Will Rice - "Who Was Jesus?" Series - Sermon #1 - Jesus the Troublemaker

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Welcome to week one of a five week series on “Who Was Jesus? A Look at the Person of Jesus.” I think that one of the biggest gifts and challenges of our Christian faith and belief is the incredible depth and richness of Jesus Christ, a figure so complex that we stumble over our words when trying to explain him. We refer to Jesus Christ as being fully human and fully divine.

Fully human and fully divine is and always has been difficult for Christians. Frankly, it can be difficult to speak in human terms about God. We tend to take Jesus’ human side and pretty it up as much as possible. It can sound almost blasphemous to talk about God shoving food in his mouth or going to the bathroom, but those are things fully human creatures do.

I was even worried about the title. “Who Was Jesus?” raises the question, “Are you implying that Jesus is only historical? Are you saying that Jesus isn’t around anymore?” But, if you asked that question, you are getting my point. My point, for the purpose of this series, is to look specifically at Jesus as he was when he lived and breathed and walked around the Middle-East. Today, we will look at the fact that he caused a bit of trouble.

Luke 4:14-30

“Jesus the Troublemaker”

In the small group study that some of you are doing in conjunction with this sermon series, one of the first activities you will do is to name some images of Jesus. Some will say, “Son of God” others “Good Shepherd” others “Lord.” Few will jump in with “troublemaker.” But I have to tell you, Jesus got in trouble a lot.

Our scripture today tells us the story of the equivalent of a new pastor’s first time preaching at a new church. However, instead, we have a young Jewish Rabbi and a synagogue.

¹⁵He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

So Jesus is gaining a reputation.

¹⁶When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom.

So far, this is all perfectly normal. The sabbath day was Saturday and all good Jews went to the synagogue. A little bit about the synagogue. Synagogue is from the Greek, συναγωγή – to gather together. Historically, the temple in Jerusalem was the place the people gathered to worship and sacrifice to God, but after major catastrophic events like the captivity of the Jewish people in Babylon and then destruction of the temple, the Jews needed a new way to worship and maintain their faith away from the temple. Thus, the synagogue system was formed. We are basically talking about weekly gatherings of people to read the Torah, what we would call the Old Testament, hear it interpreted and pray.

Exactly why Jesus was called to speak is not clear. It sounds like he was gaining some reputation as a Rabbi or teacher.

He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

Whatever the reason, it was perfectly normal for a visiting Rabbi or a lay person to be asked to stand up and read from the Law, or as in this case, the prophets. Jesus was handed the scroll that contained the prophet Isaiah:

¹⁸“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, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

He actually reads a little bit from Isaiah 61, verse one. Then he seems to jump back to Isaiah 58, verse 6 and then back to verse two of Isaiah 61. What is interesting is that the crowd knew their Torah much better than we do so they probably knew what he was doing.

²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

Still fairly normal. Now he sits down for some interpretation. Historically, this isn’t saying, “here is what I think this means.” For most it would be sharing how other Rabbis had interpreted, saying “Rabbi Micah Bar-Dan” has said…”

Jesus does something slightly different:

²¹Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” ²²All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”

Let me give you a really rough picture of why they were pleased so far. The Jews, Israel, are God’s chosen people. However, when Jesus was walking around, they were still living under the oppression of the Roman Empire and they were awaiting a Messiah, an anointed one of God to come and save them. In this moment, it is unlikely that they thought that Jesus, the boy who they watched grow up was this Messiah. However, they heard his words and his interpretation as comfort for their affliction. Isaiah’s words, if you think they are for you, can be very comforting.

¹⁸“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, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

I can bet they are hearing this as “He has anointed me to bring good news to us” and “He has sent me to proclaim release to us” to “let us go free.” The whole year of the Lord’s favor thing you will have to sort out in small groups, but it has to do with liberty and freedom and release and they are thinking that is all for them.

But then he does something that causes some trouble:

They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”²³He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”

We have to consider these lines together to get what was going on. “Is not this Joseph’s son?” is actually a statement about community. In this context, it may be a way of saying, “Isn’t he one of us?” So when Jesus says “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’” the “yourself” is more communal, “Doctor cure your family, your people.” And when Jesus says “And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” he is speaking what they are thinking that Jesus ought to take care of his own family and community first.

If you try to back up in Luke’s Gospel to find out what happened in Capernaum, you are going to have a tough time. Luke, in deciding how to order the events of Jesus’ life, puts this story first and leaves us sort of hanging. However, Mark’s Gospel tells this story after some other stories of Jesus’ exploits. In, Luke, we have to jump forward to see what they are talking about. In Capernaum, Jesus heals and casts out demons. Look real quick a little later in chapter four of Luke, starting with verse 38:

³⁸After leaving the synagogue he entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked him about her. ³⁹Then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them.

Back to today’s text.

And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”

Jesus knows what they are thinking, “we are your kin, your hometown, let’s get some of that healing going.” No offense, but think about it. If you all found out that I was heading up to Robstown on Sunday nights and people who were sick or injured were coming and I was laying hands on them and they were getting better, you would say, “Excuse me, why aren’t you doing that here? We have plenty of sick people and hurting people.”

