Them and Us - Luke 4

Some things you just can’t do on your own.

It’s one of the most important insights there is to have about Jesus … and if it’s true about Jesus then how much more is it true about us.

It runs through Luke’s Gospel almost like a refrain.

Just as went nto the wilderness to take up the mantle of the prophets and proclaim a whole new way of thinking built around the rule of God coming into the world, the kingdom of God, so too Jesus – he had the same message to share – a whole new way of thinking about the world, a message about the rule of  God breaking into people’s lives to make a world of difference, a message about nothing less than the Kingdom of God.

Into the Jordan, and out of the Jordan it was as if through that baptism Jesus was taking on the mantle of the prophets himself – he had a message to proclaim.

And he couldn’t do it on his own.

Jesus returned from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit.

You might have thought that presence of God with him would mean a smooth path.  Not a bit of it.  God’s presence was with him as he was plagued with all sorts of torments, questions: it was a testing time.   What exactly would this rule of God be like.

So many expected God to break into the world, solve all its problems and make it in an instant a safe place to live.  But God’s not like that.   Jesus knows that God’s rule is different – it doesn’t involve changing stones into bread in an instant, it doesn’t involve taking power and control over the world, it doesn’t involve putting God to the test.  There’s a quite different way he is determined to follow.

He stands his ground, stands firm against the Devil’s alternative.

But he could not do that in his own strength.

The road God calls us to follow is not an easy road.  It can take us through the wilderness..   There’s a lot of pressure to have that kind of religion that solves problems in an instant, that sets everything right, that brings power to play in a world of weakness.

But God’s way in Chrsit is not like that.  God’s rule is not like that.

And it can be hard to stand your ground.  To hold firm to that faith.

And if the truth were know you cannot do it on your own.

But there is a strength from beyond ourselves that we can draw on.  It is the strength that Jesus drew on.

Verse 14  Then Jesus returned to Galilee and the power of the Holy Spirit was with him.

This is what enabled him to take to the road as the news spread about him throughout all that territory.  He taught in the synagogues was ppraised by enveryone.

And then he went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up.

It was a risky thing to do.

His own home town.

The place where he was known so well.

He could only do it because he had a strength from God to draw on – the very presence of God’s Holy Spirit.

Then Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath he went as usual to the synagogue

Interesting glimpse of Jesus.  At the age of 12 he was found in the Temple listening and asking the questions – now as his ministry begins about 18 years later we find it was his custom to go to the place of gathering together, the synagogue.

Gathering together is what you do and at the heart of gathering together is the reading and the study and the taking in of God’s word.

Jesus knew these Scriptures.  He knew the prophets.

 He stood up to read the Scriptures

17 and was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

 and recovery of sight to the blind;

to set free the oppressed

19 and announce that the time has come

when the Lord will save his people.”

It was one of those passages from the Prophets that showed what it takes to rule in God’s way in God’s kingdom.  One of those key passages that shaped Jesus’ understanding of the task he had come to undertake.

20 Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. All the people in the synagogue had their eyes fixed on him,

21 as he said to them, “This passage of scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read.”

This was happening.  This was what he was about.  This is the message he was to preach – more than that this was the very rule of God that he was to usher in.

22 They were all well impressed with him and marvelled at the eloquent words that he spoke

A closer rendering would be ‘the words of grace’.  It wasn’t just his eloquence that impressed those listerners.  It was that fact that he spoke words of grace. Words of the sheer gift of God’s love.

It amazed them.

They said, “Isn't he the son of Joseph?”

23 He said to them, “I am sure that you will quote this proverb to me, ‘Doctor, heal yourself.’ You will also tell me to do here in my home town the same things you heard were done in Capernaum.

24 I tell you this,” Jesus added, “prophets are never welcomed in their home town.

That’s it – just as John the Baptist had come taking on the mantle of the prophets, so now Jesus was doing the same – he too had a message for the people, that would challenge the very way the world was ruled.  He would share the word of God and show how God was to shape the world.

Then, as if to seal his credentials, he tells first a story of Elijah.  And then a story of Elisha.

But what stories he chose.

The people had been looking for a Messsiah who come for us.

But Jesus spoke of the way Elijah and then Elisha came for everyone.  Not just for us but for all.

25 “Listen to me: it is true that there were many widows in Israel during the time of Elijah, when there was no rain for three and a half years and a severe famine spread throughout the whole land.

26 Yet Elijah was not sent to anyone in Israel, but only to a widow living in Zarephath in the territory of Sidon.

That’s to say, to a widow who was a Gentile, living beyond the boundaries of the people of Israel, someone who wasn’t Jewish.

