Monday Morning Sermon: Hearing the Call

This week brought us the Third Sunday after Epiphany as well as our Annual Meeting in which we shared the first fruits of our vision process.  We're going to talk a bunch more about that vision as the week progresses but we'll  begin where we always begin--where we began our vision too--with scripture.  The gospel text this Sunday came from Luke 4:

14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

What an amazing proclamation from Jesus!  "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."  How often does God tip his hand like that?  How many of us have wished that God would just come to us, speak plainly, tell us what we need to hear?  Right here, in this gospel story, he did it!  Yaaaaayyyyyy!

Except we didn't hear the rest of the story.  The rest of Luke 4 tells us how Jesus' friends and neighbors in Nazareth refused to listen when he spoke plainly.  "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked.  When he scolded them by reminding them that the great prophets Elijah and Elisha--from their own history--weren't sent to the hometown folks but to foreigners in Sidon and Syria, the people of Nazareth got so angry that they drove him out of town and tried to toss him off a cliff.  (The ancient equivalent of de-friending someone.)

How could they miss it???  Jesus was right in front of them!  They knew him better than anyone, as he had grown up among them!

Those who have participated in our Thursday-night class on Lutheran basics will know the answer.  The world tells you that you see and understand, then you have faith.  In reality you have faith, then you see and understand.

Those Nazareth folks weren't ready to hear the scripture, let alone see its fulfillment.  They were probably just fine with God as long as God stayed in his accustomed place.  Come to the Synagogue on the Sabbath, hear a few things, be good people, then go back to real life.  That was the pattern.  When God leaped off that page and into their lives they weren't ready.  They couldn't see him.  They wouldn't hear him.  They had a carpenter's son in front of them and that's all they wanted to see.  They refused anything else.

They're not alone, of course.  We instinctively feel the same way about God.  Keep him in church and keep the church mostly the same and we're happy.  When God steps beyond his accustomed boundaries, calls us to something different than we expect, we get nervous, annoyed.  Sometimes we'd sooner toss him off a cliff than follow him.

But God doesn't settle for remaining in a book or a church, any more than Jesus settled for being the carpenter's kid and not the Messiah.  He comes into our lives and disrupts them.  He insists on uplifting the poor, un-free, oppressed, blind, and disadvantaged because we are those people.  In the process he calls us to do the same for each other, which means dealing with people and issues we'd rather leave be.  But that's not our calling.

We have begun a calling to a new mission at the Genesee Lutheran Parish.  It's a calling of faith and service.  It can't be proven, nor our fears over it resolved.  Like Jesus standing before us, it can only be believed in and trusted.

Join us this week as we talk about that vision together.  Bring your questions and thoughts.  Also realize that this vision stems from scripture and the ways in which the Word of God intersects the people in our community.  We have a holy calling.  That calling will involve thought, work, and plenty of steps to fulfill.  Pack up and get ready for the journey, then travel along with us as we begin its first steps.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)