Keeping Away from the Cliff's Edge - Luke 4:21-30

I think we can all agree that if Jesus preached here at Christ Church, we would not try to throw him into the Arkansas River. When Jesus preached in his hometown of Nazareth, Luke tells us that the congregation was so angry at him that they ran him out of town and actually tried to throw him over a cliff. This passage makes all preachers nervous, by the way. If Jesus came here, we like to think that we would react differently, of course. Or at least we hope we would. But here’s the tricky thing about reading scripture. If you try to tie its stories up too neatly or take sides too quickly, usually digging just a little deeper will reveal that it’s not so cut and dry. We often find ourselves reflected in parts of a story we’d rather not be, say for example, in an angry mob. But even then, with a little work, there is good news to be found.

Let’s start by bringing today’s scene to life, and imagine for a moment that Jesus grew up in Little Rock, right here at Christ Church. As a toddler, people watched him grind his goldfish crackers into the pew cushions and make everyone around him giggle. He served as an acolyte over the years, and people would comment on how tall he was growing. In youth group he always seemed to answer questions with a wisdom beyond his years, and he was the first to sign up to make brown bag meals to hand out downtown. Everyone knew there was something special about this kid, and the community took pride in the faithful young man he was becoming. 

He moved away after high school, and people didn’t hear much from him until he came back in his early 30s. Carol Lou signed him up to be a lector, and one day he stood over there and read a passage from the prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. The word of the Lord.” Everyone responded, “Thanks be to God,” and marveled at how well he read. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he walked over to the pulpit, climbed up and said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” It sounded a little presumptuous, but the congregation was excited. And with that, Jesus preached his first sermon at Christ Church. 

First sermons at your home church are tricky, as Hannah mentioned last week. You want to impress the people who have known you your whole life, and you want them to see you in a different light than the acolyte they watched grow up. Also, new preachers usually have a significant case of sweating palms and shaking knees. But congregations are generous, cutting new preachers a lot of slack when they start out. Everyone was smiling up at Jesus as he began, ready to be generous. 

They had heard rumors about him, too. They knew that Jesus had been hanging out further down 6th Street with some Baptists and Presbyterians and people who line up for a hot lunch at Stewpot. There were reports of Jesus healing people. Luke mentions two healings in particular, a widow at Zarephath in Sidon and Naaman the Syrian, in other words, non-Episcopalians. So naturally when Jesus showed up at Christ Church, the people were excited. Surely he will heal us, too, they thought. The congregation had many people who needed it, from broken bodies to broken hearts. It had been such a difficult time, too, and it felt like Jesus showing up was the answer to their prayers. Surely he was about to bless his own. They’d loved him since he was that kid with goldfish crackers. If he was healing strangers, surely he would do even more for us. 

The gospels differ here about whether Jesus could not or would not heal people at Christ Church. Either way, he preached that prophets are not welcome at their home church and didn’t perform any miracles. And the congregation became angry. How dare he heal complete strangers and not his own people? And not only that, how dare he preach about God’s favor for that widow and leper down the street? The people at Christ Church had done everything they could to be righteous and faithful through good times and bad, and when the Messiah finally came, he seemed more concerned with the lost and the least across town. 

The impetus to throw Jesus off the cliff was maybe extreme, but you can understand how offensive Jesus’s words and deeds were to them. Of course, the real offense came not just from his words but from God’s grace itself. No matter how many times we hear it, we still think grace works on some kind of merit system. We work hard to be good, kind, and generous people as followers of Jesus, and deep down, we think that ought to count for something. Especially when we measure ourselves against those whom we think aren’t in the fold at all. 

Angry crowds have always been around, and they sure are a pressing problem today. We live in a world in which crowds want to throw people off of cliffs all the time. Even though we’d never do it, we all have a scorecard of people we think deserve it. Collectively, we seem to be getting more angry at those who have a different view than our own, on everything from mask wearing to electoral politics. It’s getting harder to hear truths that disrupt how we already see the world. That was true back when Jesus tried to preach in Nazareth, and it’s still true.  

Today’s Gospel gives us a path forward. Jesus somehow managed to walk right through the angry crowd and go on his way. He didn’t get hooked by it with an anger of his own. We can follow his lead, and stay focused on continuing to seek larger truths and deeper wisdom. We can come to see that God’s grace extends to all people, even the ones we think have it all wrong in any number of ways. That perspective doesn’t solve our differences, but it does keep us away from the cliff’s edge. God’s love for the other is one of the hardest lessons in the spiritual life, and it’s the one that got Jesus in trouble with his first sermon. But it’s also one of the most freeing lessons. God is not limited to the same prejudices we are. There is hope for all of us that our hearts can be healed, and there is hope for all the angry crowds out there. The Christian message is not always easy to hear, just ask the Nazareans. But it’s always good news.