"Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Luke 4:21
When you have been away from your home town and you go back again, it can be an awkward
experience. Sometimes you have changed and it seems that everything else is still the same as it ever was. The longer I have
lived here in the United States the more unfamiliar my hometown and my homelands in Great Britain have become when I’ve
made a visit.
I’ve noticed some people have reacted to me a little cautiously,
in a few cases even critically. My accent… believe it or not… has changed.
Some of my views and tastes have altered. When it comes to British culture I no longer know what is ‘in’
or ‘out’, what the latest thing is or the current fashion… so it can be more difficult to find common ground
for conversation.
And sometimes, although people don’t come out and say it, you can
tell that some folk, (thankfully the exception rather than being the rule), are thinking in a negative way about you. “Well,
who do you think you are? Going off to America like that… don’t think you can come back here and tell us anything
we need to know!”
Having been in that situation it has helped me gain a fresh insight into
what happened when Jesus went to His hometown and started to preach the Good News. There was a familiarity about Him that
caused the local folk to feel that they knew who He was and what He was capable of. By suggesting to them that He was more
than they realized, it caused not rejoicing but offence. “Oh... for goodness sake, it’s only Joseph’s Son!”
A couple of times in Luke chapter 4 the Greek Word dektos,
meaning ‘acceptable’ but sometimes translated as ‘welcomed’, is used. In Luke 4:19 Jesus states His purpose as being “to proclaim the acceptable (dektos) year of the Lord." In Luke 4:24 we read “He said, "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable (dektos) in his own country.”
Notice that the first instance is a positive one. ‘Today is an accepted time to participate
in the work of the Lord, a day to welcome God, a day of God’s favor.’ The second is a negative. ‘This is
not the time. You are not that person. You should not welcome this, because we certainly don’t!’
What I want to take out of this passage this morning has to do with spiritual growth. You
can call spiritual growth by whatever term you wish – Growth in Grace, Discipleship, Transformation, Your personal walk
with Jesus, Growing into your baptism, or whatever term works best for you. No matter how you describe it, the fact is that
two principles will be at work, a positive force and a negative force.
The positive principle is that we are capable of spiritual growth. Indeed if we are not
growing spiritually we are either in a state of spiritual stagnation or we are spiritually dead. Spiritual growth is highly
acceptable and to be truly welcomed.
The negative principle is that there are all sorts of forces in and around our life that
are telling us that spiritual growth is not an option, and that if we think we can become better followers of Jesus Christ
then we’ve got another thing coming.
Let’s look at both these principles.
Firstly, the Positive
Jesus comes to the folk of His hometown with an absolutely awesome proclamation. That it
was the time for people like them, people who thought of themselves as people that God wasn’t very concerned about,
to wake up and see that God had a huge desire to bless them right there and right then; that they were central to what God
wanted to do in the world.
Behind His proclamation lies the custom (which I mentioned last week) of the
year of Jubilee. During a Jubilee Year, servants were released from
their obligations and were set free. Those who had debts that couldn’t be paid were released. Those who had been put
into a situation where they had to mortgage their land had their land returned to them.
Jubilee
was an amazing time for those who felt themselves unable to help themselves…a time of great grace and new beginning.
Here is Jesus standing before His people and telling them “It’s Jubilee! You are free to be all that God wants
you to be!”
We
need to know that it is STILL Jubilee time. That today is the day of the Lord’s favor. That today is a day to welcome
the presence of God into whatever we are doing. That today is the time to seek to grow in our faith and to believe that God
can do amazing things in us and through us!
Why
is it Jubilee time? Because Christ has died, Christ is Risen, and Christ will come again. In Jesus Christ everything necessary
for our spiritual growth has been accomplished. What it needs is the application.
Christ died for our sins: We can stop agonizing over them and using them as
an excuse to step back from following. It’s Jubilee time. The debts are paid, we are slaves no more, what we had lost
has been returned. Christ is Risen: Holy Spirit power is available here
and now – the power to change, the power to bring about Kingdom change in our world. Christ
will come again: The victory is assured, what is of Christ is eternal, and what is of this world won’t last. It’s
Jubilee time!
