The Gift of Today
January 21, 2007
Texts: 1 Corinthians 12:12-20; Luke 4:13-30
One of the ethical imperatives that runs right through the Bible from beginning to end is that imperative to welcome the stranger in our midst, and the reminder that each of us is to a certain degree a stranger seeking to experience that deep welcome that God extends to us all.
And in fact, hospitality lies at the center of today’s Gospel reading, and of the Gospel overall. Judaism at the time of Jesus was not necessarily an exclusive religion – the Jewish Scriptures were full of teachings about welcoming the stranger and alien into the community. Gentiles could be welcomed into the community. But there was a dispute at the time about whether conversion was required in order to be welcomed – in other words, could Gentiles be fully members of the community only if they became Jews? There are the same kinds of issues in Christianity, and some Christian communities spend a lot of energy worrying about who’s in and who’s out – what, if anything, limits the welcome that Christians extend? What, if anything, limits the welcome that God extends?
And then, as now, some people felt strongly about the issue. Jesus had been preaching in Galilee, which was a very welcoming diverse community where Jews and Gentiles lived together easily. By pointing out that Jesus was well-received in this diverse community, Luke is pointing the way to the inclusion of Gentiles in the community of Jesus.
So in today’s reading, Jesus comes home to Nazareth. And he comes to teach at the temple, which the text tells us was his custom. In other words, he is a faithful Jew who customarily attends worship. Whatever Jesus will teach will be consistent with his Jewish faith – it will not be a radical departure.
So as was the custom, he stood to read the scripture and he read the lesson from Isaiah, a message of hope and freedom, of joy and redemption. And at first, the people continued to welcome him, but soon, it changes. They start to talk among themselves, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” They are beginning to create expectations of him. It happens all the time to younger brothers and sisters: “Oh you’re Stephanie’s sister – are you going to be in orchestra too?” People often intend to be welcoming, but there is a subtle sense in which it indicates, you’re welcome if you are who we expect. It’s a way of limiting hospitality. And Jesus got the sense of their remarks right away, for he suggests that they are only welcoming him because of what they expect he’ll do for them, and he says that they are expecting the same sorts of miracles that they’ve heard he performed elsewhere. And then, he responds, “No prophet is ever welcomed in his own country.”
And then, he underscores the change in expectations when he talks about the two greatest prophets, Elijah and Elisha. He describes two incidents where they had reached out to Gentiles, and not just any Gentiles – these were people who were outsiders on several levels. First, he describes the incident from 1 Kings 17, when during a famine, Elijah is staying at the home of a widow in Sidon. Widows were outsiders because they didn’t have a man in the household. Also, widows tended to be poor. And of course, this particular widow was a gentile. And Jesus emphasizes that during this time, there were hungry Hebrew people, but the miracle through Elijah was sent to this foreign widow.
And likewise, the other episode Jesus cites, that of Naaman who was cured by Elisha in 2 Kings 5. Naaman was a Syrian general with leprosy – talk about your outsiders! He was from an enemy nation, he was an enemy general, and with a skin condition that put him outside society. And yet, Jesus points out, it was this enemy whom Elisha cured. As Jesus will make clear later, the hospitality of God goes beyond welcoming the stranger, it extends to transforming the enemy into one of the community. The hospitality of God goes beyond allowing a stranger in – it includes making the stranger one of us. And so the people were very angry, and were ready to throw Jesus off a cliff but he walked away from them.
In a few moments, we are going to install two officers in our congregation, as we did two weeks ago also with several other officers. Among the questions we will ask them is “Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?” We expect the officers of our church – the deacons, the elders and the ministers – to take the Bible seriously as authoritative. We don’t ask whether they believe it to be literally true. But we do ask whether they accept it as a unique and authoritative witness – that is, as a book which reveals God in a way not found elsewhere. When I was in seminary, my Old Testament professor taught us to ask a question that is essential in understanding the Bible: she asked “what did this story mean to the original hearers of it?” This is a question that we ask again and again as we try to understand how God might be speaking to us in the Bible. When we understand how an episode might have challenged the people at the time, we can begin to have some sense of how God might be challenging us in our time. So what impact did the words of Jesus have on the originals hearers? Why did this make them so angry?
