January 28, 2007, Epiphany 4
Jeremiah
1:4-10; Psalm
71:1-6; 1
Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke
4:21-30
To Proclaim Good News – Part 2
Good News/Bad News – a both/and God
One day a Cardinal rushed breathlessly into see the Pope and
announced, "Holy Father, I have good news for you and I have bad
news."
"Well, tell me the good news first," says the Pope.
"Holy Father, the good news is that Jesus Christ is
coming again this very day!"
That's wonderful," says the Pope, “Gather everyone out
in the St. Peter’s square to greet him.”
"But the bad news, Holy Father, is that he is coming at
I have always had trouble with this gospel lesson. I just never have liked it. And the temptation for me is to preach on the
Jeremiah lesson which I can relate to much easier and totally ignore what’s
going on in the gospel. I mean, “gospel”
is supposed to mean “good news” and when we see the anger generated by the
people at
If you were here last Sunday, you heard the first part of
this lesson. We even sang it – “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me… - because
he has anointed me - to preach good news to the poor, he has
sent me to proclaim release to the captive and recovering of sight to the blind
- to set at liberty those who are
oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
And after he reads this lesson from Isaiah – he sits down and
says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Now for the people of
And it says that “all were amazed at his gracious words and
spoke well of him.” Don’t know what they
said exactly, but we can project what was going on – the scripture was familiar
– a much loved promise. After all,
weren’t they poor, - and oppressed by the Romans, and physical problems
abounded - “yes, good Lord, deliver us, your chosen people.” We’ve heard the tales about Jesus and what he
did in
And Jesus responds to this – “I know what you are thinking… You are thinking you are the chosen ones –
that you can just sit back and just because you are sons and daughters of
Abraham, you think that you are the only ones that God comes to and saves. But that’s not true. Let me remind you about what the scripture
says.
During the time of Elijah, during the 3 ½ year famine, there
were many starving in God’s holy land – sons of Abraham as well as widows and
orphans. But Elijah didn’t go to any of them.
Instead he went to a widow at Zarephath in
Now to a bunch of hometown boys, this sounds like sacrilege –
a foreigner, a gentile, was given the favor of God. And they didn’t like where this story was
going. And Jesus follows it up with
another story that they don’t like very much – the story of Naaman the Syrian
commander – the commander of the opposing army.
He had leprosy – and even though there were many lepers among the Jews,
Elisha only cleansed Naaman. And truth
be known, he wasn’t very gracious about it.
So Jesus is telling the people of his hometown – “I have good
news and bad news; and the bad news is that the good news is not exactly what
you wanted or expected.” The good news
is that God’s favor is at hand – the bad news is that it’s not just for you –
it’s for everyone.
Like so many people – the people of
One of today’s preaching greats, Fred Craddock, describes our
difficulty in reading the gospel of Luke by saying that "We are
'either/or' people in the hands of a 'both/and' God." We want the blessings to be either for us or
them – but God has proclaimed that it is to be for both us and them.
The message is the same for everyone – us and them – the
If we see people who we consider to be in a state of sin, we
don’t want to see them offered the same blessing that we are to receive. That’s human
nature – that’s sin nature.
The Bible tells us over and over that all are included. In Acts 2 we hear 'In the last days,
God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.’
In Matthew 28 we hear Jesus tell the disciples, “Therefore go and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”
We are the ones who ask questions like, “Well, do we have to include
those people – after all they’re not
very nice… - after all they’re in a state of sin… -
they’re not like us”
Read the parable of the Good Samaritan where the lawyer asks
Jesus, and who is my neighbor? What he’s
really asking is “who gets excluded? Who
can I leave out?” He’s asking, “Do I
have to include those in the next town – your know what they’re like…” “Do I have to include the people from that
church down the street? They don’t
believe the same thing we do?”
And Jesus tells a parable in which the “neighbor” is this
dreaded Samaritan – those are dirty people, half-breeds, who believe it’s okay
to worship on the mountain instead of
In the parable of the Prodigal Son – the father goes out to
both sons – the younger son who wandered off and squandered his money in loose
living and thumbed his nose the moral standards
- that son is accepted back into
the fold. You know what’s going on here
– the older son would rather stay outside in the cold than see his brother
accepted. And the father goes out to the
older son, just as he had the younger – he
goes out to the good son who stayed home and did everything right – to the one
wanted to see his younger brother excluded.
So, the good people of
And so Jesus passed through the midst of them and when on his
way – to bring blessing and honor and the love of God to those who wait to hear
the good news that God has prepared a place for them, also.
Please feel free to email me with comments at nan@doerrworks.com