Jesus didn't come for the hometown team

Luke 4:14-30

It’s hard to preach to people you know well: Friends, family, people who remember you as the snotty-nosed little kid who was getting into trouble or the pimply-faced, socially-awkward teenager. When people know your history it is very difficult to outlive it, and when prophets have a history in a place it changes the dynamic of what a preacher is expected to say. Prophets are temporary; they are always just passing through; but when it’s the hometown kid something changes—the temporary and the forever collide and our expectations change. This is what happens when Jesus returns home to Nazareth. You can hear the adults—you know, those of Mary and Joseph’s age—saying things like, “Hey, look, it’s the little J-man, all grown up and going to read the Bible to us! Wow, isn’t he smart?”

            To some extent—and this is probably even more true in small towns and rural areas like Nazareth or Hallock—people are always seen as kids, no matter how old they are. This can be endearing and it can be patronizing. It can mean that the message they bring is not heard when it is spoken or never spoken for fear of what the elders think. I tend to think it is far more challenging for a person (especially a young person) to speak up in this community than in a big city, for example, because whatever message they bring will get wrapped in their personal history. Being a prophet to the hometown team is hard. Preaching the Christian message to those who know how flawed you were—and are—is nearly impossible, because the Christian message is not one of preference for people who look like me or sound like me. Jesus brings a message that tears through the hometown advantage. He doesn’t preach what the people want to hear but what they need to hear. He tells them the hard truth, which is that you aren’t any more special than anyone else. Not surprisingly, the people tire of this message quickly.

            We want Jesus to be on our team—and what could be wrong with that? Why wouldn’t we want Jesus on our team? If we were drafting a team of the most important people in our lives wouldn’t it be a good thing to include Jesus? There’s just one problem: Jesus doesn’t do teams. Jesus has preferences but not teams. And his preferences tend to look the same, which is a preference for the one who is in the greatest need, for the lost and the lowly and the powerless.

            This home-town phenomenon is pretty much the same today. We talked about prophets in Confirmation last Wednesday with the 7^th and 8^th graders and their parents, and we made up a list of all the people who might be modern-day prophets. Whenever we do this I’m struck that it begins to sound a little like we’re listing the people on our podcast playlist. For example, I might say that Wendell Berry is a prophet, but that may be because I rather like what Wendell Berry says. You might like what Mike Rowe says. Or you might like what Pope Francis says. Or you might like what Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders say. I don’t know. Does that make them a prophet? If Jesus and if any of our examples from the Old Testament are any indication the best way to tell if you are listening to a prophet is to ask yourself A) is this person preaching for the visitors rather than the home team, and B) is this person about to get his or her self crucified for what they are saying? If you can answer “yes” to those questions then you may be dealing with a prophet. People don’t like what a prophet has to say. People didn’t much like what Jesus had to say. Because of this, we are forever domesticating Jesus to fit our already-held beliefs. We make Jesus into our image. We tone down the harshness of the prophetic voice at least as long as the prophecy is aimed at us—the hometown team. We follow Jesus to whatever extent it makes us feel good about ourselves, but the moment it makes us question things we turn away

            So, that’s the bad news: Prophets do not make us feel comfortable. But the good news is that you are not alone in your response to prophecy. It isn’t just you. Is that good news? Well, it means that Jesus came for people like you—even the very people who were his next-door neighbors, expecting him to come back for the homecoming pep rally when instead he told them that they were the worst of all sinners—worst because they expected to be called the best. Jesus came for the visiting team, which, it turns out, is you after all.

            This is one of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith; that in order to be the best we have to give up our status and power for the sake of the least. In order to understand our need for a Savior Jesus condemns us first. Humility is exaltation. Righteousness comes by grace so that none of us can boast. There is no home field advantage for a Christian; there is nothing that makes a Christian better than a Muslim or a Hindu or an atheist. We are all sinners. But, in our best moments, we are also able to listen to the words of prophets, bringing a message from God without putting our own spin on it, and we are capable of allowing that word to challenge us, to convict us, and to leave us asking with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall I go?” At our best, we doubt the part of us that is selfish.

            Then we’re on to something. Turn to Jesus, not to find someone who’s going to tell you that you’re great as you are, but to find someone who will take what you are, convict you, and then say, “But you are mine. And I save those who belong to me.” Turn to Jesus because, like all the prophets, he is only interested in making you aware that you are sinful so that you might know why you need a Savior.

            I want to share one story of this past week before wrapping this up. A Lutheran pastor was shopping at Menard’s and came across some baby Jesuses for a nativity scene—on sale, of course, it being now no longer Christmas. You can, in fact, get rock bottom deals on baby Jesus this time of year. Full size baby Jesuses, 17” long, the sign boasted. But it wasn’t that that was interesting—strange, maybe, but not that interesting. What was interesting was that the sign declared that these were 17” Traditional Baby Jesuses. Traditional, as opposed to….? Modern? No pacifier in his mouth or Dora the Explorer bedding? But, OK, we call all sorts of things traditional—whatever. That wasn’t the part that got me thinking about the way that we make Jesus out to be part of the home team. What got me was that these baby Jesuses that some employee of Menard’s went out of his or her way to label “traditional” had white skin with pink cheeks, the picture of Scandinavian beauty. Now, as far as I’m concerned it’s fine to make of Jesus an image that we can connect to, but if we’re going to call that Jesus “traditional” and make him look exactly like you and like me then we have to open ourselves up to the possibility that we are doing the same thing that Jesus’ friends and relatives did that day in Nazareth. Jesus was not a little white baby, but honestly that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that we make Jesus in our image only up until the point where Jesus starts saying things that convict us. Then we do what people do with prophets they don’t much care for and we crucify him. Jesus almost didn’t make it to the cross because his friends and family nearly did him in before his ministry even started.

            What we did to Jesus, nailing him to the cross, we reenact with every person who brings messages we don’t like, and here I’m not talking primarily pastors or anything like that. I’m talking most of all about people like your parents, whom you would have run out of town many-a-time if you could have. I’m talking about your teachers and coaches and the people you just can’t stand. God has always spoken through ones such as these—the people who make us question ourselves—those close to us and far. It’s hard to preach in your hometown, harder still in your home with your family. But we do preach by how we act, by how we raise our children, by how we carry ourselves. God doesn’t just speak through bushes and guys with bushy beards who smell like they’ve been out in the woods too long. God has been speaking since the beginning of creation when he quite literally spoke the world into existence. The “murmuring deep” is what Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg calls it. God is still speaking through you and me and the trees and the birds and the wind. Listen. Listen for the voice of the prophets. And when they convict you, don’t turn away. Sit with it for a moment. Question yourself. Don’t run the messenger out of town. Instead, find Jesus in what makes you uncomfortable. He didn’t come for the hometown team.