Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Truth to Power
Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (First Corinthians 13:1-13/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Luke 4:21-30/NRSVUE)
I’m not naive enough to believe that you’ll agree with or appreciate or like everything I have to say, but can you at least promise me that, when you don’t, you won’t drive me out of town and try to hurl me off a cliff? After learning about what those folks in Nazareth tried to do to Jesus, I’m understandably concerned.
What we just heard was the second half of a story that began in last week’s gospel text, so let’s revisit the first half — like when you watch part two of one of those “To Be Continued” shows on TV and they start off by replaying important scenes from part one.
“Previously, in Luke’s Gospel”: Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to his hometown of Nazareth in Galilee and spoke in the synagogue there. He got up, grabbed a copy of the book of Isaiah, read a couple of verses, dropped the mike (metaphorically, because they didn’t have microphones back then), and sat down.
The people were impressed (Luke says that “the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him), which makes sense — I mean, it was Jesus talking, and those words of Isaiah about bringing good news to the poor and releasing the captives and enabling the blind to see and letting the oppressed go free are pretty compelling — especially for the first-century Jews in Jesus’s audience here. Last week’s reading ended with Jesus telling the worshipping crowd, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” though I doubt they really understood what he meant. And today’s reading begins with that same verse.
At this point, the people are really digging what Jesus is putting out there: as Luke tells us, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth” (even though they seem kind of surprised that poor Joseph’s kid could manage to speak so well of such lofty things). But then things take a bit of a turn.
Jesus knows that he’s going to tick them off with what’s coming next, and he preps them for it by saying, “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown;” he’s basically telling them, “I know you’ve liked what I’ve had to say up to now, but you’re gonna feel differently in a minute.” And then he lets them have it.
All of this talk about these prophets of old, Elijah and Elisha, and the people they were sent by God to help might not sound like much to us today, but it would have been a big deal to Jesus’s listeners. You see, when they heard Jesus talk about Elijah helping that starving widow in Sidon and about Elisha curing Naaman the Syrian, what they heard was Jesus saying, “God may love and care about you, but God loves and cares about the foreigner and the stranger and the person you don’t like too.”
And this simple idea — one that really shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone sitting in the synagogue that day because it appears throughout the Hebrew scriptures — was what sent the people in the crowd in the into a rage, what led them to drive Jesus out of town, what caused them to want to throw Jesus off a cliff.
They went to worship that day and didn’t exactly get what they bargained for; they wanted to hear what they wanted to hear (that God is looking out for them), but they ended up hearing what they needed to hear (that God is looking out for everyone else too). And people can often react negatively when they hear what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear.
Which brings me to the sermon — and by that I mean the sermon; you know, the one that everyone’s been talking about for a couple of weeks now; the one delivered by the Right Reverend Marian Edgar Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington DC, at the National Prayer Service that took place the day after the presidential inauguration.
Bishop Budde’s sermon is about fifteen minutes long (and it is definitely worth listening to in its entirety), but most of the focus in the public discourse has been on just the final two and a half minutes of it. In that segment, she looks the president in the eye and addresses him directly, asking that he show “mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now” the transgender children who fear for their lives; the immigrants who fear that their families will be separated, or that they will be returned to the countries they fled in order to escape war or persecution.
The bishop’s sermon was a master class on speaking truth to power, on telling people what they needed to hear instead of what they wanted to hear. She had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in that context — on that day in that place — to deliver that message to an audience that didn’t want to hear it (but needed to hear it); and seizing that opportunity took a lot of courage. And, since I think that I know this congregation reasonably well, I think it’s fair to say that most of you would agree with me about all of that.
Unsurprisingly, though, in our current age of discord and divisiveness — even among those who purport to follow Christ — there’s a whole lot of people out there who felt differently, and weren’t shy about saying so. Some of them were calling for Bishop Budde to be fired or even deported; heck, some would probably hurl her off a cliff, like the people of Nazareth wanted to do Jesus, if they had the chance to do so.
