Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

The 4^th Sunday after the Epiphany, Traditional Services – 1/28/01

by Gregory S. Kaurin

Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Go to: sermon menu – or – archive – or – home page

 

Texts: Luke 4:16-30

 

The Sermon:

What Happened to His Hometown Spirit?

 

The Olympic gold medallist had returned home at last.  When she had left, almost three months ago, she was virtually unknown, except by her family, close friends and a scattering of sportscasters. 

Now, the whole town seemed to know her.  They knew which locker had been hers at the high school and decorated it.  Just about everyone had a story about how they spoken with her in a hallway or at the grocery store, or when she had passed by and said some meaningful words or just smiled at them.

She didn’t come home immediately after returning to the States.  Instead, she went to a number of inner-city urban areas, met with groups of children, where she encouraged them at school assemblies to work hard, reach and stretch themselves.  Cameras seemed to follow her everywhere.  Nearly every hometown resident had seen the footage of her visit to the Brooklyn hospital, visiting patients.  Who wasn’t moved to tears each time the local channel replayed her silent visit to an AIDS patient?  She simply held his hand with a look on her face of deep, deep compassion.

Any disappointment that she didn’t come back home immediately after the Games was replaced by all the more pride, hype and excitement.  Men firmly shook her dad’s hand and declared, “We’re sure proud of our girl, aren’t we?”  Women were constantly around her mother, suddenly including her in everything.  It was like the whole town had given birth to her, raised her and took credit for her hometown values and decency.

There was a parade with the high school band and a few of the local groups and important people.  They paraded from the park, up Main Street, which was so short, they simply looped around to come down Market Street back to the park, where everything was ready for her on the little bandstand. 

On the way out and back into the park, they passed by the ten-foot tall exact replica of the Statue of Liberty.  They had stripped it clean of the green paint that had been applied decades before, all to keep her authentic-looking.  In reality, the park statue meant much more to them than the original statue in that harbor on the “other” coast.  In their hearts it was as if the New York statue was only a poor, but giant replica of their own!

The crowd finished by gathering at the base of the bandstand, surrounded by its balloons and streamers.  A few people carried banners and signs expressing their love for her.  In the stand, they took their seats: her parents, and a couple of her former coaches.  There was also a teacher who had declared himself as one of her major sources of inspiration.  Some mentioned how she didn’t seem to recognize him. 

She sat to the right of the microphone while the mayor spoke a few introductory words.  He finished by holding up a miniature of the park’s Statue of Liberty, which he declared as “a symbol of our hometown pride, the pride that we now extended to you, our own Olympic gold medallist.”

He then held it out to her.  She accepted the statuette, and still sitting at her place but just loud enough for everyone to hear, she read the well-known inscription at its base.  It read:

The New Colossus

[1]…”Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she,

With silent lips.  “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore;

Send these, the homeless tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

--Emma Lazarus, November 2, 1883

 

There was silence. Coming from her the words seemed to mean all the more, like a dream recaptured.  Even without a microphone they had heard every word like they were new, and believed every word like scripture.  Amazed at the girl who had just read to them with such quiet intensity.  No one spoke until at last she lifted her eyes from the statue’s inscription and looked out over the crowd.  Only then did they erupt with applause, whistles and even heart-felt tears.

And as they applauded, she slowly stood up.  The mayor stepped aside.  With a welcoming gesture and a beaming face, he invited her to the microphone.  Quickly, the applause and noise died down as they anticipated the words of their new young hero.  She looked strangely serious, like she was experiencing something profoundly different than the crowd around her.

She began by saying, “I suppose I should offer profuse thanks to all of you for encouraging and raising me, for the values and the love that you’ve taught and shown me.”  At that she lifted the statue just a bit as if it illustrated those values and that love. 

“But I’m not going to.  It’s true, you are my hometown and you have taught me things.  But too many times I have seen the way you shut out the world.  I’ve seen the way you squint your eyes and cross the street to avoid any transients that come through.  You eye newcomers with suspicion.  Worse than that I’ve seen the way many of you push people out of town who are different through inhospitality and sometimes with cruel pranks done at night.  I’ve seen the way you congratulate yourselves for the way you care for your own, and almost delight in comparing this town to the outside, as if their struggles couldn’t possibly be our business. 

“You read the inscription on the base of this statue as if it has been fulfilled in you.  It is not fulfilled in you.  These words have nothing to do with you.  You are not lifted up by these words.  You are judged by them!”

