Gracious Words?

Luke 4:21-30

February 3, 2019

            At only 11, Akeelah is carrying the weight of the world on her young shoulders. At least that is how it feels. Perhaps it’s not the weight of the world per se, but it is the weight, the burden even, of other’s expectations, desires, hopes and dreams.

            Akeelah is the lead character in the movie Akeelah and the Bee. It is one of those moves that makes you think and makes you feel and makes you glad to be alive. Akeelah is a spelling phenom from what would seem to be a stereotypical urban, predominantly black neighborhood in Los Angeles.

            Her middle school has never held a spelling bee before, but to do so would put them in the running for regionals, state and eventually the national spelling bee. It would bring much needed attention to her school district, where even the stalls of the girls’ bathrooms did not have doors. Just as sports brings money into schools, a spelling has the same potential.

            As I said, you know from the outset that Akeelah is a spelling phenom. She loves the game Scrabble, and she loves words and language. It is a love that her late father instilled in her. But she is an underachiever at school. She is bullied. She tries to hide her intelligence because it makes her stand out too much. It makes her a target for others’ anger and jealousy. But as Akeelah begins to advance in the spelling bees, and as she is preparing to go to the nationals, her classmates, her neighborhood, her family and friends all rally around her. They want her to win. People from all over help her study and memorize words. They are interviewed on human interest stories saying that they want her to win because it would be good for all of them. It would be good for their neighborhood to have a hometown girl go to the bee and win.

           Akeelah feels their love and support, but she also feels the pressure. She feels the intense weight of their expectations. And for a moment she falters. She is terrified to let anyone down. She even considers dropping out because she is so afraid of failing. She realizes that she would not just fail herself; she would fail everyone rooting for her.

            I won’t tell you the rest of the story. But if you have not seen this movie, I highly recommend that you do so. But it is a study in contrasts that while Akeelah fears failing the people of her neighborhood, in effect her hometown, Jesus had no such fear. He was not afraid of disappointing or displeasing or angering the people he grew up with. That seems apparent in our passage from Luke’s gospel today.

            I have always read this last part of the story, which began last week, through the lens that the people of Nazareth, the people who thought they knew Jesus best, just could not accept that he was who he said he was. I think that may be true in the other gospel accounts, but as I really studied what is happening here, I’m not so sure that’s the case in Luke’s telling. It seems to me that the people were initially just fine with Jesus. They were pleased and accepting, and even proud of Jesus.

            Verse 22 states it outright.

            “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?”

            I think in the past I have heard a sneering tone in their exclamation about him being Joseph’s son.

            “Isn’t that Joseph’s kid, you know the carpenter from down the block? He’s gotten a little bit big for his britches, hasn’t he?”

            But I think I’ve been wrong. I don’t think that was their tone. I do believe they were amazed and pleased and proud of him. It would seem that the trouble was not so much in what the people were thinking, but what in what Jesus was saying.

            “Doubtless, you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things you did at Capernaum.’ And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

            Is it just me or was Jesus being the aggressor? The people were amazed at his gracious words. But once Jesus pushed back at them, they were ready to throw him off a cliff. Literally. They took him to the edge of the cliff, and wanted to throw him off. But he passed through their midst and went on his way.

            So what changed? What changed between his sermon and his remarks at coffee hour? Part of me wishes that he would have done what other preachers have done; thanked everyone, then left to go get lunch. That would have saved him a whole lot of trouble. But Jesus did not avoid trouble, and it would seem that in this instance, he was determined to create trouble.

            But was that what he was doing? Was he creating trouble for trouble’s sake? Or was he pushing these folks – maybe some who had indeed known him since he was a small boy, had tousled his hair or told him to stop running or picked him up and brought him to his mother when he fell and scraped his knee – maybe Jesus was pushing them not to cause trouble, but to make them aware of their own hypocrisy. Maybe Jesus wanted them to understand that he had come not for the people who thought they were God’s own, but for the people who did not.

            Think about the two stories he quoted. There were plenty of widows in Israel who needed Elijah, but Elijah went to a widow who was an outsider. There were plenty of lepers in Israel who needed healing, but Elisha was sent to heal Naaman, a Syrian, an outsider.

            Jesus was proclaiming in the verses he quoted from Isaiah; that the good news was about good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and letting the oppressed go free. That was good news indeed, but it was good news that was not only for the people who thought it should be for them. It was for the voiceless and the friendless and the powerless and the marginalized. And it wasn’t just for the outsiders, the others also; it was for them first. It was for the outsider and the stranger. And I think that is what set off the people of Jesus’ hometown. They would get no favors from their hometown boy. They would receive no special status because of him. He was not there for them first and only. He was there for the others.

            And he was not afraid to tell them this either.

            It was an uncomfortable truth. It was gracious words with a question mark instead of an exclamation point. It was something that perhaps they knew, but did not want to acknowledge. It was good news that seemed more like bad news.

            But here’s the thing; the gospel is good news that may also seem like bad news to us as well. The gospel calls our assumptions about who we are and where we stand with God into question. It calls our presumptions into sharp relief. The gospel may seem very much like gracious words with a question mark. The gospel makes us uncomfortable because it pushes us to see beyond ourselves, to see beyond what we think we know or understand about God, about Jesus, and about the people Jesus came to stand with and eat with and be with.

            These are gracious words, but they have a bite to them and a sting. They call us to look at ourselves and our motivations and take stock of our lives. But whether it seems like it or not, that is good news. Those are gracious words. And thanks be to God for them. Amen.