An All Encompassing God Keith McFarren February 2, 2025 Luke 4:21-30 What a difference there is between the narthex and the sanctuary on a Sunday morning…especially when it comes to noise. Back in the narthex, we talk and we laugh and we use it as kind of a social gathering place before and after church. But when we come into the sanctuary, it’s completely different. Everything changes. In here, in the sanctuary, with Becky playing the prelude before worship, it is quiet and it is peaceful…it is reverent in here…it’s holy, if you will. For some of us, the sanctuary serves as a place for us to withdraw from the world around us. The sanctuary affords us a place to come and leave the world and all its troubles outside. In here, it’s just us and God. All that is well and good, because there is a need to clear one’s mind and heart to properly worship God…and there is no better place to do it than right here in the sanctuary. But we also need to be aware that coming in here does not put us in a vacuum; it doesn’t automatically cut us off from the cares and the concerns of the world outside the doors of this church. When we are in here worshipping God, we need to be aware that while our worship is focused inward toward ourselves and our own faith community, we don’t have God all to ourselves. We need to be aware that while God is with us, he is, at the same time outside the doors of this church, working among all people everywhere no matter who they are or where they come from. I say this because this is how Jesus got himself into trouble this week when he tried to get the people to worship a bigger God than they were used to worshiping. Everything was going so well for Jesus. He made his proclamation that the Spirit of God was upon him; he preached his nine word sermon and everything was going well. The people of Nazareth were proud of him…after all he was a hometown boy made good. “He’s one of us,” they said. “We should consider ourselves special to have someone like him using Nazareth as his home base as he prepares to go out and liberate us from the Roman empire.” But it was that little phrase at the end of verse twenty two that makes all the difference…the one that said, “He’s one of us.” It wasn’t meant to be a disparaging phrase. It was meant to be a phrase of all inclusive pride and honor, a phrase meant to show that Jesus belonged with them and if Jesus belonged to them and represented God and his kingdom, then God belonged to them as well. If Jesus had stopped there and kept his mouth shut it would have been a glorious homecoming for him. He was a celebrity. A hometown hero. People would have been slapping him on the back and hugging him. People would have invited him to dinner and invited him to sit down and talk about the good old days when he was a boy and when Nazareth was a good place to raise a family. With his family history and his background, there is no doubt that he was loved by the people and could have done well for himself right there in Nazareth. But he couldn’t stop talking. In fact, he wouldn’t stop talking. You see, Jesus had a bigger vision for himself and for his ministry than just being located in a small town in the hill country of Galilee. “I know that you want me to settle down here, because here are where all the people are that matter. I know you don’t understand why anyone would want to leave Nazareth and go on to other towns and other countries.” “But the truth of the matter is, you don’t need me here because you aren’t willing to listen to what I have to say…and if you don’t listen to what I say, then I am wasting my time.” Jesus knew why they were so intent on having him stay in Nazareth. He knew what their approval of him was based on. But he also knew that deep down in their hearts, they didn’t want to hear what he came to say. He came to say that they were all very important to God…that much they heard. They also heard him say that God was going to kick off his coming into the world right there in Nazareth. That thrilled them to death because with God’s headquarters right there in Nazareth it would show the people in the next town over, or the people in the next county, or even the people in the next country over just how important they were to God. It starts today, they thought. Today, right here in Nazareth the scripture is fulfilled in our hearing. But what Jesus really came to say that day was that yes, they were important, but that they weren’t the only important people in the world. He came to say that God thinks even the stranger, even the foreigner, even the enemy is important…just as important as they are…important enough to save, important enough to love. Do you remember Elijah? Do you remember the story of the widow of Zarephath who gave the prophet Elijah her last piece of bread to eat? Because of her kindness and because of what she did for Elijah the woman, a foreigner, a non-Jew, was blessed by God and his unconditional grace with an over abundance of food that would feed her and her son forever. Then there was the Prophet Elisha. Do you remember that foreign general named Naaman? The guy with the skin problem who went from one doctor to another spending all he had looking for a cure for his skin disease. It was the prophet Elisha who directed him to the right person to help him cure his problem. Naaman, was an enemy of Israel, an army general who killed the Israelites and took their survivors into exile. God healed him. God blessed him. God loved him, even though he was a Syrian. But this had been God’s plan from the very beginning…to love those whom we think are unlovable and to forgive those whom we think don’t deserve God’s grace. It was also his plan for us to love all people and to know that no one group of people can claim him as their own. That’s a very bold move on Jesus’ part…to tell us to love even those who are different from us. Heck, we struggle to love one another on a Sunday morning sometimes. It’s a bold move to ask us to remove the boundaries or the barriers that we have erected to keep us away from people we don’t want to be around. It’s no wonder the people got mad at Jesus that day. It’s no wonder they turned into a mob. Jesus was inconveniencing them like they had never been inconvenienced before. He was asking them to make accommodations for people that they hated. To change their deeply ingrained habits…habits that had been habits for an entire lifetime. In changing from a normal habit to a “holy habit” Jesus calls for us to suddenly think differently about who and what a neighbor really is. The great irony of this passage is that Jesus was welcomed at first but then rejected because he reminded the people that God is God and that God is not the exclusive property of anyone. Because they didn’t like the idea of having to share God with people who weren’t like them, Jesus' own people turned on him. They were so mad they wanted to kill him. But he left. He left because he had places to go. He left because he had God’s word to proclaim. He left because he had more just a small area like Nazareth to save; he had an entire world and all its people. This is, in a sense, the story of the entire gospel. Throughout the New Testament people tried to hijack the gospels for their own use. They tried to set their own terms for God’s actions. Because of their background and their belief that they were more important than anyone else, the people of Israel took it upon themselves to determine who was worthy of God’s love and forgiveness and who was not. It could be that this is one of the saddest verses in the Bible – “He walked away.” It serves as evidence that God doesn’t force us to change. He doesn’t twist our arm or try to bribe us to follow him. He doesn’t force us to grow. He doesn’t force us to love as Jesus loves. God doesn’t demand that we become something more than we already are, or that we live a life that is willing to take risks, risks with the potential for changing the world and making it a better place to live. Jesus doesn’t beg. He doesn’t have the time to bargain or barter with you. He’s got things to do and places to go. He says follow me; and if you do, you do. But if you don’t, he turns and he walks away. Jesus couldn’t do much for his hometown because the people weren’t open to him. So one has to wonder how much God might be able to with us if we would come down from our holier than thou pedestals and be willing to tear down the barriers and the boundaries that we have erected, the barriers and boundaries that separate us from the people that God calls us to love, the barriers and the boundaries that end up separating us from the love of God…a love that is really meant to transcend all people. One scholar put it this way…he says, "There are always people who want God on their terms, but one cannot have God while rejecting God's people." As we gather here in this sanctuary this morning, I hope you know that God doesn’t look at you or treat you differently than he looks and treats other people. No matter how long you have come to this church…no matter how much money you have, what kind of car you drive, how big your home is, how liberal or how conservative you are, no matter how white you are, no matter how black you are…you do not have a lock on God because of who you are or where you come from. God is omnipotent. God is all encompassing. He came for everyone. If you do think that you have a lock on God and that you’re better than everyone else and that you are special in God’s eyes, then like he did in our scripture reading this morning, he’s going to turn and walk away from you. He’ll simply turn and walk away from you because he knows that he is not welcomed into your heart on his own terms. You don’t follow Jesus on your terms…you follow Jesus on his terms. And if you don’t, he’ll walk away. |