More thoughts from ground level

Nehemiah 8:1-10 and Luke 4:14-30

I want to look at these two accounts in the Scripture today. They are similar to each other, though they occurred about 500 years apart. Each tells of an assembly of people and with a person reading a portion of Scripture to that assembly.

The first of these two is the account of Jesus going to the Nazareth synagogue on a Sabbath day. In his hometown synagogue, he spoke about how his presence in the world would make a difference for the poor, the powerless, the needy, and the oppressed. He spoke of God’s favor for people on the margins of life.

He stood up, read from the prophet Isaiah, and then sat down to speak. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” God’s favor, he told them, is for people who have no power in this life. In the gospel of Luke, these are the first words of Jesus as an adult. This is his inaugural address and in it he announces that God’s favor is here, and he has brought it.

This is a powerful text from Isaiah. It needs to be heard wherever people live on the margins of society. And in first century Palestine, the margins were crowded. It’s a radical claim for Jesus to remind people that God’s favor is for people on the margins of life. Those are the people who in Jesus’ public ministry would be the ones to come near and listen. This word of favor needs to be hear wherever people are brokenhearted and long to be bound up in a warm embrace. It needs to be heard where people are longing for compassion and grace and only God can usher those in. This word of favor for people on the margins needs to be heard today in many places. It needs to be heard in Jena, Louisiana, where there is some concern over whether oppression looks like unequal justice.

If the people in the synagogue were hoping for an innocuous sermon so that everyone could leave in a happy mood, that’s not what Jesus gave them. They probably wanted to greet him at the door of the Synagogue and say, “Nice job.” “Thank you.” “Your folks would be proud.” Nothing like that happened that day in Nazareth.

Instead the mood among the people was different. Their attitude was, “that’s it? What about some signs and wonders. We heard you did some miracles in Capernaum. Why would you share signs and wonders with strangers and not share those with us too? After all, you’re one of us.”

This crowd doesn’t want to hear what he says, radical or not. They want a show. Entertain us with some miracles. Show us what you can do. Did you catch how Luke introduced this section? Jesus began to preach and teach in the synagogues and was praised by everyone. It’s strange then that he finds some other kind of reaction when he returns home.

Five hundred years earlier, on the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, the scribe and priest Ezra stood on a wooden platform to read from the Law of Moses from early morning until midday. The people were attentive to the reading and its explanation and wept at what they were hearing. They were awestruck and called out, “Amen, Amen,” at what was being read. Nehemiah, the governor said to the people, this day is holy to the Lord. Go your way and share a meal in your homes. Share your food with others who have little. And remember the joy of the Lord is your strength. The people went their way to share food in their homes and give food to others.

Nazareth 30AD and Jerusalem 485BC: those are two very different responses to the reading of the Word of God. Why such disparity in reactions?

What if the different reactions were the result of the two men who were reading, Ezra and Jesus? Ezra was the high priest and a significant figure in his day. He was powerful and in Judaism was the one of a few people who got closer to God than anyone else. He was the one who brought the offering into the holy of holies. He’d seen something few people had seen: the heart of the Temple. By comparison then, Jesus was the just hometown kid whom everyone knew. He’s Joseph’s son, and he stopped into the synagogue to be the lay reader that day. Maybe that’s why there was such a difference what followed the reading of the text.

Or maybe, the different reactions might have a result of the texts that were read. Ezra stood on a platform and read from the Torah. That morning he started with, In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void. He read the story of creation and fall, of the flood and the call of Abraham. He read of the descendants of Jacob moving to Egypt to live. And the ominous words from Exodus that a new king arose of Egypt who did not know Joseph. He read of the command to Moses to Go and say to Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” He read the ten word spoken by God as Mount Sinai. This is the stuff of the big screen: Charlton Heston as Moses, Yul Brynner as Ramses.

By comparison, Jesus read two verses from the scroll of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed.Or maybe, it was the timing. In ancient Jerusalem it was the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, a very important day. You get to start over with a clean slate. You get to greet people around and say, Shanah Tovah! A sweet new year. In Nazareth, it was an ordinary Sabbath. Nothing special was planned for the service that day.

Or maybe the different reactions were the result of the expectations of the different assemblies. The assembly in Jerusalem expected to be blessed by what they were hearing. Their lives had been disrupted by war and separation, and destruction. After a challenging time of rebuilding, they were open to receiving word of meaning, some sense of God’s grace delivered to them by the hearing of the word of God read and proclaimed.

In Nazareth, by contrast, they don’t even seem to listen to Jesus. They ignore the radical good news he announced and instead want him to show them some miracle. Maybe they don’t really identify with the people in Isaiah’s words. Those kind of people don’t live in our neighborhood. Their attitude seems to be one of special privilege: Jesus grew up here, and now he’s come home to show us what he can do. We’re already special. We don’t need to be open to being blessed by what we are hearing.Jesus saw right through this and told them as much. Luke writes that many were filled with rage. Luke account suggests that they might even have been getting ready to stone, but he got away.

Why such as disparity in these two accounts? Was it the readers, Ezra and Jesus? What it the texts, Torah and Isaiah? To be sure, that both are powerful texts in their own way. Was it the day? Or was it the people assembled, open or closed? By process of elimination, I’ve got to go with the assemblies as the reason for the disparity. I can’t fault Ezra or Jesus. I can’t fault the texts. I can’t fault the day of the year.

