The Demise of 'Nazareth First'

The Demise of 'Nazareth First'--February 4, 2019

"And Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.' All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, 'Is not this Joseph's son?' He said to them, 'Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, Doctor, cure yourself! And you will say, Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.' And he said, 'Truly I tell you no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of the was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.' When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way." [Luke 4:21-30]

Jesus could have stayed safe if he just would have kept his mouth shut.  The fact that he doesn't says that Jesus is more committed to declaring the scandalously big love of God than he is to looking out for his own interests.  But then again, that shouldn't surprise us: Jesus was never really one for the "Me-and-My-Group-First" routine.

That, it turns out, is exactly what gets him into trouble, and what provokes so much anger from his listeners here in the wake of his first sermon at his hometown in Nazareth.  Jesus insists that God's love always reaches beyond the boundaries we set up to contain it, and that God even reserves the right to attend to the needs of the outsiders before the wants of the insiders.

Everything had been going fine, of course, when Jesus began.  He was the hometown-boy-done-good who had come home as an up-and-coming rabbi.  And at first, the message Jesus brings sounds like God is going to do something special just for the people in Jesus' hometown in Nazareth.  When Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah a vision of God setting captive people free, bringing good news to the poor, and announcing God's favor, the folks from Jesus' hometown heard it as their special prize possession. They heard it as Jesus saying he was going to bring back the good ol' days of Israel's glory, and that it was just for them, just for the people in Nazareth, who all looked alike, talked alike, believed alike, and thought alike.  Jesus' hearers first thought he was saying that he was going to bring back Israel's old greatness once again (even if no one was quite sure what that "greatness" looked like, or when exactly it was), and they thought Jesus was launching a campaign to put Nazareth First.  After all, he was their own hometown boy...surely, Jesus meant for his divine power and favor to be just for their own kind, right?  Or that once everybody who fit into the "one of us" category, the "insiders," had their fill, maybe they could give the scraps and the leftovers to other people outside the boundaries, right?  The folks in Nazareth would have been fine with sharing with "outsiders," as long as they got to the end of the line and waited until all the "insiders" had had their fill.

And then Jesus just up-ends all of that thinking when he keeps on talking.

Jesus tells these religious neighbors in the pews, who have all heard what they wanted to hear from Jesus's words, that he has not come just for them, and that he has not come to launch a Nazareth First campaign.  In fact, Jesus says, the way God has always operated has been to reach out beyond barriers and boundaries of insiders and outsiders, and to be good to the outsiders, the foreigners, the strangers, and even the enemies, sometimes before the "insiders"!  Jesus takes the old conventional wisdom of "You have to look out for your own first" and turns it inside out.

And to make his case, Jesus references two well-known stories from the days of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, each of whom had been sent in difficult times, not to the "insiders" of Israel, not to the halls of power, and not to the people who were "like" them, but deliberately across borders to the nobodies and outsiders and even enemies who were on the margins and beyond the borders.  Elijah had been sent to help out a poor widow in Zarephath (not an Israelite town, but a Gentile/non-Jewish/pagan town in Sidon) to provide flour and oil for her and her son during the famine, and even to raise the woman's son from the dead when he fell ill and died.  And Elisha had given a free healing to the commander of the enemy army when Naaman the Syrian contracted leprosy.  Of all the stories Jesus could have taken for inspiration for his own mission, Jesus highlights these two: times when God had deliberately stepped over the boundaries and to include outsiders, to show love to foreigners (yes, even prioritizing them before the Israelites), and to care for even those who had declared themselves to be enemies of the Israelites and their God.  Jesus says, with his hometown listening, that God's way is decidedly NOT to put Nazareth First, or Me-and-My-Group First, but in fact, God deliberately reaches beyond those boundaries to embrace strangers, foreigners, and even enemies, as well.

And at that, at the mere suggestion that God's power and love are not the sole possession of "people like us," the crowd who had just been praising Jesus wants to lynch him.  They run him out of town and are prepared to throw him off the cliff because they don't like the idea that God is not at their beck and call, to the exclusion of all others.  They do not like the idea of a God who doesn't say, "Make all those outsiders stand and wait in line until after we have all had our fill," and they sure don't like the idea of a God who dares to put "the other" first.  It is downright scandalous to them, and Jesus has poured salt on the wound by showing them from their own Scriptures that this is how God operates.  

That seals it. Sometimes we (because come on, we are not really different from the people of Nazareth in the story) would rather kick Jesus out than let him in if he is going to insist on bringing everybody else along with him.  Sometimes, our need for control about who does and does not get access to God's power and love are so strong that we will silence the voices who suggest that God's reach is bigger than we dared imagine.  Sometimes we are so afraid of being wrong about who is or isn't acceptable to God that we would rather raise angry fists at those (even if it's Jesus!) who compel us to look back in our own Scriptures to see that God has always surprised us with a reach and a love that crosses the lines we thought were uncrossable.

But now here is good news on this day--at least good news for Jesus and for the people who want to be about his work: even when the angry crowd does its worst and wants to throw Jesus off a cliff, he simply "passes through their midst" and goes on his way.  Like the old Andrew Greeley line says, "Jesus and his troublemaking go merrily on," and that is exactly what happens here.  Jesus not only declares his intention to cross the boundaries that the Respectable Religious people have set up, but when they try to stop him, he simply goes right through them like a hot knife through butter, and passes on his way to keep making trouble, to keep reaching out to the "other" and the "outsider," and to keep on bringing good to people who were strangers, foreigners, and even enemies.

That's what Jesus will be up to today, too--what will you and I do about it?

Lord Jesus, break down whatever boundaries we set up to keep people away from your reach and your love, and send us out as your servants on your way to bring news of your love to strangers and outsiders, foreigners and enemies, too.