Interestingly enough – if you follow a strict lectionary discipline and only read the part of the passage prescribed for each week, we would stop there with Jesus high on a pedestal in his hometown. He’d be riding the crest of the wave – people praising the Lord and admiring this special connection he seems to have with God. We’d have ended there last week without hearing the rest of the story until this week, a whole seven days passing before you get to hear the rest of the story. I think this passage needs to be taken as a whole or else it’s hard to figure out what happened when you get to verses 29 and 30 when the angry mob is ready to throw Jesus off a cliff.

So I wonder, does this hometown crowd actually set Jesus up for failure? Have they expected too much knowing the stories about his birth? Did they want something that no person would be able to give? We’ve heard the scandals ourselves for years about the TV evangelists in the 80’s and the downfalls of Catholic cardinals in the 90’s. We are aware that just last year, mega-church guru Ted Haggard fell from grace with his Colorado congregation. These religious leaders have seemed to put themselves above the law – as though the basic Christian standards of loving God and loving neighbor that apply to us somehow work differently for them. Though Jesus remained pure in integrity, I suspect he, like these other powerful religious leaders, was under some serious pressure to perform. The crowd wanted to see him do miracles as proof of who he said he was. They were put off by the way he applied scripture to himself in a seemingly vain way. But the difference is that Jesus is able to understand more fully than any ordinary human seems to be able to that his popularity or lack thereof is not the main point.

The main point is his constant diligence in teaching and setting an example, that God wants a relationship with human beings, not to show off, but to show us the way. God draws humankind to the divine heart in ways that sometimes feel like comfort and other times feel like judgment.

God sends prophets when the community of faith stops listening, and God has no hesitation in spilling love over to the stranger to shame those who take their relationship with God for granted. Instead of the pedestal crashing down over bad behavior from the leader getting too arrogant, in this case, Jesus kicks out the pedestal himself and leaves the people to stew in their own anger.

The very same hometown crowd that was so happy to see Jesus ends up running him to the edge of town threatening to throw him off a cliff. The switch seems so devious. We’re left scratching our heads, wondering, “What turned this receptive audience into an angry mob? What was in Jesus words that burned in their ears?” And even more so, are we attuned enough to hear what Jesus is saying to us now?

Jesus reminded them of times of former judgment that they had tried to forget. He let them know that they weren’t exempt from God’s rules just because they knew him as God’s Son on a first name basis. He reminded them that at times of turmoil and upheaval, God sent a message of hope, not to Israel, but to those they would have considered strangers and aliens. He dropped serious hints that his miracles were destined fro those in Capernaum and outlying areas, not for the Galilean in-crowd who simply wanted to see a show. We may be able to sense the disappointment. We may be able to acknowledge some of the anger. But a couple thousand years later, can we see how this message of Jesus might be heard by us today?

We need to take pause. What if this church is really a crowd of insiders? What if we are the hometown hesitant who prefer seeing signs to watching for the movement of the Spirit? What if God’s word and healing are sent out to the Warehouse Grill on Saturday night or to Brushy Mountain rather than showing up here on Sunday morning? This is not a comforting word. It’s scary to think that God may bypass the “faithful” and reach out to our enemies and those we’d consider good-for-nothings with the promise of healing and hope.

Would we praise this Jesus? Or would we prefer to run him out of town? We need to rethink how often we are the “church for us” and remember that the church exists only so far as it exists for the “other.” How can we face this judgment honestly and seek a new direction? The disciples perhaps were the only ones who were ever both – both members of the in-crowd and at the same time clueless outsiders, and they were called out to bear witness to both Jesus’ love and Jesus’ judgment.

How do we learn to be more like the disciples – constantly amazed and frequently confused at what Jesus is doing? I’m not sure I have all the answers to that question, but I do know that we need to pay very close attention, like the disciples did, to what God is doing. It will rarely be what we expect. The friends and neighbors Jesus had in Galilee were expecting signs and superpowers from Jesus. They could only imagine what God’s son could do if Moses was given the ability to part the Red Sea. They also wanted God’s chosen one to be on their side. They never would have guessed that he had a word for them that would make them wonder if they really had God’s favor, and they were shocked God might have sent the hometown boy to fulfill much bigger plans. They were feeling small and insignificant on a stage they thought was set for them. So they reacted in anger and frustration.

It isn’t easy to recognize that God may be looking over our shoulder to help someone we never thought of. I don’t think that it’s that God doesn’t like faithful church people who give to the offering, who like Bible studies and good preaching. But God wants us to get it that the message isn’t only for us. Jesus offers his hometown and us a not so subtle reminder that if we get too full of ourselves, God will shower love elsewhere to shock us back into our place. You can’t be a Christian, a true follower of Christ’s way, and think that you have exclusive privileges on God’s favor.

In this day of what a colleague of mine (Joe Coalter) calls “rampant congregationalism” we have to pay attention for exactly what’s going on in this passage, the feeling that we have an in, and everyone else is somehow getting it wrong. Joe says there are three things we must remember to guard against getting too set in our own ways: 1) No congregation can live alone, 2) All are subject to error, and 3) God calls whoever God wills. It’s humbling to be sure, but it’s also really what it takes to be faithful to the boundless love of God’s wide open heart.

Amen.