Do you ever think of the church as a dangerous place? Do you even realize the risk you're taking…coming here today?
In the last few years, insurance companies have made great strides through intentional "risk management" programs for churches. We are encouraged to have policies in place to protect our children and youth from predators. We are asked to review all fire and traffic and security arrangements to make our buildings are safe places for every person who enters our doors. Some churches are purchasing defibrillators in case someone suffers a heart attack. I believe these are great ideas because they are all wonderful, proactive measures taken to manage risk…but… no matter how hard we try to circumvent all fore-seeable dangers, coming to church will always be risky.
Just look what happened to Jesus when he went to the Sabbath service at the synagogue in his hometown. He'd been there before. In fact, Luke makes a special point of saying it was his habit to go. I could expand on this, but suffice it to say, if Jesus needed the habit of worship with God's people every week, hey, maybe we need it, too!
Anyway, here he was at the synagogue
Nazareth, where he grew up. He knew these people and they knew him, or
thought they did. Jesus had been away
for awhile, but now he was back, with some rumors racing before him. A friend
of a friend had told somebody who told somebody about some signs and wonders
Jesus performed over in
In those days the rabbis would sit down when they preached, which gave them endurance, which is probably why preachers are made to stand nowadays. In those days, they would invite visiting rabbis to preach, so that day they invited Jesus, their home town boy, preceded by rumor, to be guest preacher. They took out the scroll, and unrolled it to the assigned reading for the day. Jesus rose and read the text from 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.
This was an ancient and subversive word from Isaiah, a radical countercultural prophet. It spoke of a world turned upside down. In Isaiah's day, only the king was anointed; preachers weren't anointed. And you didn't preach good news to the poor, because they were cheap labor…and good news to the poor would cost the wealthy more taxes than they wanted to pay. And you didn't release captives, or why would you capture them in the first place? In fact, many of the prisoners of war were blinded as a means to control them, or pushed into slavery to get public projects done. Who else was going to do that work and what would it cost? And "the year of the Lord's favor," the so-called "Jubilee," was the most subversive idea of all. All debts were forgiven, so everybody had a fresh start. All lands reverted to their original owners, no matter who had forced their owners into selling. And all slaves went free.
Revolutionary! But imagine the cost, the disruption! Why, the very idea would mean the end of war for profit and special interests and economic advantage! No wonder Isaiah and the other prophets with him were persecuted by the kings and priests and merchants, all the people who ran things, who had a vested interest in the status quo! But by Jesus' day, the message had been idealized … relegated to the past or to a future so distant it had no bearing on the present. And even when we read it today, nobody gets nervous, because we don't really believe it, do we? We don't really think God would turn everything upside down like that, so it's safe to say these dangerous words out loud. Why, this very morning, in thousands upon thousands of churches, all over the country these very same words are being read, and hardly anybody even thinks about what they actually mean.
So, the Nazarenes weren't perturbed by the scripture reading. And even when Jesus sat down, and began his message by saying "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," they didn't raise an eyebrow. Instead they began to whisper, "O-o-o-oh! Isn't he special?" "What a lovely voice!" "His daddy would've been so proud of him today!" They paternalized Jesus. They were all so proud of their homeboy, which of course, was a way of being proud of themselves.
Jesus was an eloquent speaker
… in the tradition of
Oh, they loved their local boy Jesus, and he would have been a big hit if he had only stopped right there. That's what gets most preachers in trouble. They don't know when to stop. Instead, Jesus cut right to the heart of their pride, even their pride in him. "You people, he said. "You've come to hear your home town hero today. You want to see some sleight of hand from one of your own. But I won't do miracles to entertain you and I won't perform to make you proud. I know you too well. You think you're God's favorites in all the world. But think about this: in the days of Elijah, God picked a foreigner to bless. In the days of Elisha, God healed a general in your enemy's army. You see, God loves everybody, not just you. God sends you prophets to tell you the truth, and what you do is kill them." And when he said that, they wanted to kill him!
It was an extreme form of what modern specialists call "audience response criticism." Not the kind of reaction most preachers hope for, which is why some only preach sweet messages on healthy self-adjustment to life's little irritations or loudly condemn "them" whenever they're talking to "us." You can't go wrong confirming the opinions people already hold. You won't get in trouble comforting the comfortable and afflicting the already afflicted. But Jesus meddled in their business. He burst the bubble of their pride and made them see themselves as they really were. And it made them furious!
