Sermon - 2019-02-03

I want you to stop and consider for a moment, when was the last time you were angry?  Oh wait, y’all are Christians, you don’t get angry do you? Sadly even in the church, we will have arguments and debates of how and what we should focus on.  We will question people’s motives, their words, and their actions. Yes even within the walls of the church, we are not completely restored to the calling and the holiness that is only found in God.  Yet if we ever wonder if God understands what it is like to be singled out, ridiculed by people whom he has known from the time he was growing up, or stand up for what is right. We can return to this passage here today.  

Today we hear of Jesus going to his own hometown church.  Reading the Scripture but going one step further and declaring that Jesus is fulfilling the ancient text that the people gathered there have just heard.  After hearing that though, the people spoke kindly of Jesus. They were amazed at his eloquence of speech and knowledge of the Scripture and relationship with God that many of them have been striving for their whole lives.  Yet then they wondered, how did this boy of their community achieve such greatness?? They knew that this was Jesus, Joseph’s son, the carpenter. He did not come from greatness and yet somehow he has achieved it.

Yes even in the church, people can become jealous of one another.  “You know more Scripture than I do” “You seem to have your life put together better than me”.  We evaluate and judge one another as though we are competing against one another rather than regard one another as supporting one another.   For it is here even in the church that we find people who sin. But isn’t that the way it should be? Shouldn’t the church be the place where sinners are found because they are the ones who need to hear that God is with them.  That God is striving and working towards reconciliation and you as well can find the relationship with God in your own life.

Yet more often than not, we become even more angry.  When Jesus shares the truth of what God has done and that there were people who were chosen to be saved and loved but there were others who were left outside to not experience God’s Grace and Mercy in the world.  This becomes an even greater struggle when you begin to realize that God gives mercy and love to the people who were not part of the Chosen People. Yes each of the examples that Jesus gives are people who are not Jewish. The people were regarded as outsiders, who did not know God and whom were not worthy of the covenant that God had bestowed upon the Jewish People.  

So what was purpose of this all?  Why was this included within the Scriptures?  This was given as a reminder that just because you are part of the Chosen People, just because in your mind you are worthy or that because of your birth that you shall receive the blessing of God.  Does not entitle you to the gift of God’s Grace. Along with that, there will be some within your life that will speak God’s Word to you but you will not have the ears to listen to it. You, and your own heart, needs to be opened, prepared and yes perhaps even broken so that you will finally realize that YOU ARE NOT GOD but truly God is.  

Now for those of you who have realized this, who have opened your heart, your mind and your soul to what God has called you to be and do within the world.  We go beyond the law, of what we are to do and what would destroy you, and we find ourselves arriving at the Gospel. The Good News that God brings unto you.   You will know that the journey of life and faith continues. Now you hear that even though this world would turn against you. Even when your own friends and community members would turn their hearts on their own desires away from God, that God Himself will be with you.  That the promise that God gives to you, no one can take away.

So now, we return to the world that God has created but is marked with sin.  A sin that is present within the world but also a love that God has brought forth as means of hope and transformation that sin would not have the final word but that God’s grace and love would be the final word.  Amen.