What brings you to church?
Why are we all seated here on a Sunday evening, when there is sports to watch, movies and shows to stream, messy houses to clean up, homework to do?
There are all sorts of great reasons to be a part of our church community… from chasing away the Sunday-evening scaries that can pop up when you think of the coming week…to the fact that we have great food at our dinner groups and potlucks….
Our vision statement as Chapel Hill Mennonite says that we’re here because God calls us together:
“God calls us to embody the love of Christ…this love transfigures us into an egalitarian community of peace where all people are welcomed as bearers of grace, where every person is received as a gift from God.”
We gather for worship and prayer and mutual aid as the body of Christ because we long to experience the love of Christ, we gather because it is a joy to share the love of Jesus with one another in tangible, embodied ways.
We gather as a church community to receive the reminder, that amidst all the to-do lists of our day-to-day lives, there is as deeper well of grace, a more creative witness of peace, a more beautiful anthem of love that we are all invited to participate in.
We come to church because we are hungry for a taste of the goodness and grace of God. We come to church to experience and embody the love of Christ.
We come to church for good news.
Last week in my sermon, I talked a lot about good news, and Jesus’ reading from the scroll of Isaiah in his first sermon, proclaiming that the Spirit of the Lord anointed him to bring good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed.
And I know that last week I needed to hear a word of good news to disrupt the cascade of chaos and hatred flowing from our nation’s highest office.
I still need that word of good news today after another hard-to-stomach week.
Now, I don’t know what brought each person into the Nazareth synagogue that day or exactly what bad news people were experiencing in their lives, but it seems that Jesus’ announcement of good news went over well that Sabbath day.
“All spoke well of [Jesus] and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”
Luke is the only gospel that tells us the story of what Jesus actually preached. Luke gives us his text choice from Isaiah and his pronouncement that the scripture “has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The other gospels just mention that Jesus taught in the synagogue and his hometown neighbors are astonished. In the other gospels they are incredulous, wondering how it is that Jesus would speak with wisdom when he is only the son of Joseph the rough-handed builder.
But that kind of bias against the trades isn’t present here in our Luke story. The congregation is amazed at Jesus’ gracious words, exclaiming, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son.”
Rather than ridiculing Jesus as the son of an ordinary builder – they are claiming Jesus as one of their own. We know this kid. We know this guy. He’s one of us – he’s Joseph’s boy.
And Jesus, as the good preacher that he is, has done his homework. Jesus anticipates the murmurings of the congregation:
“Doubtless, you will quote to me this proverb, [Jesus says], ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’…and you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we heard you did at Capernaum.’”
Jesus speaks of the congregation’s own desire and expectation for him to be a hometown hero.
And I imagine that many of us have witnessed this dynamic before.
Maybe you’ve felt it yourself going back to a community that has raised you and claimed you.
When someone has achieved a lot in life, they’re expected to give a little bit of something back to their home community and family… some money, a pep talk to the local youth, an appearance…something.
Sports stars and musicians and anyone who’s achieved prestige and returns home carries this expectation, especially if they’re from a backwater, bygone place like Nazareth.
We know what they’ve been doing in bigger and better places and we expect some of that power and pizazz here… where they got their start.
So to the loaded expectation to heal and cure embedded in the proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself,” Jesus quotes back a saying of his own:
“Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”
Jesus is not looking for acceptance, he is not a vending machine for the acts of God…he is not the celebrity alumnus of a university, launching free t-shirts into a roaring home crowd.
Jesus looks into the eyes of people he has known his whole life and announces himself as a prophet, as one anointed by the Spirit of God to bring liberation and good news to the poor.
And the congregation loves this part, they embrace his words of liberation. What makes them mad is that they don’t get a special slice of the pie first. What enrages the congregation is that the good news Jesus announces isn’t theirs to control or claim for themselves…but that’s it’s also good news for other villages, other peoples, for the enemy and the outsider.
Good news turns bad when we imagine that it’s exclusively or primarily for us.
Entitlement shifts wonder and amazement at the graciousness of life to the rage of feeling slighted and wronged.
The congregation was enraged not because of the content of his message but because of the scope of ministry, which extended far beyond Nazareth.
More audacious than Jesus identifying himself as a prophet was Jesus’ scriptural reminder that God is free to feed and heal and save whoever God wants, that God’s love extends not just to us.
Good news turns bad when we imagine that it’s only for us.
Sometimes Mennonite Christians have talked and acted like we have the corner on the market for the good news of peace.
We have a long history of taking seriously Jesus’ call to love our enemies and resist violence and creatively work for peace and justice. Amen to all of it!
Just yesterday at our Central District Conference mid-year zoom gathering – churches shared stories of how they were providing welcome to refugees, working on indigenous justice, and confronting abuse in their congregations. All of that is peace work. There are so many examples in our tradition of active peacemaking.
But sometimes we can forget that this emphasis on peace as core to the good news of Jesus is not ours alone.
There are Christians of all stripes living out robust peace witnesses – Catholics and Quakers and Church of God in Christ and Pentecostals and Presbyterians and folks of nondenominational flavor. The peace of Christ is not ours to claim triumphantly – but is a gift from God that we receive and bravely pursue and pass on with many other siblings of faith struggling for a more just world.
Good news is good news for all of us. But the good news of Jesus is not ours to control or request on demand. Sometimes good news is those hard to stomach words of truth that unmask our own assumptions of entitlement and ownership.
God’s gracious love will find a way through all our own frustration and disappointment, even when it turns into rage or violence. God will find a way to pass through.
Because the good news of God must go on its way.
The good news must go on its way onto the widowed woman living in poverty in Zarephath in Sidon, who has barely anything to eat and a sick son.
The good news must go on its way to the single mom and her son, not knowing where their next supper is coming from, here in Chapel Hill.
The good news must go on its way to the powerful enemy military leader with leprosy who is longing for healing of body and soul that his power and money can’t provide.
The good news must pass through the midst of them, it must pass through the midst of us, so we are changed and the good news goes on its way.
We come to be church to experience good news… we go from this place knowing that good news is out ahead of us. Jesus has passed through us and gone on his way. Let us follow him.