Kendall's Notebook Page 20
Sermon: In The Least Expected Place
By: Kendall Brown
Text: Luke 3: 21-30
February 1, 2004
Some people attribute the phenomenon to advancing years and others say that we simply have too much to remember in our cluttered lives. Whatever the cause most people know the frustration of putting something down right where you will be able to find it the next time you have a use for the item, only to end up searching for hours when that next time arrives. It might be a tool removed from its customary spot in the cellar, the garage, shed or closet shelf. It might be your car or house keys, something as common as the checkbook, or a note that you wrote for yourself with every intention of having the information at hand the next time it would be needed. You search and search, only to have the item appear once you have let go of the searching and given the item up for lost. The item shows up in the least expected place at the least expected moment.
Jesus had been preaching and engaging in some wondrous work before showing up in his own hometown of Nazareth. What he laid before the congregation in the synagogue was the least expected gift in the least expected place to find it. Jesus was a single-issue preacher – which is something that itinerant preachers can get away with, but a luxury that ministers who preach before the same congregation week after week can ill afford. Jesus’ single issue, proclaimed over and over again, was the nearness of the Kingdom of God. Jesus offered no exception to the rule for his hometown congregation. He preached the closeness of the Kingdom. “The Kingdom is as close as your hearing this word,” he said. Imagine that, God’s Kingdom is as near as the words coming from my mouth this minute are to your ears – that is right inside your ears, inside your head and inside your heart.
The story tells us that Jesus’ hometown crowd rejected him. Luke gives us some accounting of what they might have been looking for and didn’t find in Jesus’ message. “…Do here in your hometown what we have heard you did in Capernaum.” (v. 23b) News of the water into wine trick probably reached Nazareth before Jesus did. They were expecting a performance, like those that he had been performing elsewhere, that they could sit back and admire. After a round of entertainment rewarded with much applause they could all go home, tickled pink by their local hero but untouched by the message he preached. They went to the synagogue expecting to be spectators to something spectacular. Jesus called them to be participants in something new and special. They came to be entertained; Jesus called them to engage. They hardly expected to find what they found where they found it, the Kingdom of God as close as their hearing the word.
The rejection of Jesus in today’s story is a normal part of covenantal relationships. Covenantal relationships are those relationships that we choose to make a part of our lives. Church membership for most people is covenantal because we choose the church. Our doctors and lawyers are often people we have chosen to serve us in their fields. Friendship is one of the greatest of all covenantal pairings. The most well-known covenantal partnership is the marriage relationship. In fact, the marriage relationship is so commonly recognized as a covenantal relationship that marriage language is often used to describe other covenantal relationships, relationships of choice.
There are three fairly well known stages in covenantal relationships. The first stage is often called the honeymoon stage and is marked by adoration, sometimes operating at a level of deification. Just call to mind the lyrics of some romantic song in which the object of love is spoken of in words also used in the worship of God. The second stage is the period of disillusion often marked by disappointment, even rejection. Disillusion is a good name for it spells out something that is necessary for the relationship to grow – namely the breakdown of some of the illusions that occupy the first stage. The third stage is the coveted stage of mutual respect and esteem. There is a big difference between the respect of the third stage and the adoration of the first stage. The third stage is built on a healthy, honest and realistic knowledge of each other’s weaknesses and strengths. Adoration denies any weakness, and in the blindness of that denial also fails to see what the other’s real God-given gifts are. The third stage of realistic and honest mutual respect is the one that is necessary to achieve for the covenanted partners to be together for the long haul.
Jesus didn’t make it to the long haul in Nazareth. But the story accounts clearly for the other two steps. Verse 22 says, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips.” That verse bears witness to the adulation/honeymoon stage. People were able to glorify Jesus as long as he was in other places and all that they were hearing were stories of wondrous deeds a long way off. They could admire Jesus from afar. But up close and personal, Jesus called them to engage in a relationship with him. Being entertained requires nothing of the entertained. Engaging with Jesus calls output as well as input in the relationship. The Nazarene wasn’t ready for any output.
The second stage is in the story, the stage of disillusion/disappointment and its consequences. Verses 28 and 29: “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.” The hurt experienced and endured in the second stage is but a prelude to the third stage. Often we want to avoid this stage by avoiding anything that is painful or hurting. Yet the pain must be lived to know the healing. The Trappist monk and well known writer about spirituality, Thomas Merton writes:
“As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a Body of broken bones. Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish, without some pain at the differences that come between them. There are two things that people can do with the pain of disunion that comes between them. They can love or they can hate.” Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation” (New York, New Directions, 1961) p. 72.
Today’s lesson reminds us that the movement from the first infantile stage and the second adolescent stage into the adult like stage is a choice. Much happens between and among us. Often we have little choice about what happens between us and the resulting pain and brokenness. Our choice is in how we respond. Do we choose to live as citizens of the new community of love to which Christ calls us or do we choose to stay in the old routines, familiar but often destructive of soul, body and community itself.
Luke’s story about Jesus in Nazareth does not include the happy ending of moving from the second stage of disillusionment and disappointment to the third stage of ongoing respect and esteem. The last stage is missing because the people did not enter the Kingdom. Jesus stood before them, held the door open and invited then to enter, even as he stands before us, as close as our hearing, and invites us to enter. Such is the meaning of this table before us. Jesus is as close as the bread and body, and they through the communion become part of us.
The Nazarene synagogue was looking for and expecting a miracle - something to entertain them. Jesus offers a mystery. It is the mystery of a new community. It is the mystery of relationships in the Kingdom that is as close at hand as our own hearts. It is the mystery that our lives and hearts can be transformed by forgiveness and grace. It is the mystery that the old can be made new and that the broken can be made whole. It is the mystery that is received when we stop looking with our eyes and ears and start longing with our hearts and souls. It is the mystery that is as close as every breath that we take. It is the mystery that is there for us to find in the places where we least expect it: in the broken places of life.
Let us gather at the Communion Table to find there what Jesus offers – a new community. In this new community there is a place for everyone, even those with whom we struggle. Let us bring to the table our brokenness and be made whole. Let us bring to the table the closed places in our hearts that they may be opened – for community in first and foremost an interior thing. Everyone has to have a space inside of you before there can be a place for them in the community. Let us bring to the table our emptiness that we may be made full. Let us bring our oldness that we may be made new.