It’s important to remember that the Mediterranean world at the time of Jesus, much like today, was an honor-shame society. Unlike our Western notion of guilt, which is an essentially private notion, honor is a social construct. One’s honor is essential to identity, one’s place in the world, and therefore even to survival. It was also a limited goods culture – that is, they understood all goods, including honor, to be in limited supply so that if someone received honor, it was taken away from someone else. For Jesus to suggest that people in another town, and especially foreigners, understood him better than the people who knew him best was to grant outsiders honor and take it away from the people of Nazareth. A consistent theme in the teachings of Jesus is to challenge this limited-goods view, to suggest that God is a God of abundance, and that there is plenty of honor and love to go around. But, understanding this limited-goods view is essential to understanding how much the Biblical value of hospitality was asking. And, it should challenge us to look at our own time, and see where God might challenge us to practice hospitality. It’s easy for us as 21st century Christians to feel smug about this, but have we considered the connection between the call of Jesus to a fuller hospitality, and for example, immigration policy?
Jesus was signaling a different kind of community, a community where everyone was welcomed, where because we have been welcomed, we want to welcome others. And it wasn’t just an abstract welcome, Jesus really did welcome people from the margins – he ate with tax collectors, spoke with prostitutes, healed lepers, and people were scandalized. Welcome needs to be more than talk. Who are the people whom our culture treats as unwelcome? How do we practice hospitality in our homes, in our nation, as well as in our congregation?
Frame has long been a community that is welcoming, and we need to keep being intentional about creating welcoming space. For example, we have been a welcoming place for youth of this community, a place where teens could come and discuss any topic, even those topics that weren’t usual for church youth groups. And so during this time of transition, we have a Youth Group Advisory Team that is working to articulate just how we have created that sense of hospitality and welcome, so that we can be intentional about continuing it.
By making our building available to Narcotics Anonymous, and to a depression and anxiety group, we are trying to be intentional in creating safe space for people facing the challenges of addiction or mental illness.
Ned Hallowell, a psychiatrist who is best known for his extensive work on ADHD, also has written a book called The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness and he argues that one of the most important gifts adults provide children is unconditional love: being connected to other people. I heard him talk on this subject and he described the importance of “…adults in whose eyes a child can see welcome.”
And Hallowell has found that sense of welcome to be essential to the development of vocation, which is part of what Paul was talking about in his letter to the Corinthians. He is describing a diverse community, where there are people with different gifts and different callings. And communities which are comfortable with this kind of diversity are communities where people can grow into their gifts. Being able to do that is critical to self-acceptance, which is, after all the ability to provide hospitality to oneself. And this is essential to vocation, which has been described by Frederick Buechner as “…the place where the world’s deep hungers meet our own deep gladness.” It’s not only the ability to welcome ourselves that matters, it’s also the sense that we can make a difference – that we have been welcomed by the world, and as we consider the world’s deep hungers, we are validating the people and places of need in the world, extending hospitality outwards.
And finally, hope is another manifestation of hospitality —for hope is making space for the future in the reality of today, no matter how disconnected they may seem. Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Right here, right now. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus talked a lot about TODAY. In fact, Luke uses the word “today”12 times, while the other three gospels combined only use it nine times altogether. The present impact of the message is part of Luke’s message. And we need to realize that hope is not just an abstract kind of hope – it is the recognition that the only opening for the future lies in today, and so if we want to see a better world, we need to be taking action today.
Sometimes we don't feel ready – we are looking for the right action, the best opportunity to make a difference. We feel like we are inadequate to the task of ushering in the future. And I certainly understand that. Today, I felt inadequate to the preaching task. I didn't feel good about the sermon, I didn't feel ready. But the time came, and I have to do what I have ready, even if it's not what I want it to be. Today is all we have. Today is where all our opportunities lie – for we can only act in the present moment. No other time is within reach. Today is where we find contentment as well, which is another way of recognizing that we also provide hospitality to the moment, and recognize in it an irreplaceable gift. For in this moment we are connected to eternity, and we receive in the fullness of the moment the capacity to act in a way that welcomes God, and receives God’s welcome. May we find in God the home, and the hope we all seek. Amen.
