Have you ever been caught up short with yourself and your life?
One of those moments that makes you stop to reassess everything about yourself?
Different things provoke these moments of questioning and redirection.
In the addiction recovery community it is called hitting rock bottom, realizing that we are spiritually bankrupt and in need of a painful moral inventory.
Or surviving a heart attack, or a tragedy or a disaster followed by a moment where we are given a profound sense of perspective, and an awareness of how out of focus our lives are.
In Christianity we talk about a conversion experience, where we turn away from something destructive and more importantly turn toward the person of Jesus, the grace and mercy of God.
St. Paul’s conversion was brutal, he was struck blind and a voice called out “why do you persecute me?” In his blindness he could suddenly see clearly the waste of his life.
The gospel lesson for last Sunday and for today is meant to bring us to the edge where we question ourselves and how we see things and how we live out our too few days.
The scene is Jesus preaching his first and last sermon in his hometown, in his home synagogue. Jesus is just beginning his ministry, he has just returned from his baptism and then being tempted in the wilderness. This is his first recorded public act. The beginning. This is important to understanding everything that follows.
Last Sunday we heard Jesus choose and read several verses from the prophet Isaiah, scripture verses that would define his life. You can tell a lot about a person by the scripture verses they focus on.
This is what he reads.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus fulfills these words as they are spoken and heard. He is the one filled with the Spirit, the one anointed, chosen and sent on a mission, the mission of God in the world and that mission is to bring good news to the poor, the mission is to release the captives, the mission is to bring recovery, sight for the blind, the mission of God is to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the arrival of God’s favor.
This is who God is, this is what Jesus is up to, this is the Gospel.
You can tell a lot about a person by what scripture they choose to lift up and offer.
What we hear today in the Gospel lesson is the sermon that follows the scripture lesson, Jesus’ first sermon.
I remember my first sermon at my home church, people were much more kind, but then again I did not deliberately provoke the wrath of the congregation and Jesus does just that, he provokes them. This is how Jesus deliberately starts his ministry.
This is what he does.
The people wanted him to work wonders like he had done at Capernaum, a Gentile town, people who are not Jews.
So Jesus brings up two miracles worked by the prophets Elijah and Elisha, not for Jews but for Gentiles, one was the widow of Zarephath and the other Naaman the Syrian.
Meaning just as God’s prophets blessed not the Jews but the Gentiles, so Jesus would bless Capernaum and not his hometown of Nazareth.
And the people are enraged beyond reason and try to kill Jesus; their reaction is extreme and visceral, out of control.
What was at stake for such a sudden and violent response? After all this is not a mob. They are at the synagogue on the Sabbath.
Things were probably tense because Israel was living under the occupation of the Roman Empire, a Gentile empire. It was hard to accept that they would receive God’s blessing rather than the people of God themselves.
What was at stake?
What was at stake was their identity as God’s people. What does it mean to be God’s chosen? What does it mean to be blessed by God? What is the appropriate response to God’s blessing? To God blessing somebody else?
Who are the insiders? Who are the outsiders? Who does God welcome and invite and who is left out?
We are left with this experience of God as the one who always surprises us, upsets our expectations, the one who reverses what we have come to accept as normal and appropriate. God brings the great reversal. Those who thought they were on the inside are suddenly left out. Those who thought they were on the outside are suddenly invited in.
Jesus begins his ministry by showing that the activity of God is primarily concerned with those who are left out, excluded, outsiders, fringe dwellers, people on the edge.
So what of all those who try so hard to live by what they thought were God’s rules that some lived up to and others did not? How do we now measure ourselves against one another now? Who is inside? Who is out?
This is what Jesus provokes and leaves us with, a deep questioning of the rules that we live by and of our expectations of others and of God.
It is a place of uncertainty. How do I measure up? What is the standard? Am I out or in?
The great reversal of God, this what Jesus fulfills in our hearing.
What will we do with this spirit filled uncertainty?
We are left not knowing much, what we are left with is a searing image of God always inviting in, a radical hospitality that is not so much concerned with rules of how things ought to be as with making sure all are welcomed, all are fed, all are healed, all are set free.
We don’t know if we are inside or outside God’s circle, all we know is that there are people that we can welcome and make at home, that is all we know, that is the only question we can answer. What will we do with that?
This is where Jesus reveals the activity of God. And all our questions have to change. It is no longer about who makes the cut. It is about will I practice the hospitality of God?
Its that simple.
Can we give up our old questions and expectations? The people of Nazareth could not, and they were left in silence seeing the violence of their hearts and of their heaven. Perhaps it was one of those moments of conversion, of perspective, of seeing how bent and distorted they had become.
And we are all left in that same place, provoked by Jesus, to set aside all our certainties, all our old questions about making the cut and to pick up the cross of servanthood, deep hospitality and welcome and going forth on the way to find those who are buried in the rubble.
Nothing else matters. This is the activity and presence of the Holy Spirit, this is where true perspective is gained.