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Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
St. Stephen's Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, February 3, 2013


The Gracious Words of Jesus


Text: Luke 4:21-32

Jesus once told His disciples, "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first." (John 15:18) He went on to say, "They hated me without reason." (John 15:25)

Why? Why does the world hate Jesus? People everywhere speak well of Jesus as a great thinker, teacher and healer. And yet, when it comes to following Him, when it comes to obeying His teaching, when it comes to letting Him heal their lives, many choose to run the other way. They will say they don't "hate" Him. But you can't have it both ways. Either you love Jesus and obey, follow and trust in Him, or you hate Him. There is no middle ground. For to pass Jesus off as just a great thinker, teacher, or healer and nothing more, is to deny who He is. He is the Son of God. He is God manifested in our midst, who came into the world to rescue it by rescuing each person who put themselves in His hands. If you deny that is who He is, you reject Him.

We see that rejection in our reading today from Luke's Gospel. We see the moment the people turned on Jesus. We see the moment their admiration turned to hate. Let's spend a little time with this passage of scripture and see what we discover.

We heard the first part of this story last week. Jesus was in His home town of Nazareth, and He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, as was His custom. He was handed the scroll of Isaiah, and He read the familiar passage that says,

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." [Luke 4:18-19]

Then He rolled up the scroll, sat down and said, "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4:21)

What an amazing moment. Just think how different things would have been if the people had fallen on their faces before Him and said, "Alleluia! The anointed one of God has come. The prophecies of the Messiah have come to pass. Alleluia!" But instead, as we read this morning, they grabbed Jesus and drove Him out of town, to the edge of a cliff. They were actually ready to throw Him off the cliff, but it was not His time, and He walked right through them and left town.

It is striking that when Jesus finished reading and saying the scripture was fulfilled in their hearing, the people were "amazed at His gracious words," and they "spoke well of Him." He got off to a good start. But what happened? How did things turn around so fast and go from admiration to murderous intent?

This was one of those times when Jesus read the hearts of the people. He knew what they were thinking as they admired His words and found them to be gracious. They were thinking, "Wow, Jesus is talking about how much God favors us." When someone in the crowd said, "Isn't this Joseph's son?" Jesus knew what that meant. It meant, this is our hometown guy, and he will certainly jump to our hometown tune.

Jesus read all this, and so He preached an unpopular message that was calculated to make them see their self-centered hearts with clarity. He started by reminding them that a prophet is never accepted in his home town. He said in effect, "You guys are hoping I will do some miracles like I did in Capernaum, and put Nazareth on the map." And then He referred to two incidents in the Bible that they knew well. One was about the widow of Zarephath, whom we hear about in 1 Kings. (I Kings 17:8-16) It was the time of Elijah the prophet, and there was a great famine in the land. People were dying of hunger and thirst. God had sent Elijah to this woman to ask her to give him something to eat and drink. When he arrived, she that she and her son were starving, and she was about to prepare their last meal. Elijah wasn't about to let them die. God did a miracle and saved their lives. The key to this story, and what Jesus was reminding the people that day, was that the woman was a foreigner. She was from Zarephath in the neighboring land of Sidon. This incident always stuck in the craw of the "chosen people," because they resented God's showering His miraculous blessing on anyone but themselves. Remember, for example, how angry Jonah was when God wanted him to go to Nineveh to warn them to change their wicked ways. Nineveh was in a foreign country, and Jonah was afraid that if he took them God's warning, they would repent, and God would refrain from punishing them.

Jesus alluded to another story at the synagogue in Nazareth that day. This one was about the time a Syrian General wanted to be cured of leprosy, and he reluctantly went and asked the Jewish prophet Elisha to help him. This one was in 2 Kings (2 Kings 5:1-14). But again, it was not a Jew whom Elisha healed of leprosy, but a foreigner.

Jesus was tapping into a truth that runs throughout scripture to which the people of God turned a blind eye. That this truth is that God's blessing is for the whole earth. God had assigned His chosen people a major role in His plan to save the whole world. And all the care and provision and discipline that God showered on them was not for their benefit alone. All the miracles He did to keep them had a purpose beyond their own needs.

We hear this right in the beginning when God went to Abraham and commissioned him to go to a land far away which God would show him. God said he would give Abraham an heir and a land of his own. Both are blessings upon Abraham and his family. But then God said, "and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants." (Genesis 12:3) In other words, God did not give Abraham an heir in his old age just because a rich man should have a son to inherit his property. He gave Abraham an heir so that a people would grow out of God's promise, a people that God could call His own, and cultivate, a people God would use to bless the whole world.

