In the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the senior’s Bible study that I lead one of the suggested topics for this year was the early years of Jesus Christ prior to the start of his public ministry. Frankly, we don’t know a whole lot about Jesus’ early years. We don’t know much about his family life or his education that sort of thing. But we do know that his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist marked the start of his public ministry. And we do know that after this event he was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. And we do know that when he returned to Galilee and began his ministry people were strangely drawn to this wandering rabbi.

Last Sunday we heard the opening part of his sermon in the synagogue back home in Nazareth. The synagogue was filled with family and friends who had heard the rumours, the great things that he had done in Capernaum for example. They were awed when after reading from the prophet Isaiah he proclaimed, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” What confidence and even audacity Jesus displayed that day and the congregation “spoke well of him.”

But this atmosphere of good cheer didn’t last long. It was at this point that Jesus launched into a diatribe against his hometown crowd which brings us to our reading today. This is a tough text to understand and I have to admit that I had some difficulties with it this week. We move from praise to fury, from heaven to hell all in the space of a few short verses.
One minute Jesus is being praised to the hilt and in the next minute an angry mob of congregants have seized him and are seeking to throw him to his death.
This swift reversal in the mood of the congregation is puzzling and we want to know what happened. How could things have turned so ugly in such a quick fashion? But Luke only gives us the sparest detail. Perhaps his original audience had the back ground to understand more deeply what was going on but we seem to lack the insight and are left to educated guesses.

The conflict between Jesus and his hometown congregation seems at first glance to revolve around the nature of God’s mercy and salvation – who is in and who is out. One of the themes that Luke wants to convey in his gospel is the universal impact of Jesus’ ministry. In Jesus and through Jesus, God is saving the lost and that means the lost everywhere, both Jew and Gentile, wherever they may be found. In Luke, this is always threatening to those people who want to make God’s salvation local, just here and not there, just for us and not for them.

Returning then to our gospel reading, we see this attitude displayed in the congregation in Nazareth. They have heard of the wonderful things that Jesus’ has done in Capernaum, a predominantly Gentile town. But now is the time to bring it home where it truly belongs. Jesus, sensing this attitude, resists and responds with a couple of stories from the scriptures featuring the prophets Elijah and Elisha.

In both stories the point is the same. God’s mercy goes not to the Jews but to the Gentiles – there is in effect a wideness to God’s mercy that extends beyond Israel. God’s grace keeps widening the circle, putting more and more leaves in the Kingdom banquet table, reaching more and more people. Now, “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up and drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill… in order to throw him off.”

The fact that these two stories of Elijah and Elisha were in their own scriptures were the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and triggered the congregation’s violent outburst. The congregation was confronted with the truth of its own tradition concerning the wideness of God’s mercy and they couldn’t deal with it. For Luke, the tension that erupts into violence is not between Jesus and Judaism but rather Judaism and its own scriptures. It is the scriptures themselves that speak of the wideness of God’s mercy.

Now before we blow this off this notion let us consider our own faith stance for a moment. We are Christians because we find a sense of comfort within Christianity. The knowledge that God chose us, calls us and loves us through Christ is great source of comfort and brings meaning to our lives. But if we spend any time at all in our scriptures we soon come to realize that the Christian life is not all sweetness and light. Jesus Christ is comforter, yes, but Jesus Christ is also disturber of the peace. The Christian life is comfort but it also challenge. There is a tension that exists in Christianity as well when we take our scriptures seriously. Let me give you a contemporary example. Right now there is a great deal of discussion about the issue of homosexuality, whether homosexuals should be ordained or whether they should be married in the church. But if we look at the four gospels that we possess, Jesus never mentions the issue of homosexuality at all.

However, Jesus does spend a great deal of time talking about our relationship with money and possessions and how we covet them and use them. Walter Brueggemann, the Biblical scholar, makes the point that, “the contemporary church has so largely embraced the ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or act.” It is here that the tension exists between us and our own scriptures because it is ultimately related to God’s justice for the poor. We can ignore it but it is does not make the tension disappear.

As an example, if we move further along into Luke chapter 18:22, we have Jesus’ words to the rich young ruler, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.” I have stumbled over this text for years. I have tried to ignore it but it doesn’t make the tension go away. In fact when I look at my own lifestyle it haunts me and challenges me.
The text stands in judgement over me and all of us.

And Jesus responds by saying, “if you would read your Bible, you’ll see a whole lot of things about the way that God has always worked. God’s grace is not just a local event nor is it simply about your comfort.” In the scriptures we find what God expects. So let’s be about it.
THANKS BE TO GOD, AMEN.