January 31, 2010: IV Epiphany
IV Epiphany (c)
January 31, 2010
Fr. Dan Clarke
...And they were astonished at his teaching, for his word was with authority.
In Nomine Patris.
I ALWAYS believe this particular passage of Scripture could have been written about me: I generally get looks of astonishment whenever I open my mouth to speak; and I have never spoken a word except with authority. A working maxim of mine has always run, "Say it with authority and people will believe you!" which usually means that people believe me whether I know what I'm talking about or not. Like Bishop Salmon says of Louise, "Often wrong, but never in doubt!" A case in point: I have been teaching you with authority for a decade now about home, a place I've been calling "north Berkeley County" in just about every other sermon I preach. Imagine my surprise to have spoken of "north Berkeley County" at our family Christmass dinner a month ago, only to have astonishment mingled with disgust pass across my cousin's face as she said with authority, "Do you mean "upper Berkeley County? Surely you haven't been calling us "north Berkeley County for a decade! Tell me you have haven't been doing that!" And so I said with authority, "Oops!" And so now I can reveal to you my one New Year's resolution for 2010: I will never again...invite her to Christmass dinner; and if someone else does, I'll keep my big mouth shut around her. Then she really will be astonished.
I wonder if Jesus ever told stories about Nazareth of Galilee. Somebody was telling things, triflin' things, because Philip once querried, "Can anything good come out of north Ber.... that is, can anything good come out of Nazareth?" I can't pretend to know how Jesus felt about going back to Nazareth, about going to the synagogue where he'd worshiped as a boy. All of us probably want things to be the same when we go home to family dinners or to our childhood church. Religion itself can be like a hometown church: familiar, traditional, unchanging—comfortable in an all too-fast-changing world. We want our religion to stay the same, to look like it always looked, to sound like it sounded when we were children. We want to sing familiar hymns with tunes we know. I'll bet we all agree: no hymn should ever be sung for the first time!
It all seemed right and familiar in the synagogue at Nazareth when Jesus read to them from Isaiah, and all spoke well of him, and all wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And no one realized immediately that the next words out of his mouth were new. The words "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" were being said for the first time. I'll bet it sounded for a moment like "The Word of the Lord" does to us; and probably they all droned out "Thanks be to God" like we do, without even thinking about what had just been said: "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." And then slowly it began to sink in to them just what was being said here.
It wasn't just disappointment at not seeing any miracles performed here, like in Capernaum. It wasn't even that Jesus the Hometown Boy now seems to regard himself as a prophet, you know, Mr Bigstuff up from the Holy City, come back home to upper Galilee County—bad as that is! It took them just a bit to have it sink in, just what he was saying: "Today this Scripture...has been...fulfilled...in you hearing." Well, the hometown folk didn't just sneer behind their hands, they didn't get into a huf like when a hymn is sung for the first time. The hometown folk were filled with wrath! Jesus has just said that God was good to Zarephath and to Syria rather than Israel! Jesus is changing everything! They wanted to throw him off a cliff!
The old, the familiar, the unchanging and comfortable ideas—what was being said about those? Is our religion being changed? Everybody knew the Sacriptures: we've heard them over and over—Jesus himself would have learned them here with us, hearing them read again and again in this very synagogue! Perhaps we haven't heard him rightly, anymore than we've ever heard the prophet Isaiah rightly. Good news for the poor? Liberty for the oppressed? For such prophecy to come true, things would have to change! No wonder they were filled with wrath, ready to kill him. Our religion? Can't it stay the same? Can't it sound like it always sounded, look the way it always looked when we were children? No wonder the hosannas were turning to "Crucify him!" even here.
But yes! The worship could stay the same. The problem was not in the Liturgy but in the Religion: the religion of our hearts, the way we relate to the world. The familiar boundaries, the unchanging and comfortable self-assurances, the self-congratulations, the old, hard hearts of the people could not stay the same. Religion can be like that: familiar, comfortable, unchanging, frozen. But when Jesus walks into our sanctuary, saying with authority, "Today these words have been fulfilled in your hearing," change is not "in the air" but right here in our cold, unlistening hearts. Now, all sorts of people I'd never invite to my table are invited to his. We cannot now hear "This is my Body which is given for you," without recognizing that "given for you" includes all those people I thought we could do without: that wretch in that pew over there, and all those ruffians in upper Berkeley County, and all Republicans, and all Calvinists over at First Scots, and all Iraqis, and all Germans, and all Irish, and all Jews and all Muslims and all blacks and all Mexicans and all gays and all foreigners and all poor people, and all Lawyers! And all Priests! And all those whom I wanted to see in Hell, but Jesus refuses to send there just to please me. "This is my Body which is given for you all." Take and eat, if you will. The old, familiar, unchanging, comfortable attitudes are slipping from around my heart, or at least they ought to be. Can God still love me even while he's letting all the strangers, all the outsiders, share in the Good News with me? Yes, he can. He can love me too, just like he always did; and he can love us all even the outcasts, the widow of Zarephath, Naaman the Syrian, the populations of Nazareth and upper Berkeley. His Body is given for us all.
Well, it's not quite the church I grew up in, but it's very much more like the kingdom of God.