February 7, 2010
Faith or Fiction? - Luke 4:21-30
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI arrived as a student pastor in Mooreville, Texas in June of 2002. We all remember what happened the previous September. September 11 was a once in a lifetime, monumental, defining event. Churches were jam packed the following Sunday and they remained jam packed for the rest of that year. People came to Church then like they never had. Their worlds had been shattered. The country’s foundation had been broken. We were going to war, we were fighting anthrax, and the economy was in a nosedive. So people wanted some assurance, and they went to the only place where they could get it: the Church. Never had the church had such a big and captive audience. People needed assurance, you see. They needed hope that everything would somehow be alright. That’s what they needed and certainly what they wanted, and we had an incredible opportunity to give it.
So therefore, Jonathan Speegle blew it big time. Jonathan preceded me at Mooreville and his tenure there was not a happy one. One of the beefs that Mooreville had with Jonathan was the sermon that he preached following September 11. In my opinion, as I said, we needed a comforting sermon then. We needed assurance. Instead, Jonathan talked about how Christians are compelled to forgive and pray for their enemies. Jonathan even prayed that Sunday for the terrorists who attacked our nation.
Looking back on all of that, I still think I had a point. We did need assurance of a good and sovereign God even in the midst of the rubble in the midst of our fear. But Jonathan also had a point. If we’re trying to preach the truth (as Scripture has revealed it), then at some point (maybe not the next week), we have to pray for our enemies and talk about the hard work of forgiveness. There is no way around that for us. When we pray the Lord’s prayer, as we do every Sunday, we limit God’s forgiveness of us to our forgiveness of others. So therefore, we must talk about the unpopular subject of forgiveness. But we have needs as a church, you see, and budgets to meet, and futures that we hope are bright. Quite frankly, forgiveness doesn’t comply well with that vision. Do you remember the joint session of congress after Sep 11? President Bush addressed the nation about our response to the terrorist attacks. We would respond, he said, and if you are in military, he said pointing to me, then get ready. His approval rating at the time was the highest of any president in history, something like 90%. Now imagine had he said this: “We are a Christian nation and all, so instead of getting ready for war, we need to forgive the terrorists. And let’s turn this joint session of congress into a joint prayer meeting of congress where we pray for our enemies.” What do you think his approval rating would have been then? Which begs the questions, are we more worried about approval ratings or the truth?
When Jesus walked into Nazareth, he was the hottest thing in town. Jesus had made a name for himself. Everybody had always said that nothing good ever came from Nazareth. The people of Nazareth had a rotten reputation. Well, Jesus was changing that. After centuries of being the joke of the region, now maybe Jesus could fix all that, and now in this synagogue would be a perfect time to start.
Jesus read from the 61st Chapter of Isaiah, that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him to proclaim some good news to the captives, to Nazareth. If anybody was due for some good news, it was Nazareth. Jesus said that that Scripture from Isaiah had been fulfilled in him. Not only that, Jesus said that it had been filled today, not some wistful tomorrow. And not only that, but Jesus said that it was specifically fulfilled “in your ears,” in Nazareth’s ears. This was big time for Nazareth. Jesus had worked all these miracles in all these other towns. So if he did all that stuff everywhere else, imagine what Jesus could do for Nazareth.
Now if Jesus was smart, in my opinion, that’s what he would have done. Everybody was watching. The sanctuary was packed out. The gym was even packed out. Policemen had to direct traffic. Other area churches even cancelled worship that day to hear this guy at Central Steele Creek. Good Shepherd even had a streaming video. The press was here. News cameras were everywhere. This was big time. Now you’re Jesus, and you’ve done all these things everywhere else, so, by golly, do something big. Go heal some people. Raise somebody from the dead. Magically pay for the family life center or something. Do something big, real big and real popular.
But what did Jesus do? Jesus preached the truth. “Doubtless you’re going to say to me, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ Show us what you have.” But the truth is, Jesus went on to say, there were many widows in Israel during that dreadful drought in Elijah’s time, but Elijah didn’t go to Israel. No, Elijah went to Sidon, one of Israel’s worst enemies. Oh, and do you remember all those lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha? Well, not one of them was healed, but Elisha went to Syria of all places and healed one of them. Scripture may be fulfilled, Jesus implied, but it was fulfilled for everybody, not just Nazareth and not just Israel, but even Israel’s worst enemies. The good news, you see, is for us and also for them. Because it’s good news for them, it necessarily changes us and how we view them, our enemies, the low down, scum of the earth who have made our lives miserable for centuries and who promise to make our children’s lives miserable. Israel had enemies at the time who lived just miles from them.
So that was a hard message for Israel to hear, and it’s a hard message for us to hear, too. And it’s also a hard message for us to preach. So, are we really gutsy enough to preach it? And, are we really willing to live with the results of preaching that message, especially considering where those results landed Jesus? Or, maybe another way to put it, are we more interested in faith, or just plain old fiction?
What the world wants to hear is fiction. We hear it all the time. The Grammies last week was a glowing example. Super Bowl Sunday is another glowing example. If we can just live in bigger houses in bigger subdivisions, we’ll finally find ourselves. Or if we can just get the newest gadgets, or drink more coke, or crack another Budweiser (only if you’re over 21 of course says Anheiser Busch tongue in cheek). If we just get more stuff, if we just can just get that promotion, if we can just look ten years younger, we’ll finally make it. Human beings have always loved fiction. We pay people very good money to deceive us.
In fact, that’s what coming to church can be about, finding our best lives now. That’s what we want, and we almost always define that in terms of material wealth. We sometimes even use God as a means to that idolatrous end. We love fiction and we want to hear it. We need, though, to hear about the Bible, which portrays this expansive God who is just as concerned about the prodigal son as he is the faithful son, who forsakes ninety nine of his sheep to look for the dumb one who got lost, or who, as Jesus said here, goes all the way to God-forsaken Syria to cure their lepers. We need to hear about the Bible, which has this story of the God creating the whole world and coming down and living among us as a person. And while he could have had the fat life that we’re all supposed to want, he ended up preaching the truth to us, and we killed him for it. And by the way he commanded us to preach the truth to others, which his early disciples did, and most of them were killed for it. We are commanded both to hear and to preach the truth. If the Church is not doing that, then who, do you think, ever will?
We do a lot here at Central Steele Creek. We are trying to reach out to our neighbors. We, too, are trying to appeal to the public. More than anything, we need to speak the truth to a world who may not want to hear it, but who desperately needs to hear it. We may not want to hear it, either, but we need to hear it, and most importantly, we need to speak it. The world wants fiction. It needs faith. It needs truth. And in Jesus, we’ve got the Truth, and the Truth has us. We may not understand all that we would like and we may have our questions, but we know a few things about the Truth. And we also know what’s not the truth. So may we have the courage to speak the truth, even if it kills us.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