The
door to spiritual growth, both as individuals and together as a church community, is wide open. God invites us, “Ask
and you will receive…Seek and you shall find…It’s Jubilee time!” But
no… hold on a minute…look around you…it’s just us…and it’s just me and you…it’s
just the same old same old.
Already
we’ve moved to the negative. Already, even as Jubilee is proclaimed, we’re seating ourselves in the synagogue
and saying, “Now hold on a minute, that’s just Joseph’s son, isn’t it?”
And
Jesus knows exactly what’s going through our minds. Here it is in Luke 4:23: And He said to them,
"Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Physician, heal yourself’. What we have heard you did
at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well."
You hear what they are saying? “Listen, if you are all that and a bag
of chips, then show us some fancy stuff like we’ve heard you did elsewhere; then we’ll believe.” Now why
was Jesus able to work miracles elsewhere? It was because the people in those other places believed it was Jubilee time, but
the people in His hometown couldn’t get beyond their limited narrow ‘nothing can ever happen here’ mindset.
The most limiting factor for those folk in Nazareth was themselves.
Secondly, the Negative
This was no ‘glass half empty’ pessimism; it was a deeply rooted
misplaced pride that cut faith down before it could even flex its wings. To illustrate, Jesus uses two stories that were well
known to the listeners, one involving Elijah and a widow of Sidon, the other about Elisha and Naaman.
The first story is set in the middle of a drought, and Elijah needs something
to eat and drink. He goes to Zarephath in Sidon and encounters a widow about to
make a final meal for herself and her son. He asks her to make him a meal as well and tells her that “The jar of flour will
not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD gives rain on the land. (1 Kings
17:14). Everything happens just as Elijah has said.
In the second story, Naaman, a great general in
the command of the King of Aram, seeks to be healed from a leprous disease. He comes to Elisha, who instructs him to dip into
the waters of the Jordan seven times, and eventually
he receives his healing. (2 Kings 5)
In both accounts there is an initial reluctance
to respond. Both the widow and the General are outsiders. Yet, in both cases, once they humble themselves before the prophet’s
words, and act upon what they hear, miracles take place in their lives. They rise above their fears and overcome their misplaced
pride.
Misplaced pride prevents God from working in our
lives. Such pride grows out of our insecurity and fears. It expresses itself as a control issue. Those worshippers in Jesus
hometown had a lot to be rightfully proud of. That was Joseph’s son up there preaching a blazing sermon. He was somebody
that their town and their synagogues had nurtured and given a great start to. They had been gracious enough to give Him a
platform from which to express His views.
But the offence came when He suggested that there
was more to the Kingdom then they realized. That the message of God wasn’t all about them and their town, or even just
their nation, but was something that wrapped its arms around strangers and outsiders and people whom they still considered
beyond the boundaries of God’s Grace. In fact it was something so close to them, that they just couldn’t see it!
To recast this story into a contemporary mold, these were people familiar with the gospel story but strangers to the gospels power.
They were proud of their heritage, proud enough to defend it against anything they perceived as a threat. But that same pride
prevented them from experiencing the love of God as something that could work miracles in their midst, something that could
change and renew their lives and enable them to experience the Kingdom of God in a
way they never had before.
As a Presbyterian Church we have a tremendous heritage.
We have some great stories to tell and as a denomination have been instrumental in helping shape the history of the nation.
But that was then and this is now. Let us not fall prey to the familiarity of the hometown crowd. Let us rise to the challenges
of the present, confident that the Lord Jesus Christ, who stands in the midst of His church, the same yesterday, today and
forever, continues to lead us and guide us in unfamiliar ways and with fresh insights.
Let it not be said of us that we are people who
knew the story of the gospel but not its power. We can grow. As individuals and as a church community God desires our growth. Let us be proud of where we have been but have the humility to recognize that we haven’t
yet arrived, that the fields are once again ready for harvest, and that we are called to ‘keep on keeping on’
building the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and to the Glory of God!
Believe it! With God’s love as our incentive
and with hearts and lives prepared to make a positive investment in the things of God’s Kingdom, I believe that miracles
still happen! To God’s name be the glory!
Rev. Adrian J. Pratt