One of the ethical imperatives that runs right through the Bible from beginning to end is that imperative to welcome the stranger in our midst, and the reminder that each of us is to a certain degree a stranger seeking to experience that deep welcome that God extends to us all.
And in fact, hospitality lies at the center of today’s Gospel reading, and of the Gospel overall. Judaism at the time of Jesus was not necessarily an exclusive religion – the Jewish Scriptures were full of teachings about welcoming the stranger and alien into the community. Gentiles could be welcomed into the community. But there was a dispute at the time about whether conversion was required in order to be welcomed – in other words, could Gentiles be fully members of the community only if they became Jews? There are the same kinds of issues in Christianity, and some Christian communities spend a lot of energy worrying about who’s in and who’s out – what, if anything, limits the welcome that Christians extend? What, if anything, limits the welcome that God extends?
And then, as now, some people felt strongly about the issue. Jesus had been preaching in Galilee, which was a very welcoming diverse community where Jews and Gentiles lived together easily. By pointing out that Jesus was well-received in this diverse community, Luke is pointing the way to the inclusion of Gentiles in the community of Jesus.
So in today’s reading, Jesus comes home to Nazareth. And he comes to teach at the temple, which the text tells us was his custom. In other words, he is a faithful Jew who customarily attends worship. Whatever Jesus will teach will be consistent with his Jewish faith – it will not be a radical departure.
So as was the custom, he stood to read the scripture and he read the lesson from Isaiah, a message of hope and freedom, of joy and redemption. And at first, the people continued to welcome him, but soon, it changes. They start to talk among themselves, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” They are beginning to create expectations of him. It happens all the time to younger brothers and sisters: “Oh you’re Stephanie’s sister – are you going to be in orchestra too?” People often intend to be welcoming, but there is a subtle sense in which it indicates, you’re welcome if you are who we expect. It’s a way of limiting hospitality. And Jesus got the sense of their remarks right away, for he suggests that they are only welcoming him because of what they expect he’ll do for them, and he says that they are expecting the same sorts of miracles that they’ve heard he performed elsewhere. And then, he responds, “No prophet is ever welcomed in his own country.”
And then, he underscores the change in expectations when he talks about the two greatest prophets, Elijah and Elisha. He describes two incidents where they had reached out to Gentiles, and not just any Gentiles – these were people who were outsiders on several levels. First, he describes the incident from 1 Kings 17, when during a famine, Elijah is staying at the home of a widow in Sidon. Widows were outsiders because they didn’t have a man in the household. Also, widows tended to be poor. And of course, this particular widow was a gentile. And Jesus emphasizes that during this time, there were hungry Hebrew people, but the miracle through Elijah was sent to this foreign widow.
And likewise, the other episode Jesus cites, that of Naaman who was cured by Elisha in 2 Kings 5. Naaman was a Syrian general with leprosy – talk about your outsiders! He was from an enemy nation, he was an enemy general, and with a skin condition that put him outside society. And yet, Jesus points out, it was this enemy whom Elisha cured. As Jesus will make clear later, the hospitality of God goes beyond welcoming the stranger, it extends to transforming the enemy into one of the community. The hospitality of God goes beyond allowing a stranger in – it includes making the stranger one of us. And so the people were very angry, and were ready to throw Jesus off a cliff but he walked away from them.
In a few moments, we are going to install two officers in our congregation, as we did two weeks ago also with several other officers. Among the questions we will ask them is “Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?” We expect the officers of our church – the deacons, the elders and the ministers – to take the Bible seriously as authoritative. We don’t ask whether they believe it to be literally true. But we do ask whether they accept it as a unique and authoritative witness – that is, as a book which reveals God in a way not found elsewhere. When I was in seminary, my Old Testament professor taught us to ask a question that is essential in understanding the Bible: she asked “what did this story mean to the original hearers of it?” This is a question that we ask again and again as we try to understand how God might be speaking to us in the Bible. When we understand how an episode might have challenged the people at the time, we can begin to have some sense of how God might be challenging us in our time. So what impact did the words of Jesus have on the originals hearers? Why did this make them so angry?
