[Propertalk] PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part 2C

[Joe Parrish]

PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part 2C

PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 (7 of the 70 plus preaching resources available at GoodPreacher.com for this Sunday):

SCRIPTURE & SCREEN: Luke 4:21-30

Some texts shock us, usurping our expectations. Movies that go and do likewise can be a smart match with such texts, including this one.

One of the most shocking and unsettling films is the surrealist, silent, classic short film Un Chien Andalou (1929; dir. Luis Bunuel). This sixteen-minute film opens with the infamous shot of the director slicing open the eye of a woman (Simone Mareuil) with a straight razor. The initial message is lacerating yet blunt: "What you, the viewer, are about to see will assault you, including by overturning your expectations of film." The movie delivers on this threatening promise. With help from the Surrealist painter Salvador Dali, Bunuel presents one bizarre and grotesque scene after another, repeatedly catching the viewer off-guard. The plot-as much as there is one-is of a romance between a man (Pierre Batcheff) and a woman (Simone Mareuil), who appears to be married to someone else (Luis Bunuel). The two engage in a relationship that is sometimes almost unsettlingly erotic, sometimes hostile. Mixed in with this "plot" are strange, phantasmagorical images, such as a hand that has a hole in it from which ants are crawling. One of the most famous images from the film is that of the man dragging behind him the following items, which are attached to him by ropes: two grand pianos, rotting donkey carcasses, the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and two bewildered priests (Salvador Dali and Jaime Miravilles). Even the title, which translates as "An Andalusian Dog," is bizarre in that it appears, at least at first, to have nothing to do with the film.

What does all this mean? Beats me. The movie's meaning is difficult to pinpoint; indeed, the meaning's elusiveness is one of the movie's key themes. Our text from Luke does contain meaning, but it is abrasive and shocking. Jesus chastises his hometown for its rejection of him, thereby helping to fortify the very rejection of which Jesus speaks. Thus, Jesus' message to his fellow Nazarenes almost seems designed to be offensive. In any case, the harsh message is offensive, just as Un Chien Andalou, with its bizarre and grotesque departures from film conventions, is at times offensive, or at least disturbing. Just as Un Chien Andalou slices open the eye of the viewer, so also does Jesus slice open the minds and hearts of the people in his hometown, as well as, to a lesser extent, the hearts and minds of us readers/hearers of the text.

Indeed, challenging societal convention is a salient feature of Jesus' ministry as a whole, and sharply criticizing societal conventions, including Christianity, is a salient feature of Bunuel's films, including Un Chien Andalou. In this film, for instance, Bunuel's image of the man dragging the Ten Commandments and priests with rotting donkey corpses suggests that at least mainstream religion is oppressive, a burden. In his Surrealist 1930 masterpiece L'age D'or (which means The Golden Age), Bunuel intensifies his attack on religion through such images as a bishop being thrown out of a window and, most shocking of all, a scene near the end of the film in which a Christ-figure is associated with a murderous orgy. The movie also intercuts scenes of Paris and Vatican City, showing both as sick with decay. One scene shows buildings collapsing on a Sunday and indicates through an intertitle that such activity is typical for a Sunday.

Bunuel also attacks other aspects of bourgeois Western society, giving special attention to the bourgeois Westerner's inability to have a fulfilling romantic relationship. The film features a man (Gaston Modot) and a woman (Lya Lys) trying repeatedly to have a love affair but butting up against one obstacle after another. For instance, when the two try to be intimate in a garden, the man gets distracted by a statue of Venus. Then he is summoned to deal with a phone call. While he is absent, the woman sucks erotically on the toes of the statue. The two people, especially the man, are inept at having any real relationship. The movie is full of such parodies and critiques, with one of Bunuel's main points being to expose and deride the impotence and hypocrisy of Western, bourgeois society.

Jesus, also, is providing a severe critique of the society in front of him, his hometown. Indeed, his ministry, as we see throughout Luke, challenges religious authority and conventional values. Jesus' words in this text are shocking and lead to a climax and denouement reminiscent of a Surrealist film: The crowd devolves into a mob and tries to throw him off a cliff, but he somehow gets away.

We preachers, then, can offer a new perspective on this passage by highlighting how it resembles these counter-cultural Surrealist films, striving to slice open our expectations with the straight razor-side of the Good News. 

