Sermon prepared
for
by Gregory S.
Kaurin, pastor
traditional services,
Text: Luke 4:21-30
Sermon:
Take
the Cotton Candy out of Your Ears!
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Last Sunday Pauline and I
visited a Lutheran church in
The pastor started, though, with
a comment that seemed odd to me. He said
that at first reading this gospel lesson “might not seem all that exciting.” Wah?
Pauline leaned over to
whisper in my ear, “If a crowd of people were throwing me off a cliffside, I’d call that pretty exciting!”
Well, the pastor moved on to
preach about our need to listen to each other, and, even more important, our
need to listen to the Holy Spirit through each other and through prayer. He said that often God is the one talking to
us precisely when we’re hearing things we don’t want to hear, or listening to
people we’d rather not be around.
It was right about then that
he got me (both the preacher and the Holy Spirit), and I told Pauline about
this as we were walking back to the Metro station. He got me, because even as he was preaching
these things about listening, there I was, not listening. Oh, I was hearing his words, and even the
points he was trying to make, but there I was critiquing everything in that church: his delivery, the way he started, the
music, songs, choir, how this message wasn’t where I would’ve taken this passage,
how long this was taking, on and on.
I personally know how
challenging preaching can be. I’m
normally a lot better about cutting other pastors some slack. I know that often it’s up to me to listen for
the deeper voice of the Spirit. This
time, however, I’m embarrassed to say, I blew it… just about. Suddenly, I realized, and I audibly heard
God’s Spirit say to me through that pastor: “Greg, I’m talking to you.
Stop critiquing and dismissing me. Listen!”
It was then that I realized
that I was being as self-indulgent as that group in the synagogue when Jesus
was preaching. If the preacher in
The truth is, though, that
God was speaking to me through the pastor on a much different level. I was the one closing my ears, wanting a
sweeter message. If you really stop to
think about it, I was really just listening for my own voice, my own message,
my own litugy and hymns, and rejecting any others. God caught me in the middle of self-worship.
Just like Jesus when he caught
his hometown congregation worshipping themselves, and not listening to… God. Let’s look carefully
at this passage, because it is incredibly dynamic, and we need to figure out
what changed this crowd. What caused
this normally decent, God-fearing group of neighbors who knew Jesus since he
was a child, Joseph’s son, how did they go from praising Jesus to suddenly wanting
to toss him off a cliffside, like Humpty Dumpty?
You probably remember from
last Sunday, Jesus had just read from the prophet, where Isaiah proclaimed,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good
news to the poor. He sent me to comfort
the broken-hearted. Captives will be
released; blind will see. The year of
the Lord’s favor has come.”
Jesus read those words, and he sat down. (That was how they preached in Jesus’ day; you
stood up to read God’s word, then sat down to preach
on it.) All eyes were fixed on him. “What is he going to say?” They wondered, “What’s Jesus, our hometown
boy who’s been making such a name for himself with all his preaching and
miracles out there in
And Jesus said simply,
“Today, this scripture is being fulfilled, it’s coming true, even as you listen
to it!”
…And the crowds loved
it! Wow!
Powerful! Maybe they really loved
it because it was the shortest sermon anyone had ever delivered before. But more than that, it went straight to the
heart! It was exactly something they
wanted to hear. This is exactly what
those people in Nazareth wanted to
hear, because they were absolutely sure, at first hearing that Jesus was
talking about them, that they were the captives about to be released, oppressed
under foreign rule, that they were the poor who were about to be lifted again
as God’s people.
What they heard was Jesus
saying to them, specifically to them, was that “This is the year we’re going to
break through! This is the year of the
Lord’s favor. This year will bring down all
our oppressors.” Whether they imagined
that Jesus meant it literally, or that salvation was just around the corner, it
was a powerful message that they reveled in.
They ate it up. They let these
words of Isaiah and Jesus (and their own interpretation of them) fill their ears like sweet cotton candy.
“Yeah!
Yes, …that’s
our boy! our grown-up, preacher-boy, Jesus, Joseph’s
kid! a kid of the carpenter, but just listen to him
now!” They marveled at his gracious
words. In other words, they heard a
pep-talk. They heard that God was on
their side, and only their side, and that God was then, even right then,
working to restore them… to their old
Biblical glory.
