Sermons, they say, like biscuits, are improved by shortening. The two shortest sermons, I can think in the Bible, were delivered by Jonah and by Jesus. Jonah’s sermon is the shortest in the Old Testament, which has only five words, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4). Today’s gospel passage is Jesus’ first preaching, and it has only eight words, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Their sermons have neither outline nor theme, but Jesus’ preaching, in particular, doesn’t encourage us to make our sermons short because we hear at the end of Jesus’ preaching that people say, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22). His sermon is too short. They may expect such a long Midrashic interpretation. But such a reaction of the people of Jesus’ hometown tells us more than the length of his sermon.
The question, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” implies their rejection of Jesus’ preaching or his interpretation of the passage from Isaiah. Jesus grew up in a small town called Nazareth. It was just about the same size of our town. But they rejected Jesus’ reaching not because of the familiarity as some people say that the reason no prophet is accepted in his/her hometown is familiarity, but because of his preaching or his interpretation on the book of Isaiah. The awful truth is that they were angry because they didn’t really want their God to include everyone. They wanted to maintain their privileged status with God. They wanted Jesus to affirm that they were and would always be favoured and special to God.
In other words, they didn’t expect that the power of the Holy Spirit is upon Jesus, and God’s spirit has anointed him to bring good news to the poor and to proclaim the year of God’s favour. They didn’t believe that God’s love for those people who are poor, captive, blind, and oppressed. They are the outcasts. So Jesus challenged his people to love those people whom they didn’t believe that God loves them.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah” (Luke 11:29). What is the sign of Jonah? Jonah could be a sign to God’s grace for Gentile even though he didn’t want to go to Ninevah to preach God’s message of repentance. The sign of Jonah is that God’s grace is for everyone. As the book of Jonah is not about a whale or a big fish, but about God’s grace for the Nineties, Jesus taught his people that God loves everyone. Likewise, today’s passage is not about Jesus’ rejection by his own people, but God’s grace for everyone.
Jesus continues his proclamation by alluding to two famous prophets: Elijah and Elisha. Elijah and Elisha specifically seek out Gentiles with whom to share God’s grace and power. Jesus’ reference to the widow at Zarephath and the leper Naaman, the Syrian, reveals for whom Jesus has come- the widows, the lepers, the orphans, and the outsiders. Jesus’ whole ministry will be for the least of these, over and over again. Jesus is for everyone. Both Elijah and Elisha take God into places where God was not thought to be and had no business being. It is these words of inclusion that Jesus’ own interpretation of his ministry reveals the reason for God in a manger. Of all the stories about these two famous prophets, he picks two about prophetic ministry to people who were not part of the people of Israel- ministry done on behalf of those who are not part of the hometown crowd.
The implication is that Jesus has a ministry that is directed at those beyond the borders of his hometown. Once again, Luke is reminding his readers that God’s grace is available to all- in Luke’s gospel, there is an emphasis on salvation for both the Jew and the Gentile (e.g., Luke 2:31-32; 3:6).
Each one of us human beings is of equal value to God. God loves all the same. God is not just my God or your God. God is the God of everyone in the world. God loves every person in the world as much as God loves us.
Methodists have always strived to be an open church. We have strived, although we have not always succeeded. Because being open is a struggle for Methodists, just as it was a struggle for the people of Nazareth. We like the idea of these words, “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors,” but we may not like the reality quite as much.
Three days before his Aldersgate experience, John Wesley was to preach at a healing service. But he was having a spiritual crisis and didn’t feel that he could preach on that evening. He just wasn’t feeling it. So his friend Peter Bohler gave him some advice: “Preach faith until you have it. And then because you have it, you will preach the faith.” Act as if you have faith, and one day you’ll you turn around and find that you do!
The call to discipleship Jesus extended to his own disciples was a call to see, learn, and be able to name and respond to all the ways God’s kingdom is happening among all people. It is God’s love for everyone. God loves everyone, and we also are called to love everyone. Paul emphasizes the significance of love in the following way:
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing (1 Cor 13:1-3).
It is a love that calls us to do things we feel inadequate to do. It is a love that strengthens us and gives us courage and perseverance in times of trial. It is a love that enables us to speak words of truth to questioning and sometimes hostile world. Love, indeed, is the greatest of these. God’s grace for everyone! Can we embrace that as God’s vision? Can we sit in the synagogue of Nazareth listening to Jesus say: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing!” and hear it as God’s amazing good news?
The good news is this: By the power of the Holy Spirit he has passed through the midst of us and will go on his way to love and to heal and to announce God’s love for all people, all the way to the cross. Amen!
