People don’t like Change
Introduction
We all know the old adage “Familiarity breeds contempt” - a saying that goes back as far as Publius the Syrian, in 2 BC.
And as we see in our Gospel reading this morning, this happened to Jesus when he went back to his hometown of Nazareth.
I didn’t grow up with anyone who went on to be famous. Though I missed being a contemporary of the rock group "Genesis" at Charterhouse by one term.
But I wonder how I would have responded if one of my friends had gone on to become famous
You could imagine the Nazareth Times that Sunday:
The front-page story: “Local Boy Makes Good” – followed by a report on the miracles that Jesus had been performing.
So WHY was there a problem when Jesus came to Nazareth.
After all he preached a short sermon.
Look how Luke records Jesus going to the Synagogue when he got home::
….on the Sabbath day Jesus went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour."
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, 1and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."(Lk 4:16-21)
Jesus preached eight words of sermon and finished. And St Luke records:
"All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips." (Lk 4:22)
Perhaps that’s the length of sermon I need to preach if I want to be popular!
So what was in Jesus’ teaching that generated so much heat?
It wasn’t his eight word sermon:
"TODAY is the Scripture fulfilled." (Luke 4:21)
though paradoxically you might have thought it was.
Jesus was tapping into the mood of the day.
The passage that Jesus had just been reading - was a well-known Messianic passage - from the book of Isaiah - Isaiah 61:1-2.
Let me remind you of the background:
The Jews were second class citizens in their own country.
They were longing for a Messiah – God anointed one – in the mould of Judas Maccabees - who would deliver them from the oppression of the Romans.
Judas Maccabees had, you may recall had, in 166 BC delivered the Jews from the yoke of a foreign power - Antiochus IV, a particularly despicable Syrian monarch.
So anyone who promised the Jews that they were going to have a deliverer was going to have a receptive audience
So what went wrong - why did the Nazarenes reject Jesus?
We get the clue in the next section of the reading, where Jesus goes on to explain the fulfilment of this prophecy in Isaiah:
"I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian." (Lk 4:25-27)
Here Jesus refers to a time, about 800 to 900 years earlier during the divided kingdom of Judah and Israel where the spiritual life of the Jewish nation was at its lowest ebb.
This was a time in which God raised up two important prophets Elijah (and we see him later in the Gospel accounts of the Transfiguration) and Elisha his successor.
False Gods were worshipped along with the God of Israel – and indeed often instead of the God of Israel.
And it was during that time that God refused to intervene in the lives of the Jews but sovereignly intervened in the lives of two Gentiles.
Here Jesus introduced change into the story.
The Good News that the Jews wanted to hear was not the Good News Jesus brought.
What was galling was that Jesus was attacking one of the most important tenets of Judaism –
that of the Jews being a special people to God.
Jesus in contrast was heralding a new age where Jew and Gentile were going to have equal access to being special
And then the mood of the crowd changes :
Who did this upstart think he was – preaching change.
But actually all Jesus had done was to point out an obvious and simple truth from their own Scriptures - the Old Testament. The record was there. But his application of the text was revolutionary
The new era that the Nazarene Jews thought they were welcoming when they spoke so well of Jesus was in fact one of change
In a way it is a paradox.
We have an unchanging God who introduces change.
Yet if we really trust God, we can be secure in that apparent paradox of the unchanging God bringing change to our lives.
And another paradox is that it is often the very people who worship God who resist the change that God introduces in their lives most!
St Paul captures the thinking of the Jews in Nazareth that day very well at the end of Romans 2.
And he makes his own comment on Judaism from his Christian perspective. I think it bear repeating:
"Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonour God by breaking the law? As it is written: "God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."
Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. If those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.
A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God. (Rom 2:17-29)
Jesus was bringing in change and they didn’t like it. No one likes change. It was a change to their way of thinking
And Jesus still does that today
Let us be open to allow him to bring change into
i) the way we think,
ii) into the way we live our lives and
iii) into the way we worship God.
Let us ask God to give us the compassionate heart of Jesus for the lost – for those outside the Kingdom of God so that we will be willing to go out of our comfort zone – to promote the Kingdom of God for Jesus’s sake and in his Name.