 

While she spoke, mouths dropped.  Hands fell to their sides.  There were a few gasps, then a few angry rumbles, whispers, and calls.  She backed away from the microphone.  The anger of the crowd was growing as her rejection and betrayal hit home.  Signs were torn, thrown down and stomped.  Shouting and tears, and a few even began to look violent, approaching the stand puffed and red-faced.  Quickly, her parents, nearly as shocked and confused as the rest, grabbed her, pushed her and ran her off the back of the stand to a car, fortunately just a few yards away.  They drove off while some followed with fists and unattractive gestures waving in the air. 

She was never invited to speak anywhere near her hometown again.  Never a kind word about her was spoken too loudly.  …However, a few (a very few) heard in her hard words something that rang true and for them a door of understanding opened.

 

A couple months ago, Pastors Joe, Steve and I were looking over the lessons and decided that the theme for this worship series in the Epiphany season would be titled, “Contrary to Darkness.”  And specifically for today, Pastor Joe suggested that the subtitle could be “Contrary to Darkness: Listen to the Hard Word.”  We knew this would be a difficult message to preach.  What will I say is the message of Jesus’ harsh words to his hometown, to those people who seemed to be extending their hearts to him?

When Jesus read the words from the prophet Isaiah, and especially when he finished by announcing that the words were fulfilled even while they listened, they loved it.  They loved it!—And not just because it was the shortest sermon they’d ever heard—but because Jesus took this prophesy of Isaiah, and more than just talking about it as if it were some great day of fulfillment and healing way off in the future, Jesus described God present and bringing it about even now, even right now.  It was an idea, a powerful word of which they had never heard nor thought before.

But just when their love and amazement reached out to him, Jesus suddenly turned the tables.  “Doubtless,” Jesus said, “you’ll tell me, ‘Doctor, cure yourself.’  In other words, ‘Now do for us, do the work we have heard you’ve been doing everywhere else.  It’s time to take care of your own.’”  Then Jesus reminded them of the stories of Elijah and Elisha, who were sent to help widows and lepers outside of Israel, even while Israel suffered the very same things.  Jesus had just finished telling them that God’s Word of healing and power was fulfilled, but just when they were about to take delight in it, he essentially told them that the fulfillment wasn’t about them.

I believe that Jesus was trying to teach them a very difficult lesson. God’s fulfillment is never a thing that can be owned and housed by a people.  They had imagined and lifted themselves up as the people and community of God, so that they forgot that God’s message them to be a light for others.

Instead, they had closed their eyes and hearts from outsiders.  They closed their eyes and were dreaming that they still bathed in his light, forgetting that light can only be light when it radiates out. 

 

Luke is the only one of the Gospel writers to give us all the details about what happened between Jesus and his hometown synagogue that day.  I think Luke saw an important message for future disciples, for us, so that we don’t close our eyes.

Luke was writing to a community of God.  They called themselves followers of Christ.  Week after week, they came together to hear the message, to break bread and pass the cup. Week after week they came to be fed by the Word and return home.  Eventually, that is how they came to view their church, as a kind of spiritual filling station.

I agree that we Christians need this place of refreshment and encouragement.  It’s why Jesus gave us his Holy Meal.  But we often speak and act as if we don’t really believe the permanence of God’s claim on us.  We talk as if the world has some ability to drain the power of God’s promise. 

We need to trust the power and permanence of God’s promise to each of us.  We are forgiven and owned by him.  We are each secure as his child.  We don’t need to constantly fret and focus on ourselves, dramatizing and wallowing in our own spiritual needs.  We are secure! 

Jesus didn’t just form the group of disciples around himself to teach and feed them and then listen to their praises.  Jesus sent them.  Even while he was still alive, even while they were just fledgling disciples, Jesus sent them out, like fishermen to haul in others.  The fulfillment of God’s Kingdom is experienced in mission. 

Once we have been baptized into his family and forgiven at his altar, the focus, our focus, needs to shift to those who are not secure.  Jesus told his hometown, and he tells us, that he will not be trapped by self-pity, or by self-congratulations.

His message to his hometown was to “Wake up, and quit revolving around yourselves.  You are God’s children.  Nothing can take that from you.  But don’t wallow in it as if you are the only center to the promise.  Start thinking about others.  Start helping.  Start reaching.”

 

It is possible that the most important thing that we Christians do is not just coming here week after to week to sing to each other and listen to the message.  It is possible—it is probable—that the most important thing for Christians to do is to believe the message enough and with enough passion that we want to pass it on to others. 

 

Go to: sermon menu – or – archive – or – home page

 

To send comment or question (please put sermon title “Hometown Spirit” in subject line): mailto:[email protected]