No Constraints
Luke 4:14-30[1]
It’s a feature of
human life that we tend to associate with those who are like us. There’s
something about it that creates a sense of safety. And it’s only natural for us
to want to be safe. But the problem comes when we think that’s the way it’s
supposed to be. When we take that step, we can start drawing lines to separate
“us” from “them.” More than that, we can assume that those who belong to “our”
group are “better” than those who don’t belong. It doesn’t take a very strong
push to go from there to full-fledged prejudice toward anyone we see as “other”
or outside “our” group.
While we’d like to
think that we are above all that in the church, I’m afraid we bring this human
tendency with us. We say out loud that we are saved by God’s grace alone, but
inside we have a very different story. We tend to translate our years of
faithful attendance and service in the church into the notion that we “deserve”
God’s grace because we’ve “earned” it. And since the “others” haven’t done what
we have, they haven’t “earned” God’s grace, and they don’t really “deserve” it.
Of course, we don’t say any of this out loud, but it’s still there, however
deeply buried it may be. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we draw lines
that exclude “other” people from God’s grace.
I would say that was
what was going on in the story of Jesus’ not-so-friendly encounter with the
people in the synagogue at Nazareth. As we saw last week, Jesus went to the
synagogue in his hometown and announced a message full of hope and promise:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good
news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and
recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the
year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk. 4:18-19). He even said, “today this scripture
has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). In other words, he declared to
them that “the year of the Lord’s favor” had come, or “the time of God’s great
acceptance.”
The problem was that
the good people of the synagogue at Nazareth knew that Jesus had done wondrous
things in Capernaum, a city they considered “heathen” territory. It was a
scandal to them that he would share God’s blessings with “others” and not his
“own” people. But that was where they got it all wrong. Jesus made it clear
that God’s “favor” was meant especially for outcasts they themselves had
excluded. The freedom and release he promised was for those who had been beaten
down by the hard-hearted attitudes of some of the very people sitting there in
the synagogue. And when he made it clear that God’s grace could not be
constrained by their expectations, it enraged them so much they tried to kill him.
To some extent, we
could say that Jesus “provoked” the people of Nazareth. As one commentator puts
it, he literally “threw the book at them.”[2] He
cited two stories that would have been very familiar to them from their own
Scriptures. The first one came from the life of the prophet Elijah. Jesus
reminds them that when there was a famine that lasted over three years, Elijah
was sent to a widow in a different country, the land of Phoenicia. And to
provide for his faithful prophet, God extended his grace to this “foreigner” by
providing food for her and her son.
The second story came
from the life of the prophet Elisha. When Naaman, the commander of the Syrian
army, came to him to be cleansed of his leprosy, God extended his grace to him
through Elisha. Now, the folks at Nazareth might have been able to accept the
story about the widow of Zarephath. After all, she was a widow on the point of
starving. But Naaman was another story altogether. He was the commander of the
Syrian army. Syria and Israel were allies at times, but they were just as
likely to be enemies. That God would extend his grace to the man who led the enemy
army would have pushed them over the edge.
The fine, upstanding
people in the synagogue at Nazareth were full of amazement and wonder at Jesus’
“gracious words” while they were envisioning him bringing the “year of the
Lord’s favor” to them. They expected
God’s blessings for themselves. They believed they had earned them and were
convinced that they deserved God’s
grace. But Jesus reminded them that God gives his grace to everyone. What makes
it grace is that no one deserves it!
The
problem with the very human tendency to limit God’s grace by our own standards
is that it flies in the face of biblical truth. God’s grace will not be
constrained! And when God puts his grace to work among us, and those we prefer
to exclude are included, it can offend us to the core. More than that, when
people who are too far outside the boundaries that define who we think belong
here actually come into our community, our neighborhood, or our church, it can bring out the worst in us, like it
did in the people of the synagogue at Nazareth. But Jesus came to offer God’s
blessings to everyone, regardless of what we think of them. And he gave his
life on the cross to make it clear that God’s grace will not be constrained by
our expectations. If we would follow him, we would do well to extend that grace
to others, with no constraints whatsoever.
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