David von Schlichten



"THE SPIRIT OF JESUS" 
Luke 4:14-30

When we read the Bible, we are supposed to find ourselves in the story. So when I read the story of Jesus' sermon in Nazareth, I put myself in the place of the leader of the synagogue who asked Jesus to preach. When pastors choose someone else to preach they are particular about it. For the most part, we want someone who will say things with which we agree­though it is always humbling when someone asks after another preacher's sermon, "Have you ever thought about that?" when you know that you preached on the same subject a week earlier. Pastors who give someone else a turn in the pulpit are never quite sure how to respond when church members say "Don't you wish we could hear preaching like that every Sunday?" Pastors would rather have a good visiting preacher, but if the guest proclaimer turns out to be dull or long-winded, that is not a complete loss either. Maybe we will sound more interesting by comparison.
  
Several people had mentioned that if Jesus came home for a weekend they hoped he would be asked to preach. Everyone was talking about Jesus. He was preaching in synagogues all over Galilee and making quite a name for himself.

The leader of the synagogue thought, "What do I really know about Jesus?" He has no credentials­no degrees, no ordination, but he is clearly intelligent. His speaking gifts are remarkable. He tells compelling stories. He is a clever debater. On the downside, Jesus is a bit dramatic. He eats with non-church people. He staged a protest at the temple, overturning the tables of the moneychangers. Asking Jesus to preach could lead to trouble. He has a tendency to challenge the business community and to criticize religious people. If there had been "spin doctors" in Jesus' day, they would have tried to persuade Jesus to schmooze with the important leaders in order to gain their support, but the career counselors would have quickly given up. Jesus seemed so young and idealistic. Finally the leader of the synagogue figured that if he did not ask Joseph and Mary's boy he would have to explain why he did not to fifty people fifty times, and he could use the week off. So he asked Jesus to preach and put an announcement in the newsletter.

A huge crowd shows up to hear Jesus. After the singing of a Psalm, the quoting of the Shema, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone," the reading of scripture­as many as seven different passages, and the prayers, they hand Jesus the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and Jesus begins to read, "The Spirit of God is upon me to bring good news to the poor, to announce pardon to prisoners and sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free."

The people love this passage. They are the poor, and they need good news. Several of them notice that Jesus does not read the part where Isaiah talks about the day of vengeance on their enemies. That is disappointing. They especially like the part about vengeance.

Then Jesus announces, "This is the day God wants all of this to happen." An older man shouts, "Amen." His wife whispers, "Jesus has such a nice voice." The neighbors are so proud of Jesus. The leader of the synagogue relaxes a little.

At this point, the reasonable thing for Jesus to do is tell them what they want to hear. He should work verse-by-verse, phrase-by-phrase through this passage talking about what it meant to the people to whom Isaiah preached 500 years earlier. He should politely encourage them to care for each other. If Jesus does that, everything will be fine. At lunch, they will talk about what a fine preacher Jesus is.

But Jesus is no politician. He refuses to be the hometown boy offering a feel-good sermon. If Nazareth had hopes for their local boy come home, it seems likely Jesus also had hopes for this visit. These were the people with whom he grew up­his Sunday school teachers, friends who were in the youth group with him. Surely they will hear what he is saying. But Jesus understands that they do not believe the words he read from Isaiah. He knows too well the small compass of his neighbors' understanding, and the way they assume that they are at the center of the world.

There before those who know him best, Jesus suddenly goes on the offensive: "Let me tell you something, no prophet is ever welcome in the prophet's hometown." Then Jesus makes certain that prophecy comes true. "You don't get this. The Spirit of God blows in more places than you've imagined. When Elijah the prophet was in trouble, he didn't go to one of your widows, but to a foreigner­someone you would never invite to dinner, someone you would cross the street to avoid." The sanctuary is silent. "There were a lot of people sick during Elisha's time, some of them lived around here, but Elisha didn't heal any of them­only an enemy who wouldn't be welcome in this synagogue. The Spirit doesn't belong to you. It's God's Spirit. God is for the people you look down on."

When they hear that, the whole congregation blows a gasket. When the invitation hymn is sung, they all come forward, but it is not because the tenth verse of "Just as I Am" finally gets to them. When they realize that Jesus' good news is going to benefit people they don't like, they take Jesus to a cliff and come close to throwing him over the edge. They fail to do it, of course, but not many miles or many months away, after a few more sermons, they succeed.

