debi Thomas
[5] Isaiah 61:1-2 and
Luke 4:18-19
[6] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2067-leaving-home.
Published: 27 January 2019. Debi Thomas
[7] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2067-leaving-home.
Published: 27 January 2019. Debi Thomas
[8] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2067-leaving-home.
Published: 27 January 2019. Debi Thomas
[9] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2067-leaving-home.
Published: 27 January 2019. Debi Thomas
[10] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2067-leaving-home.
Published: 27 January 2019. Debi Thomas
No comments:
Post a Comment