Job Description, Part Two

This sermon was delivered at the First Presbyterian Chruch in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday January 28, 2007.

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

I ended last week’s sermon with a bit of a teaser. This is how it went:

“So, then, after reading from the scroll, Jesus gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of the synagogue were fixed upon him. Then he began his interpretation of the text. He began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ How does the hometown crowd respond to this?”

Then I promised to finish my thoughts this week.

Well, I don’t know if you have been waiting with baited breath or not, but next week is now this week and it’s time to finish this scene. First, another look at last week’s reading from Luke.

Last week, because of the insight of the Wednesday night group, I described the reading as a job description. The first part of the job description is that Spirit is manifest in ministry. The Spirit fills our flesh with its nourishing power and with this filling comes the power and the joy and the glory of the Holy Spirit. Ministry follows only through the power of the Spirit.

Next is anointing, the setting apart for special service under divine direction.[1] By this divine direction, God anoints us through the power of the Spirit to do the work appointed to the body of Christ.

The third part is proclaiming the word of God to the marginalized. I used the example of the persecuted church in the time of Luke last week. But I needn’t have gone that far into the past. On May 24, 1995, Cuban police arrested Pastor Orson Vila at his home. Vila was the pastor of a 2,500 member house church in Camaguey. After a drumhead trial, he was sentenced to twenty-one months in prison.[2] He was charged with something to the effect of being subversive to the Cuban government. His crime was proclaiming the word of God to the marginalized.

The last direct lesson taken from the job description is that the Good News of God demands a response. It is not enough to hear and learn the word of God. Unless we respond to the word of God, then we never really heard it at all. Perhaps Paul says it best in 1Corinthians when he says exercising the spiritual gifts without love is like being a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

We then discerned the last part of the job description is that the gospel is not tied to one place. Jesus traveled throughout Palestine, and as he took the word with him, we are called to take his word with us.

So, the people had just heard Jesus run down this job description. They had just heard him take complete ownership of this mission. Last week, we even imagined what the reading would have sounded like if Jesus had placed special emphasis on the first person pronouns: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me…”

So how did they respond? The people loved it. Even if Jesus was being heavy on the first person pronouns, he was saying what they wanted to hear. The Jews were looking for their militant messiah, the one who would throw off the shackles of Roman rule. They were hoping and praying and waiting for this messiah. The people were so happy to hear what he said that they were amazed at his gracious words showing wisdom beyond his years and upbringing. They were very, very happy to hear these words of salvation.

So, the people loved the first part of the job description, but this is section of the Gospel is commonly known as “Rejected in Nazareth.” Now we get to what went so desperately wrong.

How did things go wrong? Easy, Jesus knew what the people wanted, and he told the truth instead. It may not be popular, it may not be what the people want to hear, but he told the truth. In my opinion, this is the biggest piece of the job description, tell the truth.[3]

What did the people want instead? When Jesus took the Gospel on the road; he showed signs and performed miracles along the way. He preached the Good News of the Gospel of the Lord and backed it up with signs of power that only the Lord can perform. And this is what the people wanted to see. Jesus knew, and he told the people what they were expecting in Luke 4:23. Jesus knew the people expected him to do the things that they heard he did at Capernaum here in his hometown.

Well, that wasn’t the message Jesus was sharing on this day. Yes, he realized that the people would think poorly of him. Yes, he realized the people had come for the show and they would not feel like they got their money’s worth. Yes, Jesus realized he would face the fate of the prophets before him—he would not be accepted in his hometown.

But this does not dissuade Jesus. His next words are the telling: “But I say to you in truth…” He knows he is not going to be popular, but he is going to tell the truth.

In Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, C. S. Lewis tells his imaginary protégé, “[people] don’t go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or if you prefer, to enact it.”[4] I dare say in this case Lewis would be mistaken. It seems the people came for the show of word and deed. They wanted to hear the Good News and see the signs and miracles. So Jesus shares the word, a word they weren’t ready to hear.

In Luke 4:26, Jesus talks about Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. This scene comes from 1Kings 17:8-16 when during a long drought and famine, the Lord tells Elijah to find a particular widow. She is getting ready to prepare the last meal for her son and herself when Elijah promises her that the Lord will provide grain and oil until the day that the rain falls again on the earth. Jesus makes the point that there are many, many widows in need to choose from in Israel, yet the Lord sends Elijah to a Phoenician town between Sidon and Tyre.