It is easy to think the people in Nazareth were violent, primitive people, but part of the truth is that they took Jesus' words more seriously than we do. If Jesus preached this sermon today, we would not ignore him, but we might make fun of him at lunch. If we really hear these words we will be offended. Do we want everyone to have a place at the table? Who wants to hear good news for people we do not like?
 
"Good news to the poor" Jesus promised. Do we want all the accumulated inequities wiped out? Do we want our wealth redistributed, for everyone to have equal opportunities when we have more than our share of the money?
 
"Release to the captives"­a few Christian magazines list prison inmates who have asked to receive mail from Christians. Would you write a letter to a prisoner and give him your address? Would you let your daughter?

"Freedom to the oppressed"­there are so many hurting people that it seems foolish to grieve for all of them. How can God expect us to hurt for all the burdened and battered people in the world? There are too many tragedies to feel bad about.

We all have our prejudices. Who is that makes us uncomfortable? Who is not included in our circle of friends? Who does not quite fit in? There are people whom we have difficulty loving. Maybe we look down on members of certain races or maybe our prejudice is reserved for people we think are prejudiced. Maybe we cannot stand being around people who think Fox News is fair and balanced or perhaps it is people who think Keith Olbermann is fair and balanced that bother us most. Maybe it is those who think Arrested Development should never have been cancelled or maybe it is people who think Lebron James is overrated. Maybe we are bothered by anyone who does not think or speak or look enough like us.

Have you heard the word lookism? It is a sociological term that is defined as "the prejudice of judging people by how they look." The word lookism is new, at least it is to me, but the concept is familiar. We constantly decide what we think about other people on the basis of how they look. Maybe the people we look down on are poorly dressed­shoes beyond broken in or maybe it is the ones too perfectly manicured­shoes that are too shiny. Maybe the people we have the most trouble with are the ones who talk too much or the ones who do not talk at all, the in-law we would rather not have, the neighbors to whom we do not speak, the church member we think does not quite belong in our Sunday school class, or the lonely person who wants more of our time than we are willing to give. We all have trouble loving somebody. That is why good news for people we do not like is hard to hear.

In fact it would be impossible to hear Jesus' words as good news were it not for one thing. When Luke tells this story he begins by saying "Jesus was filled with the Spirit." The first words Jesus reads are "the Spirit of God is upon me." The key to understanding the compassion of Christ is recognizing that Jesus lived in the Spirit of God.

The Spirit led Jesus to see that every life is sacred. The poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed matter to God, because beaten, bruised, broken lives are no less holy than any other lives. Jesus recognized that the presence of God is here for all of us. The Spirit is all around us.

Jesus was merciful because Jesus was open to the Spirit of mercy. Jesus was loving, because he was open to the Spirit of love. Jesus was hopeful, because he was open to the Spirit of hope. Jesus had eyes open enough to see the heavens part at his baptism and the Spirit descending like a dove. Jesus was open enough to address God as Abba, the Aramaic word that toddlers use for their fathers, "daddy" or "papa." Why would a first century Jewish person, used to formal ways of addressing God, talk to God in such an informal way? Jesus experienced the closeness of the Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being.

Jesus' openness to God's Spirit got him into trouble by leading him to love. Jesus' life was a response to the Spirit's call for compassion for the hurting. It is interesting to note that at the service in which Jesus preached in Nazareth, there were no Gentiles present. As far as I know, there is not one of us here today who would have been allowed in that worship service. We are the outsiders Jesus wanted to include­poor, blind captives that we are. The Spirit teaches us that the good news Jesus shares with others is the good news Jesus offers us.

Christ can invite us to love the unlovable only because we can live in the same Spirit Jesus knew. The Christian life moves beyond the impossible task of trying to love people we do not like to the joyous hope of living in the Spirit. Jesus' message to us is not primarily about avoiding bad things or doing good things. Jesus' word is that we can live in the Spirit in which Jesus lived. Trying to follow Jesus' example is so overwhelming that it leads to frustration, but knowing the presence of God that Jesus knew leads to life.

The Spirit is quietly acting in our lives right now. Faith is hearing the Spirit speak in the ordinary circumstances of our days, recognizing that we are never far from God. The difference between moments of grace and moments of feeling lost is that at times we are open to the Spirit and at other times we are completely closed off from anything beyond what we understand. We have the capacity to see the extraordinary in the ordinary and to acknowledge the presence of the Spirit, but we are also capable of completely missing God's presence.