 How do we to hear the Word of God brought to us? Here is a simple test: are you receptive to being challenged or changed by truths brought out of ancient words? I pray that we are exactly that: open to receiving the Word of God read and proclaimed as a blessing. How will we then respond to it? I pray our response is with our whole lives. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Luke 14: 34-15:2 and 1 Timothy 1:12-17

What do you put salt on? French fries, garden tomatoes, eggs, pretzels, corn… Does anybody put salt on cantaloupe? Salt on these foods makes their flavor better. Jesus said salt is good, but he wasn’t talking about salt as a seasing. He was talking about it as a parable. By salt, he meant us. And so like salt, our presence is supposed to make things better. Our presence in the world—in the office, home, church building, court room, class room, barn, hospital—is supposed to make those places better.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was very forceful about this. You are salt for the world around you, he said. When this come up again in Luke 14, it’s also to a large crowd. This time Jesus said, salt is only good so long as it makes a difference, only so long as it adds flavor or preserves food. If it doesn’t do these things it’s tossed out.

Do you hear the implication of this? Salt’s worth is in what it accomplishes. So if we who are salt follow Jesus, we should expect to be active the way salt is active. You are salt! This is a call to action. And that prompts the question, what kind of salt are you?

Are you the add-flavor kind of salt? People who are this kind of salt connect with others. They bring a perspective to a situation which changes how others see it. If you’re this kind of salt, your presence makes a moment better for someone. There a moment in the Book of Acts where Philip sounds like he is this kind of salt. He meets a man who is reading from the scroll of Isaiah while riding along in a chariot. Philip asks him is he understands what he is reading, and the man answers that there’s no one to help him understand. So Philip gets into the chariot with him and begins to add meaning to what he had been reading by telling about the good news of Jesus Christ. When they pass by some water the man asks if he can be baptized. To me Philip sounds like he was the add-flavor kind of salt.

A classmate of Susanne and mine, Heather is add flavor kind of salt. She was a hospital chaplain and now she is a children’s minister. She has a cheerfulness about her. She’s a joyful person and has an easy laugh. She’s an attentive listener and has a way of making thing better because she’s there. Are you the add-flavor kind of salt?

Or maybe you’re a preserve-food kind of salt? People who are this kind of salt bring a constancy to life. They remain focused on what is true. They aren’t blown about by fads or trends or the latest version of a story. In Romans, Paul tells the church to hold fast to that which is good. People who are this kind of salt know exactly what that means: to preserve what is truly good. Are you this kind of salt? I think of Billy Graham as this kind of salt. His vocation has been to preserve the core of the gospel and share it as long as he can. People who want the church to think about how we are helping another generation of ministers or church musicians to discover their vocations are this kind of salt. People who care for the creation to are this kind of salt. People who study history and want to connect a sacred space to the saints who have come before are this kind of salt. Are you preserve-the-food kind of salt?

Now, to add a modern dimension to this question, maybe you’re a melt the ice and open the road kind of salt? This kind of salt gets things unstuck and moving again or moving in a new direction. You bring a commitment to action. The Apostle Paul was this kind of salt. He brought the gospel from Jerusalem to the whole world. The reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther were this kind of salt. They protested the church of their day. Martin Luther King was this kind of salt. He challenged our society to free itself from being frozen in destructive hate. Prophets and dreamers are this kind of salt.

The world needs us to be active as whatever salt God has made us. After five years I have an idea of what kind of salt all of you are; it’s a great mix. Jesus finished talking about salt that day with a strange phrase. He said let anyone with ears to hear listen. Then, in the very next sentence, Luke writes that tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen.

I like how that fits together especially in an ancient culture that was quick to put a permanent label on a person. You’ll recognize the labels of that culture: outcast, sinner, unclean, and unrighteous. And they were the ones listening to Jesus. They were the ones with ears to hear. By contrast, the holy people, the people who were sure they had everything figured out, were complaining. They were complaining about the type of people Jesus had attracted to hear what he said.

Jesus was sharing a message of self worth. And people who had been told they had no worth were coming to hear him. He said to the crowd you do have worth and here is the proof: God has come near to search for you. You have worth because you are a person. You can do something with your life. You can be salt. So give your life to the God who seeks out those who have wandered off or who are wayward or prodigal or labeled as unworthy. And don’t believe any label anyone besides God gives you.

We are salt, and as such God expects something radical of us. God expects us to make the world better, and not just our corner of it, but all of it. How are we going to do that? We do that by making sure our mission statement is more than words on a banner or a bulletin cover. It has to identify what we really do as a community. We worship God in community. We study the scripture in community. We practice the teachings of Jesus in community. This mission statement tells us how to be salt. I want to challenge us to do something more in your own life to help this church family make its mission statement more than simply ten words on a banner. That could be for you something more in worship, in study, in practicing the teachings of Jesus.

Our world is so full of different, no-salt alternatives. Some of them are very enticing, brightly packaged, and have other flavors added to disguise the absence of salt. Remember them for what they are: a salt substitute. And none of us is called to be a substitute.

We have so much to learn from each other in of the each ways we gather—in worship, in study, or to practice the teachings of Jesus. We have so much to learn from each other in the different ways we are true salt in the world. Your commitment to this community makes it a stronger, more vibrant place. God’s commitment to this community of faith makes it a place of amazing grace and transformation. May we all be sent from here to make the world better. And thanks be to God. Amen.