Jesus then refers to the Syrian warrior Naaman who was cured of his leprosy by Elisha in 2Kings 5. There are many lepers in Israel who need healing, but only Naaman is cured by Elisha.

So what is it that makes these examples so unpalatable to the crowd in the synagogue? Jesus is making his points using Gentiles as recipients of God’s grace and mercy; and it has been this way since the time of the Old Testament Kings. Jesus is teaching his hometown that the Word of the Lord, the Good News, the Gospel, is shared with the others. The truth he shares is that the Lord’s truth and wisdom are often found in unconventional places. And this does not set well with the crowd.

Jesus has quickly gone from being the favorite son to pariah in a heartbeat. They were so upset, so furious that they drove him out of town, took him to the edge of a cliff intending to throw Jesus to his death. A fate Jesus somehow avoids.

In the time of the Gospel, the Jews were upset when Jesus tells a synagogue filled with God’s chosen people that God also chooses others. This of course highlights the split of the people of God: the Jews and the Christians. At the turn of the first millennia, the Christians split between the Churches of Rome and Constantinople: the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox. In 1517 the church splits again between the Roman Catholic Church and those who protest against it: thus the name Protestant. Will the church split again? Perhaps—probably even. If not now—then later. If not over the latest controversy—then the next one, or maybe the one after that.

This leaves us with the job description. As I said last week, when Jesus read the prophecy from the scroll of Isaiah, he read it as if it is his own job description, but it is our job description too. We are called to take the word of God with us into the world. We are filled with the Spirit to do the work of God in the world. We are anointed by the Spirit; set apart under divine direction. We are to take the word to those on the margins of society. This is our response—to take the word into the world. We are to tell the truth, even when it isn’t popular.

Is this difficult? Perhaps, but we have hope. Mirroring the call of Jeremiah, the Lord knows us even before we were formed in the womb. Before we were born we were consecrated, another way to say anointed, consecrated to do God’s work. When we fear that we are only—what ever limitation we place on ourselves—we are touched by the Lord, anointing us to do what is necessary.

As Jeremiah was given his marching orders, so too are we. The Lord tells Jeremiah that he is to go where he is sent, and speak as he is commanded. The Lord reaches out and touches each and every one of us with the words we are to speak. Paul experienced this in his ministry to the gentiles, and he gave the church in Corinth the ultimate set of guidelines for exercising the gifts and responsibility of ministry. Paul tells the church in Corinth to act in love.

Without love we are nothing. We may have the gifts of the Spirit of God, able to speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but in the words of James Brown, without love we are “talking loud and saying nothing.”[5] We may have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and knowledge, we may have all faith—faith that can move mountains, but without love we are nothing. We can give all that we have away—even our very selves—but without love we gain nothing.

The love Paul speaks is not romantic attraction; instead it is a reflection of the love of God, a reflection we must show one another. This is a love which is patient and kind. This is a love which isn’t envious or boastful, arrogant or rude, self-seeking or irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth.

There we go again, back to the truth.

All of the things that we are, all of the things that we do, even the ways we use the gifts of the Spirit in service to the Lord, all these things will fade away. But love never ends. They will fade away because the best we can do is only like a grain of sand on a vast beach of God’s creation. But love never ends.

As the Lord appointed his Son Jesus the Christ to share the Good News with the world, we are called to share the Good News with the world. As this is his job description, it is ours. We will never be able to do this job as well as Jesus, but God knows that. God knows that better than we do. We must seek the truth. It will take us places that are neither familiar nor fashionable. The truth is hard; just as Jesus told the synagogue that they weren't everything they thought they were when they were expecting a pep talk and signs. We must share the truth, even when people don’t expect it or like it. We must use the gifts God gives us to do the work God has anointed us to do, sharing the truth of the Good News of the Lord Jesus Christ in love.

[1] Bauer Danker Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament from BibleWorks
[2] McKeehan, Toby, Smith, Kevin, Tait, Michael, and White, Tom, Jesus Freaks. Tulsa, Oklahoma: Albury Publishing, 1999, pages 103-104.
[3] As a part of the Commencement Ceremony at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, the President of the Seminary charges the graduates. This was the charge to my graduating class, “tell the truth.”
[4] Lewis, C. S. Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer. San Diego, Harcort, 1964. Emphasis from the text.
[5] Brown, James, Byrd, Bobby, “Talking Loud and Saying Nothing” 1972.