The Spirit leads from anxiety to trust, from the bondage of self-preoccupation to the freedom of self-forgetfulness, from our attempts to be good enough to the celebration of the Spirit.

The invitation I heard when I was a child was to believe in Jesus. I took that to mean believing what the Bible and the church says about Jesus and trying to do the things Jesus did. Now I understand that believing is more than that. Believing is giving ourselves to the Spirit Christ knew, to the God who is Spirit.

Brett Younger
McAfee School of Theology
Atlanta, GA

SERMON REVIEWS: Luke 4:21-30

Robert F. Browning quotes a Flannnery O'Conner short story entitled "Revelation," about Ruby Turpin, a woman with an attitude. Sitting in a doctor's waiting room, she judged everyone around her, including a very poor and unkempt teenager named Mary Grace. Ruby wondered aloud about the girl's looks and manners until Mary Grace could stand it no longer and hurled the book she was reading, hitting Ruby in the head causing her to fall to the floor. "Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog!" Mary Grace called out to her. This violent action awoke Ruby's better self and in that moment began an attitude adjustment.

"In the synagogue that day, Jesus threw the book, or should I say scroll, at his childhood neighbors and friends." Jesus declared that he was the fulfillment of the Isaiah prophecy. He then spoke of Elijah and Elisha as people of God who eventually bypassed the Jews and ministered instead to Gentiles. Through them, God became more loving and inclusive than God's listeners had ever considered being. Jesus believed it was time that these listeners changed to "reflect God's heart." This made the listeners furious and anxious to kill Jesus.

Browning asks whether Jesus was surprised by or expecting this reaction. Most likely Jesus was trying to open their minds and hearts "to new ways of thinking, "seeking to help them build bridges and not barriers." This approach was incomprehensible to them. They became extremely agitated.

Has the gospel ever offended us? We cannot sit idly by. The gospel demands change in our "beliefs, attitudes, values, priorities, relationships and behavior" and calls us to move beyond our own well-being and desires. Gospel compassion presses us to consider the starving widow and the sickly outsider. The gospel is a bridge building word urging us to move away from our comfort zones and into the arms and hearts of folks worse off than ourselves. Jesus encourages his listeners "to declare hope instead of condemnation, to promote freedom in place of slavery and to heal wounds rather than inflict them." He challenged them to become trendsetters, "courageous, humble and inclusive," even confrontational when necessary.

Browning illustrates this with President Jimmy Carter's 1978 Camp David talks when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat refused to negotiate a second longer. His bags were packed, and he had called for a driver. Carter went immediately into a nearby room and prayed, asking God for wisdom and guidance. Then he assertively asked Sadat not to leave. If he left, he would betray his own people and betray Carter's friendship as well. With tears in his eyes, Carter shared that Sadat walked off for a few moments and then came back informing Carter that he was staying. A peace agreement followed.

"Sometimes the gospel is assertive and offensive" throwing a book in our face. "It's called tough love."1

Father John Dear emphasizes the audience's hostility as they cry out against Jesus' criticism. Bringing the passage into our century, Jesus would be saying that we Americans think we are holy, and God should consistently bless us. Instead, God is not paying any attention to us for God is helping a widow in Baghdad whose families were killed by our fire, and a child in Afghanistan killed by our military, and a family in Palestine who lost their home due to American military aid to Israel. Dear believes we too would have been hostile hearing Jesus speak openly and frankly to us with such advice. In our day, Jesus, would be trying to shock us into a new awareness, which should lead us to humbly accept his judgments, leading us to repentance and obedience. "We need Jesus to tell us the truth, to call us to justice and liberation, [and] to summon us to his way of loving nonviolence."2

Russell Campbell stresses Jesus' prophetic role of calling people into accountability and away from their selfishness and faithlessness. Jesus' integrity moved him to call the people of Nazareth to become servants of light. Instead, their narrowness led them to miss a great opportunity "to participate in a new future." The listeners were only "willing to settle for a God just small enough to meet [their] own needs." Likewise, we too, are often so preoccupied with our perception of mission that we become "limited to maintenance rather than mission." We become so enamored with security that we fail to move forward in the power of the Holy Spirit to places and callings that leave our comfort zones behind.3

Christopher Davis Carlisle 

Notes
1. Dr. Robert F. Browning, "Can the Gospel be Offensive?" January 28, 2007.
2. Father John Dear, "A Prophet Is Not Welcome," February 1, 2004,.
3. Rev. Russell Campbell, Luke 4:21-30,"Me Too!," January 28, 2007.
SCRIPTURE & SCREEN: Luke 4:21-30

Some texts shock us, usurping our expectations. Movies that go and do likewise can be a smart match with such texts, including this one.