Jesus will do that. God has a way
of stepping on our toes. The Bible messes with our business. We get used to
ignoring the people standing on our street corners begging for help. We seal
our souls against the news that our senior adults are getting squeezed by the
cost of their prescriptions while drug companies make record profits. We ignore
the cries of our brothers and sisters who want to know why our prison
populations are 80% non-white. We often miss the point that when we say
"God bless
But when we read the Bible, it says, "In as much as you've done it to the least of these, you've done it also to me." It says, "Take care of the widows and orphans among you." It says, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream." It says, "Love your enemies." It says, "God loves all nations and peoples." We do know what it says, but we don't often believe that God is calling every single one of us to take those words into our hearts and truly live them!
To tell the truth, there are lots of times I read the text for the week and I want to run, and this week was one of those times. At the end of this worship service we will hold our annual meeting and you will be voting whether or not to extend my contract as your pastor. You can see why the smart move would be to preach a really nice touchy feely sermon this morning, of all mornings. But one of the reasons I love the lectionary is that it won’t let me do the smart thing…it holds me accountable to listen to what the Holy Spirit offers, as a way into the texts, from today’s readings and that helps keep me honest, with you, and more importantly, with myself.
And I'm sure not always ready to do what today’s scripture proclaims. Like most other folks, I come here to meet God, but do I really want to? God might just change me and you in ways we aren't ready to change. So for just a moment, think of my as an insurance agent, and let me offer a few tips on spiritual risk management where it comes to this dangerous God.
I suppose one way to manage the risk is not to come at all, blame the church for not being what it ought to be, say they're all hypocrites anyway, announce you're a "spiritual" person but not "religious" (which really means you don't give a hoot about other people and don't want to be bothered with the entangling obligations of community). Well, that can be pretty lonely, so we can come, but manage the risk by ignoring the scriptures we don't like and listening only to those passages that make us feel good, that affirm what we already think and how we already live. Or we can let your minds wander during worship … to where we're going to get lunch or we can critique the choir or reflect on when the walls might need painting. That way, God's not likely to get through. Or we can listen closely, but when we hear something in scripture we don't like, anything that makes us uncomfortable, we can get mad, call it "fundamentalism," deny we might need changing, One of my personal favorites is to listen attentively and openly, all the while, straining to pat my self on the back for my brilliance in realizing how much the person next to me needs to hear the message!
All of these are useful ways we
dodge the bullet …we manage the holy …we deny the truth about
ourselves. But Luke tells us what happens when we reject the word of the Lord: "(Jesus)
passed through the midst of them and went on his way." That was the
benediction to the service at
On the other hand, you and I can open ourselves to the fierce love of God and let God get to us, show us where we need to change our minds and hearts, and let the power of God change us. It might mean giving up some things, or it might mean taking up some things. It might mean changing our habits, forgiving some people who have hurt us, loving everybody with the love of Christ, even the people we don't like. It might mean reordering our priorities to put Christ at the center of our lives.
The ancients understood the dangers
of drawing near to God. The Hebrews were warned to
stay away from the smoking, trembling mountain where God was giving Moses the
ten commandments. Poor Uzzah touched the ark of the covenant without permission and died on the spot.
Nobody was allowed to enter the holy of holies where God dwelled in the
Jesus gave us confidence to approach God, but not glibly. "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling," Paul warns, and the author of Hebrews intone: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." But we seem to think we have made God safe, tame as a housepet, a pussycat, a domestic servant to our slightest needs.
Today of all days, I hope your not going to get mad at me for telling you what I read in the Book…that you can't manage the risk…that you can't domesticate the wild Lion of Judah. You and I both know, worship can be painful, needs to be painful sometimes, if it is true. But we also know, this pain is like surgery, the wound that heals. We don't want to have it, but we know we need it sometimes, and avoiding it will only lead to worse suffering, even to death. And we know this because we have all seen what happens to people who let God in, what happens in those moments when a congregation lets God get loose and stops trying to manage the risk. Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, they weren't perfect people. But they let God take hold of them, and our world is not the same.
And if you dare, listen again to these words, but these times as if God were talking directly to you, personally, individually!
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. You shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you… I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.
Now, listen to these words as if they were your personal, individual response to God.
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.
What would it take for us to say "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing?" Is it worth the risk?
May we pray?
Holy God,
May we have a word with you? We know you love us as we are, but you love us too much to leave us as we are. And your first grace is telling us the truth about ourselves, seeing behind our masks, exploding our easy self-justifications. Your word interferes with our ways, but shows us the way to life. Forgive us for thinking we can manage you. But give us the courage to listen to your word, open ourselves to your transforming love, and follow you. O God, let Jesus walk through the midst of us today, and stay. We pray this in his name. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa