The God Who Pushes Past Our Comfort Zone
The Rev. Allen F. Robinson

Gospel: Luke 4:21-32
(This sermon is also available in audio.)

May the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight,
Oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We have all at some point in our Christian journey heard this particular story, because at the heart of this story is the message-- a prophet is without honor in his or her own country. The joy for me in developing this sermon was trying to decide which avenue I wanted to explore. So while a little bit of my sermon will focus on what it means to be a prophet without honor in his or her own country, I also want to talk about the way in which the Israelites in today’s Gospel lesson understood and interpreted Jesus’ words. And also, how they misinterpreted those words, so much so that they became angry enough with Jesus to want to throw him over a cliff.

Looking at the Gospel passage, it probably seems strange to you that these words of Jesus could have made them so angry. As a matter of fact, the very beginning of the Gospel lesson says that after Jesus says, "Today the Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," people begin to say wonderful things about him. So at that point, the people were satisfied with Jesus. They were okay with his message. I like to say that what happens next happens not in the middle of worship or in the synagogue itself, but it happens at coffee hour. Jesus gets into trouble over coffee-hour discussion. What happens? Everyone is very proud. The message was wonderful—well delivered and well executed—but Jesus doesn’t stop there. He continues on.

He’s assembled with some of the people from the synagogue, and he says to them, "Do you wonder why God allowed the prophet Elijah to go to the widow at Zarephath in the region of Sidon?" Now, unless you understand what that means, it’s easy to miss the moment in which the Israelites become very irate with Jesus. It’s not what he says during the synagogue service, it’s what’s said after the service.

When Jesus says, "Do you wonder why God sent the prophet Elijah," the great prophet of Israel, mind you – that’s so important – "the great prophet of Israel to Sidon?" Remember, the Israelites in Old Testament time despised the people of Sidon. Basically what he’s saying is that when there was no rain for three and a half years, the people could not grow crops, which meant they could not feed the widows. In Israelite culture people were responsible for feeding widows based on the amount of crops grown in the land, a percentage – it was like income tax. A percentage of what was grown had to be given over to the government to feed the widows.

And Jesus says there were many widows in the land of Israel during the prophet Elijah, and yet God sent the prophet Elijah to a widow at Zarephath in the region of Sidon. This angers the Israelites. Jesus has just said that if you are not willing to accept the wonderful gifts that God has for you, if you are not willing to accept all the wonderful things that God is doing for you right here in Israel, then God will take those gifts and give it to people who will appreciate it.

Because the people of Israel were rejecting Elijah, the great prophet, God said, "Well, I’ll tell you what. There are widows in a neighboring country of people that you don’t like. The prophet will do my work there." Because the prophet Elijah is so revered by the Israelite culture and Israelite religion, it’s hard to believe that God would give him over to the enemies to do wonderful, miraculous things. So that’s the beginning of the moment in which the people really began to take back all of the wonderful things they had said about Jesus earlier.

Then Jesus takes it a step further and says, "What about Elisha? What about the prophet Elisha who was sent to the lepers? There were many lepers in the land of Israel, why does God send the prophet Elisha to see Naaman, the Syrian?" Again, all you have to do is pick up the newspaper to realize that Israel has just a slight problem with their neighbors the Syrians.

So you can imagine again that these are problems and situations that are centuries old and Jesus has the audacity to bring them up at coffee hour. God did something in the land of your enemies, the Syrians. Your God blessed even the Syrians. You see, the Israelites have a problem with Jesus’ message.

This is the piece of the conversation that causes the people in the synagogue to want to throw Jesus off of the edge of the cliff—God operates and manifests Himself beyond the walls of Israel. Most of us overlook that Old Testament connection. We think what got Jesus in trouble was his statement, "Today the Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." That’s not what gets Jesus into trouble.

Remember, in the year 587 and 586 B.C., the Israelites were taken into captivity by the Babylonians. While in exile, the Israelites believed they could not worship God because they understood God to only be within the walls of the temple in Jerusalem. So here is Jesus saying, but that’s not true—God did a wonderful thing for Naaman, the Syrian, and God also did a wonderful thing for the widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon.

Jesus attempted to push those in the synagogue beyond their comfort zone, and they were only willing to be pushed so far. You have to understand that Jesus truly steps out on a limb by using their history to show that God is active and alive in places that they weren’t willing to acknowledge. God did not only exist and work in the temple or in the synagogues. The God of history and the God of the Old Testament and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is also the God to the widow in Sidon and Naaman the leper in Syria.

All one has to do is pick up the Scriptures and read the Gospel lessons and read those moments in which Jesus comes up against a foreigner, someone outside of Israel, a Gentile. Notice the relationship that is created. Remember the story of the woman at the well? She has a somewhat long discourse with Jesus, and because of that encounter she goes back into town and tells everyone that she has found the Messiah. The whole town becomes converted on the words of this one individual who had an informal discussion with a man at a well. She wasn’t an Israelite, and yet God did a new thing in her life and the life of those people in the city.

Remember the Roman centurion? A Roman, of all people, who comes to Jesus and says, "My servant has fallen ill. Please heal him." Jesus is ready to walk with him to his home to heal the servant, but the Roman centurion says, "Just speak the word only, and it will be done." And Jesus utters the words, "I tell you in all of Israel have I yet to find faith as great as this." The Roman wasn’t an Israelite. He wasn’t an Israelite. The woman at the well wasn’t Israelite.

Remember the conversation that Jesus has with the Syrophoenician woman? Her daughter is very ill and she comes to Jesus asking for help. Jesus says to her (and this is the piece of Scripture where Jesus sounds so harsh), "Is it right that I take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs?" Instead of allowing those words to drive her off, she comes back with, "Yes master, but even the crumbs fall from the master’s table to the dogs." Jesus responds, "I tell you not in all of Israel have I found such great faith."

The people who should get the message aren’t getting it. The people who aren’t supposed to get it are getting it loud and clear. Syrophoenicians and Syrians are people that the Israelites despise, people that they’ve had tumultuous relationships with, yet God is doing wonderful things in those communities.

So, this was a tad bit too much for the Israelites to take from Jesus. They were pushed beyond their comfort zone. Jesus tried to get them to break free of thinking that they had a hold on God; because Jesus tried to push them beyond their limits, they become reactive and were prepared to do him harm.

This is, I believe, the unique piece of the story of this lesson. While it’s very easy for us to understand that a prophet is without honor in his own country, another strong and equally powerful message is that we must break free of thinking that we have a hold on God. Or that because God created a unique relationship with the Israelites, they have a hold on God. We need to understand that God is active in every aspect of all of our lives. The God that we encounter at church and the God the Israelites encountered in their synagogue is the same God who is active and alive in the back alleys where there are drug dealers and crack addicts.

This same God is just as active in the hospitals with those who have just delivered babies as those addicted to drugs and crack. That same God is present in the lives of those battling cancer, and in the lives of those who are trying to make it day by day. It’s the same God that Jesus is trying to get the Israelites to understand. God is everywhere and in every aspect of our lives. The same God who is active in the lives of those struggling to keep their marriages together is with the high school teenager who is struggling to graduate. God is active in every part of our lives.

I believe that the message Jesus hoped the people in the synagogue would get that day was that to understand the work of God, you must be willing to free yourself up from the way you understand God’s work in this world.

Copyright 2001 Calvary Episcopal Church

Excerpted from a sermon delivered at Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis, Tennessee, anuary 28, 2001.

Gospel: Luke 4:21-32
And he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked. Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote to me this proverb: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.' I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed --only Naaman the Syrian." All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Then he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the sabbath began to teach the people. They were amazed at his teaching, because his message had authority. NRSV

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