This was not what the people expected to hear.

Good news for the poor of the gentiles?

Sight for the gentile blind?

Release for the gentile captives?

For the people the good news was for ‘us’ the people of God over against ‘them’ the Gentiles responsible for their poverty, for their oppression.

Jesus breaks through that ‘them’ and ‘us’ approach with his remarkable words of grace.  The moment has come spoken of in Genesis 12 and more forcefully in the last part of Isaiah when the blessing of God comes through the Jewish people for all people.

The time is fulfilled.  That moment is now.

No longer ‘them’ and ‘us’

Now the words of grace are for all.

Jesus pressed his point home moving forward to the time of Elisha.

27 And there were many people suffering from a dreaded skin disease who lived in Israel during the time of the prophet Elisha; yet not one of them was healed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”

That was as much as they could take … 28 When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were filled with anger.

AT one moment they marvelled at his words of grace, at the next they were filled with anger and with rage.

29 They rose up, dragged Jesus out of the town, and took him to the top of the hill on which their town was built. They meant to throw him over the cliff,

30 but he walked through the middle of the crowd and went his way.

31 Then Jesus went to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, where he taught the people on the Sabbath.

Not only has he a powerful message, but he brings healing to people who are hurting – a man with an evil spirit on the Sabbath, Simon’s mother in law sick with a fever – many, many people.

He taught, he brought healing to hurting people … and he couldn’t do it in his own strength.

At daybreak Jesus left the town and went off to a lonely place.

And what did he do there?  It’s out into the wilderness again.  But this time not as a place of testing.  This time it’s a place of prayer to draw strength from the presence of God.

 The people started looking for him, and when they found him, they tried to keep him from leaving.

43 But he said to them, “I must preach the Good News about the Kingdom of God in other towns also, because that is what God sent me to do.”

44 So he preached in the synagogues throughout the country.

That’s the message – the kingdom of God, the rule of God in people’s lives.

And it was for everyone – good news for all.

It’s the tragedy of the Christian story that the church as it became an arm of the state did exactly what the people in that place did – the good news is for us, not for all, release is for our captives and not for all … and in particular the church too often turned against the Jews.

It is part of our tradition of being church that there should be freedom of conscience.

We need to have a love for people as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus, a willingness to share that love with all people.   A love for people of other faiths and religions.

It is that love that should drive us on.

It is an all embracing love.

Read the story of what happens in the synagogue as a story of Jews over against Jesus and you miss the point.  That/’s the kind of reading that leads towards anti-semitism and results in the holocaust.

We must read this chapter differently.  Jesus is fully Jewish in this story.  He is giving a reading of the Law and the prophets that brings God’s blessing to all.  And his challenge is to his own people.

Read the story that way and it becomes a massive challenge to all of us.

In this present climate it is so easy to think in terms of ‘them’ and ‘us’.  That fuels the atmosphere of terror and gives rise to more violence.

We must take to heart the words of grace Jesus shares and reject in our hearts, in our thinking and in our words any tendency towards ‘us’ and ‘them.  Instead we must share the words of grace that Jesus shares with us.

This week has seen the 70^th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation.  AT the Holocaust memorial commemoration in the Municipal offices in Cheltneham the two Hebrew Congregations joined with churches and others formthe town not just to remember but to plead that this should not happen again.

In the programme that accompanied the commemoration was a description of the other genocides of the last c70 years and then a warning – the 8 stages that lead to Genocide.

The first stage was ‘classification’ –  "The differences between people are not respected.  There's a division of 'us' and 'them'.  This can be carried out through the use of stereotypes or excluding people who are perceived to be different.".

Take to heart the words of grace shared by Jesus and act on them … an beware to slip into a way of thinking that categorises people as ‘them’ and ‘us’ in the present climate is something to avoid at all costs.

Gracious loving God,

Teach us to live in harmony with one another

To live peaceably with all and so

give us eyes to see as others see

ears to see as others hear

and a gracious loving heart

that’s faithful to You

in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,

the love of God and

the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Let’s have those words in our hearts as we now listen to a piece of music played at the Holocaust Memorial from the Methodist Central Hall – and shared by Richard -  the beautiful cello and piano piece (Prayer) by Ernest Bloch. The cellist is the son of distinguished cellist Raphael Wallfisch (who was at college with Richard’s wife Alison) and grandson of Anita Wallfisch, who survived Auschwitz because she also played the cello and was part of the Auschwitz Orchestra.

Prayer from Ernest Bloch’s 1924 triptych  for ‘Cello and Piano called “From Jewish Life”.