One of the most shocking and unsettling films is the surrealist, silent, classic short film Un Chien Andalou (1929; dir. Luis Bunuel). This sixteen-minute film opens with the infamous shot of the director slicing open the eye of a woman (Simone Mareuil) with a straight razor. The initial message is lacerating yet blunt: "What you, the viewer, are about to see will assault you, including by overturning your expectations of film." The movie delivers on this threatening promise. With help from the Surrealist painter Salvador Dali, Bunuel presents one bizarre and grotesque scene after another, repeatedly catching the viewer off-guard. The plot-as much as there is one-is of a romance between a man (Pierre Batcheff) and a woman (Simone Mareuil), who appears to be married to someone else (Luis Bunuel). The two engage in a relationship that is sometimes almost unsettlingly erotic, sometimes hostile. Mixed in with this "plot" are strange, phantasmagorical images, such as a hand that has a hole in it from which ants are crawling. One of the most famous images from the film is that of the man dragging behind him the following items, which are attached to him by ropes: two grand pianos, rotting donkey carcasses, the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and two bewildered priests (Salvador Dali and Jaime Miravilles). Even the title, which translates as "An Andalusian Dog," is bizarre in that it appears, at least at first, to have nothing to do with the film.

What does all this mean? Beats me. The movie's meaning is difficult to pinpoint; indeed, the meaning's elusiveness is one of the movie's key themes. Our text from Luke does contain meaning, but it is abrasive and shocking. Jesus chastises his hometown for its rejection of him, thereby helping to fortify the very rejection of which Jesus speaks. Thus, Jesus' message to his fellow Nazarenes almost seems designed to be offensive. In any case, the harsh message is offensive, just as Un Chien Andalou, with its bizarre and grotesque departures from film conventions, is at times offensive, or at least disturbing. Just as Un Chien Andalou slices open the eye of the viewer, so also does Jesus slice open the minds and hearts of the people in his hometown, as well as, to a lesser extent, the hearts and minds of us readers/hearers of the text.

Indeed, challenging societal convention is a salient feature of Jesus' ministry as a whole, and sharply criticizing societal conventions, including Christianity, is a salient feature of Bunuel's films, including Un Chien Andalou. In this film, for instance, Bunuel's image of the man dragging the Ten Commandments and priests with rotting donkey corpses suggests that at least mainstream religion is oppressive, a burden. In his Surrealist 1930 masterpiece L'age D'or (which means The Golden Age), Bunuel intensifies his attack on religion through such images as a bishop being thrown out of a window and, most shocking of all, a scene near the end of the film in which a Christ-figure is associated with a murderous orgy. The movie also intercuts scenes of Paris and Vatican City, showing both as sick with decay. One scene shows buildings collapsing on a Sunday and indicates through an intertitle that such activity is typical for a Sunday.

Bunuel also attacks other aspects of bourgeois Western society, giving special attention to the bourgeois Westerner's inability to have a fulfilling romantic relationship. The film features a man (Gaston Modot) and a woman (Lya Lys) trying repeatedly to have a love affair but butting up against one obstacle after another. For instance, when the two try to be intimate in a garden, the man gets distracted by a statue of Venus. Then he is summoned to deal with a phone call. While he is absent, the woman sucks erotically on the toes of the statue. The two people, especially the man, are inept at having any real relationship. The movie is full of such parodies and critiques, with one of Bunuel's main points being to expose and deride the impotence and hypocrisy of Western, bourgeois society.

Jesus, also, is providing a severe critique of the society in front of him, his hometown. Indeed, his ministry, as we see throughout Luke, challenges religious authority and conventional values. Jesus' words in this text are shocking and lead to a climax and denouement reminiscent of a Surrealist film: The crowd devolves into a mob and tries to throw him off a cliff, but he somehow gets away.

We preachers, then, can offer a new perspective on this passage by highlighting how it resembles these counter-cultural Surrealist films, striving to slice open our expectations with the straight razor-side of the Good News. 

David von Schlichten



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