And just when they were
ready to put Jesus on a big float and parade him down
Instead, Jesus went on to
remind them of two of the greatest Old Testament miracle stories. Through Elijah, the foreign widow of Zarapheth was kept alive while thousands upon thousands of
widows of the so-called chosen people
back in
In other words, Jesus’
sermon wasn’t done. In other words, Jesus went on to say to that
congregation, “Oh, you think that I’m only talking about you? That you are the poor
and oppressed? My message goes, God’s
salvation goes, way beyond you and
Jesus was calling them
selfish, God-grabbing. He was calling
them deaf, and he was saying that their very selfishness was excluding them
from experiencing and being a part of this great happening described by
Isaiah. “Today this scripture is being
fulfilled, even as I read it,” Jesus said, “—but not for you.”
No wonder they were so angry
at Jesus… and wanted to push him from the cliff. He had taken them from the heights of God’s
love, all the way down to embarrassed, dirty, shameful, judgment.
They didn’t want to hear it,
and they certainly weren’t about to listen to or believe it. They wanted to hear that they were martyrs,
eventual victors, rising from the dust of their poor lives to riches and power
and—most important—to vindication, sweet revenge and vindication.
But Jesus was telling them
that they were no better, in fact, they were worse than pagan foreigners and Romans,
because they were so wrapped up in themselves that they were only listening to,
and caring about, themselves.
What God was telling me last
week, and what Jesus was telling the people in
We are like that oblivious
teenager who shuts out the real world most of the time because she’s got on her
headphones. She listens only to her
music, her beat, and no one else’s.
Unless the message is delivered or sounds like the message she likes or
feels comfortable with, she won’t hear it.
In fact, she assumes that anything else is “not for her,” or that it is “wrong.”
“If it ain’t
‘me,’ it ain’t real.
It isn’t the gospel and it’s not really God’s Word, unless I like it, unless
it resonates with me, makes me feel good, or proves my point of view.” That’s what we all often assume, but the
reality is that God’s Spirit might be saying what we don’t want to hear and
don’t want to believe.
No wonder God feels like—and
sometimes God even sounds like—the Father of billions of teenagers, all listening to their own sweet messages,
refusing to be called to his dinner, refusing to do their chores, oblivious to
their desperate danger in this world, and even oblivious to the extreme
measures he has taken just to keep us alive, to save us… through Jesus Christ.
For all of our talk against “entertainment”
theology and liturgy, for all of our talk against the lack of challenge in
modern preaching, it is we Christians throughout
the years and generations who keep falling back to listen to only those voices
and messages and songs that we want to hear, that make us feel good. Just like Jesus’ congregation in Nazareth, we
can become so charmed and enraptured by the sounds of our favorite words and
our favorite ways of hearing, that we become content with just a passing
general effect. “It made me feel good
and refreshed today, so it must have been right!”
You see, then, we have
always been in danger of entertaining ourselves instead of really listening to
God’s Spirit. That doesn’t mean that God
favors every wind of change. He
certainly does not!
It does mean that we need to know our stuff. Our salvation doesn’t depend on understanding
our doctrine, but our ability to truly rejoice in it does. We are called into greater study and maturity
about the depth of our sin and the expanse of God’s grace.
We need to know these
doctrines because we are a lot like that congregation in
Our ability to live in and
to revel and rejoice—to have real joy in the eternal gift God has freely given to
us—begs us to take time, study and discover what exactly Jesus saved us from: the depth and pervasiveness of our sin, so
that we can really see the incredible mercy it took to forgive us, and the powerful
love of God who chooses to live with each of us forever.
So, before I finish this
message, just think on this for a moment.
In view of all our selfish rebellion and arrogance and sin (that is
displayed even in the way we worship him), why would God choose to have
anything to do with us? Why would he
forgive us, claim us? Why would he
choose to live with us forever? When we
are so much like those people who wanted to throw Jesus from a cliff, why does
God put up with us at all?
The answer is to be found in
his grace. The depth of our sin only
serves to reveal the awesome expanse of God’s grace! In spite of all that is so true of us and our
sinfulness, God still looks upon us with favor, and grants us peace.
That’s the difference; we
can see our need for forgiveness and mercy.
Today, this gospel is being fulfilled, even as you hear it. And today, this gospel includes you.
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