These vitriolic reactions are pretty insane for any number of reasons — including, but not limited to, this rather obvious one: not one thing she said actually contradicts the teachings of Jesus. And if you show up at a Christian church to hear a sermon preached by an Episcopal bishop, then you probably should expect that to be the case.
I also think it’s fair to say that no small number of you have been wishing that I would get up in this pulpit and say to you the same kind of things that Bishop Budde said to the president, that I would share words like the ones she preached in those last two and a half minutes at the National Cathedral. But I’m not going to do that — and not because I disagreed with a single thing she said (which I didn’t), but because I don’t believe you actually need to hear it (even though you might want to).
Do I really need to remind you — in this Open and Affirming, Creation Justice-covenanting congregation of the United Church of Christ with it’s long history of advocacy for those whom society has marginalized — of the gospel imperative to show mercy and love and compassion? I mean, really? That would be the dictionary definition of “preaching to the choir,” and I respect you all way too much to do that.
I would invite you, however, to listen to Bishop Budde’s sermon in its entirety, if you haven’t already done so. I say this because if all you’ve seen is the final two and half minutes, you might not know that it’s core message was the importance of unity — the lack of which in our country, she fears, could destroy our country. Drawing from the texts that are sacred to Christians, she posits three foundations that are necessary for unity to be made real in our place and time.
First, is honoring the inherent dignity of every human being. As she explains it, “In public discourse, honoring each other’s dignity means refusing to mock, discount, or demonize those with whom we differ, choosing instead to respectfully debate across our differences, and whenever possible, to seek common ground. If common ground is not possible, dignity demands that we remain true to our convictions without contempt for those who hold convictions of their own.”
Second, “is honesty in both private conversation and public discourse.”
And third, is humility. As she says, “We all need [humility], because we are all fallible human beings. We make mistakes. We say and do things that we regret. We have our blind spots and biases, and we are perhaps the most dangerous to ourselves and others when we are persuaded, without a doubt, that we are absolutely right and someone else is absolutely wrong. Because then we are just a few steps away from labeling ourselves as the good people, versus the bad people.”
To say her words are challenging is an understatement. Indeed, they are every bit as challenging as the ones she’d later send the president’s way.
And now we’ve reached the part of today’s reflection after which you may want to run me out of town or hurl me off a cliff (though I encourage you to resist that temptation). And so, in the tradition of preachers challenging (rather than pleasing) the congregation that’s in front of them — like Jesus did in Nazareth two thousand years ago, and like Bishop Budde did in Washington a couple of weeks ago — I want to leave you with some questions to ponder:
As we seek to remain true to our convictions (you know, that whole embodying God’s extravagant love thing that we’ve covenanted with God and one another to do), how much contempt do we have for those who hold different convictions?
Who do we, in the righteousness of our convictions, see as being absolutely wrong, as being the bad people?
Before you answer, remember precondition number two for unity— you know, the one about honesty.
How much contempt do we have have for people who hold different convictions? Who do we see as being absolutely wrong? Who do we see as bad people?
We don’t have to agree with them, we don’t have to like them, we don’t have to accept the awful things they often believe and say and do, we don’t have to stop speaking out and working against those awful things. But, make no mistake about it, God wants us to love them and show mercy to them — yes, even when they don’t seem terribly inclined to show love and mercy themselves.
Look, I get it – this is probably not what you want to hear — if I’m being totally honest with you, I don’t want to hear it either. Some people are just really hard to love; and I confess before all of you and God that I often fail miserably at it. But there no doubt whatsoever that it’s what God is calling us to do.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus, knowing that his time with his disciples is short, teaches them about what they’re supposed to do after he’s gone — they’re to “love one another.”
Jesus doesn’t say, “Love one another, but when that’s tough to do just hate one another instead;”
he doesn’t say, “Love one another unless someone does or says things you believe are wrong, in which case you don’t have to love them;”
he says, “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.”
And if you have an issue with any of this, rather than running me out of town or hurling me off a cliff, maybe you should go watch all of Bishop Budde’s sermon, read the Gospels and have a word with God instead.