We hear in the prophets as well, that God intended all along that His blessing would be for all nations. And that is why Jesus sent the disciples out to preach the Gospel to the whole world and to baptize people of all nations, and to teach them to obey his commands. The Chosen People of Israel were only the beginning of the family of God. Now, with the coming of the Messiah, God's salvation would be taken to the ends of the earth. Now the family of God would be filled with Gentiles and Jews alike.

Jesus knew this was not what those people wanted. And so He spoke of God's miraculous blessing on the Widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian leper. And Jesus' audience reacted as He knew they would. Suddenly, His words were not amazingly gracious. Suddenly, He wasn't their homeboy anymore. Now He was a man who said disgusting things that made them want to throw Him off a cliff.

Times have changed. And yet things are very much the same. Times have changed in the sense that now Christians have no problem understanding that God's saving grace is for the whole world. But what has not changed is that people want to reject what they don't like from what Jesus is telling us.

Yes, God's salvation is for everyone. So, many Christians have turned it into a new message that Jesus did not preach. And that new message is, "You don't have to know Jesus to be saved. There are many pathways to God." Well, that isn't what Jesus said. He said,

I am the way, the truth and the life. There is no way to the Father except through me.[John 14:6]

He said,...

whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."

To pass Jesus off as a great thinker, teacher and healer, but deny who He is, is to reject God.

God has said to us, "I am God, and there is no other." (Isaiah 43:10-12) The whole problem with the world is that we are estranged from the one God, who created us to be in relationship with Him. In its estrangement, the world says, "I have no need of God. Or, if I do, I can find him any way I wish." Tragically, the church is allowing the thinking of the world to infiltrate and corrupt their Biblical worldview.

Those of us who have been reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ should be thankful that He has made a way. How can we turn around and tell others, "You don't need to know Jesus to fix your greatest problem?"

A little over six years ago, when this congregation voted to separate from our denomination, it wasn't just because the officials of the Church had consecrated an openly homosexual bishop in New Hampshire. It was because they had set aside the Bible as the authoritative truth. And when they did that, it wasn't long before they said, "Jesus is not the only way." Christians with whom we had been in fellowship were critical of our rigid position. They said things to us like:

When I got these challenges from my colleagues, it felt as though they wanted to drag me out to the brow of the hill and throw me over. But it is not people like us they are throwing over the cliff. What has happened is that by giving in to the pluralism and relativism of the world, the Church has actually thrown Jesus over that cliff. It is as though it had ended His ministry right there in Nazareth that day. He didn't need to go to the cross to atone for the sin of the world. He didn't need to rise from the dead. He didn't need to ascend into heaven to reign and judge the world. He was just a great thinker, teacher and healer. And we're all so very happy seeking whatever we think we need in our own way.

Brothers and sisters, there is a war raging. The Bible tells us that,

[God's] intent is that now, through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God will be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to His eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Ephesians 3:10]

And what is that wisdom? It is that God is redeeming the world through the sacrifice of Jesus, and through the witness of those who believe that Jesus is the Savior. Not all those rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms are receptive to God's wisdom. Some of them are Satan and his fallen angels. And they are trying to thwart the witness of the Church. You can hear the success that they are having when people assert:

There is a war raging. And our role in that war is to stand fast for Jesus. We are His warriors, and our job is to obey what He commands us and to pray that His Kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. When people come at you smiling and say "Surely, you can't be so exclusive and intolerant as to believe everything you read in the Bible," a shot is being fired. Simply to say, "Yes, I do believe," is to engage in that battle.

God has equipped us for this battle by giving us the "Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." (Ephesians 6:17) Some of us are going to be especially good at wielding that "terrible swift sword," and people will surrender their disbelief. Others will take the Gospel out to the world and plant it where it will bear abundant fruit for the Kingdom of God. Others will simply stand firm and hold the line. But every one of us is a warrior, and none of us should run the other way.

"All spoke well of Him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips." But when He laid out the truth of God's manifold wisdom to them, they wanted to throw Him over the cliff. We're on that cliff with Jesus, you and I. He has appointed us to tell the truth. He has appointed us to stand against the vain philosophies of the world. He has appointed us to be His witnesses. Yes, indeed, we are amazed at the gracious words that come from His lips. For every word He speaks is the truth. And that gracious truth is that He is the High and Holy One, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2013

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