Now, if I weren’t a troublemaker, I would say something in response to make you feel better, like, “Oh sorry, I didn’t know you were interested,” or “The Bishop made me go to Robstown.” But Jesus is trying to make trouble:

²⁴And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. ²⁵But 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; ²⁶yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.

I know to us this sounds more confusing than enraging, but trust me, this is a Jerry Springer moment. If you have a Bible with you, open it to 1 Kings 17 as I remind us of the story of Elijah the Tishbite. What you have to remember was that we can assume that the people in the synagogue that day knew this story very well.

God calls Elijah to tell King Ahab that there will be a drought for three years. God then tells Elijah to go see the widow Zaraephath in the land of Sidon and God miraculously keeps Elijah, the widow, and the widow’s son alive on a handful of flower and a little jar of oil through the whole 3 year drought and famine. At first glance, this is just nice and miraculous, but dig a little deeper and you can see why they might get mad. Sidon is outside of the land of the people of Israel in a territory where people did not worship the one true God but worshipped other Gods. God decided to miraculously keep alive an outsider while many other insiders died. Jesus is not pointing out the miracle, he is pointing out that it happened to outsiders.

In case they missed the jab, he comes in again:

²⁷There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

Now he is telling them how the prophet Elisha heals another outsider, this time a Syrian named Naaman. You can read this story in 2 Kings, chapter 5.

Let me go back to my example. Say I am going and doing miraculous healings in Robstown and you call me on it and in response, I tell you a miraculous story of God healing atheists in Budapest. If you didn’t get confused you would be likely to get aggravated. If I really wanted to make you mad, I would tell you of a miraculous healing of the member of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Perhaps, I wouldn’t. I don’t have the guts, but that is what is going on here.

²⁸When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. ²⁹They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. ³⁰But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Jesus has just turned a quaint moment in his home town into an angry mob. Jesus is a troublemaker.

There are a ton of stories in the gospels of Jesus saying the most contentious things, knowing full well that they are going to really dig deep. He throws out these little troublemaking daggers and if we don’t read carefully we miss them. There is this great little line in Matthew’s gospel, in chapter 8:

¹⁰When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.

It sounds so nice, but you have to notice who he is saying it to.

⁵When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him

A centurion, a guy who worked for the Roman empire, the ones occupying and oppressing the Jewish people, not a favored person for the “insiders” for God’s chosen ones. This is one of the guys they want God to come and get rid of.

⁵When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him ⁶and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress.” ⁷And he said to him, “I will come and cure him.”

Already, the people are annoyed. Jesus needs to be healing them.

⁸The centurion answered, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” ¹⁰When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him,

Get ready, here’s the line again:

“Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.”

This outsider, this pagan, this worshiper of other Gods has more faith than you chosen people. Ouch! And then he keeps going:

¹¹I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven,

In other words, outsiders will inherit the promise of God.

¹²while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

And the chosen ones are in trouble.

¹³And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.” And the servant was healed in that hour.

Now Pastor John spoke a couple of weeks ago about the outsiders and the insiders so I am not going to go too far down that road. The point today is that Jesus was a troublemaker. The same Jesus who brings us so much comfort, who tells us through his death and resurrection that we are all beloved children of God and that there is nothing that we can do that can finally separate us from the love of God, that same Jesus did not and will not let us ever get away with being agents of limiting the grace and power of God.

Jesus causes trouble on a number of subjects but the one argument he keeps engaging over and over is this issue of insider verses outsider. He is hanging out among people who think that God’s grace and power are limited to a certain group of people who are specially selected by God and/or live in such a way as to earn God’s love. Jesus keeps responding to their limitation of God by saying “No, no, no! God’s love is for everybody and if you can’t get that, maybe it is not for you.”

And if we for a moment start thinking, oh those silly Israelites, they just didn’t get it, we are missing Jesus stirring up the same trouble in our hearts, because everyone of us, me included, has a barrier set somewhere that we believe God won’t cross. We love to categorize and something about our humanity needs for someone else to be out for us to be in. Who do we think is beyond God’s love and what trouble might Jesus stir up in our hearts about that?

And if we can’t get at that, nearly all of us have been caught, at least for a moment considering how we, at least deserve some amount of special treatment from God for being faithful, even if that is just a free ticket to heaven. What kind of trouble might Jesus be stirring in our hearts to make us think of not our benefits, but of our calling?

When we find ourselves trying to limit the grace of God or allowing ourselves to feel special because we are the insiders while not taking the time to feel love and compassion for those who don’t attend our church or look like us or seem to worship in the same way, when we find ourselves there and Jesus starts stirring up trouble in our hearts, do we let him or do we try to throw him off the nearest cliff.

If reading the gospels does not stir up trouble in our hearts, if the historical Jesus talking to us in our context today doesn’t cause us to get a little nervous as we consider the limits of our own love and compassion, if it doesn’t cause us to consider where we need to grow, if it doesn’t make us uncomfortable, then we are not paying attention and if we aren’t paying attention, then we are missing the opportunity to live as true children of God.

Jesus was, is and will always be a trouble maker. But this is a good kind of trouble, a trouble that calls us to account and makes us better people.

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