It’s important to remember that the Mediterranean world at the time of Jesus, much like today, was an honor-shame society. Unlike our Western notion of guilt, which is an essentially private notion, honor is a social construct. One’s honor is essential to identity, one’s place in the world, and therefore even to survival. It was also a limited goods culture – that is, they understood all goods, including honor, to be in limited supply so that if someone received honor, it was taken away from someone else. For Jesus to suggest that people in another town, and especially foreigners, understood him better than the people who knew him best was to grant outsiders honor and take it away from the people of Nazareth. A consistent theme in the teachings of Jesus is to challenge this limited-goods view, to suggest that God is a God of abundance, and that there is plenty of honor and love to go around. But, understanding this limited-goods view is essential to understanding how much the Biblical value of hospitality was asking. And, it should challenge us to look at our own time, and see where God might challenge us to practice hospitality. It’s easy for us as 21st century Christians to feel smug about this, but have we considered the connection between the call of Jesus to a fuller hospitality, and for example, immigration policy?
Jesus was signaling a different kind of community, a community where everyone was welcomed, where because we have been welcomed, we want to welcome others. And it wasn’t just an abstract welcome, Jesus really did welcome people from the margins – he ate with tax collectors, spoke with prostitutes, healed lepers, and people were scandalized. Welcome needs to be more than talk. Who are the people whom our culture treats as unwelcome? How do we practice hospitality in our homes, in our nation, as well as in our congregation?
Frame has long been a community that is welcoming, and we need to keep being intentional about creating welcoming space. For example, we have been a welcoming place for youth of this community, a place where teens could come and discuss any topic, even those topics that weren’t usual for church youth groups. And so during this time of transition, we have a Youth Group Advisory Team that is working to articulate just how we have created that sense of hospitality and welcome, so that we can be intentional about continuing it.
By making our building available to Narcotics Anonymous, and to a depression and anxiety group, we are trying to be intentional in creating safe space for people facing the challenges of addiction or mental illness.
Ned Hallowell, a psychiatrist who is best known for his extensive work on ADHD, also has written a book called The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness and he argues that one of the most important gifts adults provide children is unconditional love: being connected to other people. I heard him talk on this subject and he described the importance of “…adults in whose eyes a child can see welcome.”
And Hallowell has found that sense of welcome to be essential to the development of vocation, which is part of what Paul was talking about in his letter to the Corinthians. He is describing a diverse community, where there are people with different gifts and different callings. And communities which are comfortable with this kind of diversity are communities where people can grow into their gifts. Being able to do that is critical to self-acceptance, which is, after all the ability to provide hospitality to oneself. And this is essential to vocation, which has been described by Frederick Buechner as “…the place where the world’s deep hungers meet our own deep gladness.” It’s not only the ability to welcome ourselves that matters, it’s also the sense that we can make a difference – that we have been welcomed by the world, and as we consider the world’s deep hungers, we are validating the people and places of need in the world, extending hospitality outwards.
And finally, hope is another manifestation of hospitality —for hope is making space for the future in the reality of today, no matter how disconnected they may seem. Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Right here, right now. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus talked a lot about TODAY. In fact, Luke uses the word “today”12 times, while the other three gospels combined only use it nine times altogether. The present impact of the message is part of Luke’s message. And we need to realize that hope is not just an abstract kind of hope – it is the recognition that the only opening for the future lies in today, and so if we want to see a better world, we need to be taking action today.
Sometimes we don't feel ready – we are looking for the right action, the best opportunity to make a difference. We feel like we are inadequate to the task of ushering in the future. And I certainly understand that. Today, I felt inadequate to the preaching task. I didn't feel good about the sermon, I didn't feel ready. But the time came, and I have to do what I have ready, even if it's not what I want it to be. Today is all we have. Today is where all our opportunities lie – for we can only act in the present moment. No other time is within reach. Today is where we find contentment as well, which is another way of recognizing that we also provide hospitality to the moment, and recognize in it an irreplaceable gift. For in this moment we are connected to eternity, and we receive in the fullness of the moment the capacity to act in a way that welcomes God, and receives God’s welcome. May we find in God the home, and the hope we all seek. Amen.