The Shepherd’s Voice

Readings for Sunday, January 31^st
Jer 1:4-10
Ps 71:1-6
1 Cor 13:1-13
Lk 4:21-30

God Is Faithful, Why Aren’t We? from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on Vimeo.
Download The Shepherd’s Voice – Sermon Video (.m4v)

Last week we heard about the Spirit of the Lord being with Jesus. Isaiah said it; Jesus read it – when the spirit of the Lord is upon us we respond with love to those around us. We preach good news to the poor, we proclaim release to captives, we help the blind receive their sight, and proclaim the acceptable day of our Lord.

This is really stewardship; this is what we do after we say I believe. This is all part of God’s master plan to reclaim the world from sin, death, and the power of evil.

Today, we are going to talk about God’s faithfulness in contrast to our feeble attempts at being faithful. We need to understand God’s plan for this world. We need to reflect a little on God’s greatness, God’s glory, God’s goodness, and finally God’s grace.

When Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” What exactly did he mean?

First, let me say, this strong statement undoes the deists thinking that God created this world and left it to fend for itself, without further intervention or miracle. God sent Jesus into the world to continue God’s plan for humanity, but how do we know Jesus is the real thing?

The United States Secret Service, who are responsible for guarding the integrity of our nation’s currency, have a time-tested way of training its agents to recognize counterfeit bills. There are many tricks of the counterfeit-hunter’s trade, but what they all come down to is this: the Secret Service trains its agents not by teaching them how to look for counterfeits, but by teaching them how to look for the real thing. Agents who have become thoroughly familiar with every characteristic of a genuine bill have little problem spotting a counterfeit.

I know Jesus and Jesus is the real thing, his words indicate it, history supports it, and his behavior, as described by witnesses, shows he is NOT a counterfeit, not a pretender.

The people in the synagogue were surprised and amazed at the gracious words that came out of his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” Sometimes we are surprised by joy in our own lives, by noting what God has done for us, how God’s grace pours over us like melted butter on toast.

Jo-Ann earlier expounded upon ‘Blessed to be a blessing.’ When we are open to God’s greatness, God’s goodness, God’s glory and God’s grace we begin to understand God’s grand plan for humanity.

I’m not sure the people in Jesus hometown of Nazareth understood this. Jesus indicates they may be myopic in how they understand God’s plan. They have no view of the long term. They seem to be asking for miracles, like he did in Capernaum, but Jesus wants none of it. Jesus wants them to accept him without the glitz and glamor of the miracles.

Jesus says “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” He then goes on to tell them about healings that were done to Gentiles, non-Jews and all of a sudden the crowd becomes irritated. This statement is kind of a slap in the face to these folks.

Jesus is telling them that divine grace may be withheld from them and yet given to gentiles, non-Jews as it was told in earlier Old Testament scripture.

Remember, from the beginning when God promised to make of Abraham a great nation, the covenant was between God and the Israelite people. When God was faithful in giving Abraham a son, when God delivered his people for oppression in Egypt, when God brought the people of Israel out of the wilderness into the Promised Land it was all about a promise, a covenant between God and the Jews.

How could this hometown boy all of a sudden be talking about grace for gentiles, non-Jews? This infuriated the hometown crowd. This was not what they understood about the covenant, the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Many of us as Christians, also get our hackles up when we are told God is selective. God predestines certain people to curry God’s favor. These are statements that are very very politically incorrect today, and yet scripture supports this idea. Our text today says the same thing and this hometown crowd, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.

Unfortunately, this sentiment goes all the way back to creation for many people. The universe, the world was nothing but chaos, the earth was formless and void and God said, “Let there be light.” God saw the light was good and God separated the light from darkness and it was evening and morning of the first day.

This act of creation, ‘bara’ continued and on the sixth day God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. And then God blessed them. God blessed them to have dominion over all the earth.

But as human beings, wanting to be like God, we were not satisfied. We had to eat from the tree of knowledge and even though God blessed us, we disobeyed. We fell short.

In our gospel text today Jesus is repeating the same idea. God had blessed the Jewish people to become a great nation. God was with them through the wilderness, brought them into the ‘Promised Land’ and they turned their back on God. Jesus said health, wholeness, and blessing came to the ‘widow at Zarephath in Sidon’ and ‘Naaman the Syrian.’ God was faithful and they were not and all in the synagogue were filled with rage
Life is NOT fair. Isn’t that what we all say, life is not fair. God blessed us and created us to be a blessing, but we often do not carry out God’s plan for this world. It’s by God’s grace and Christ’s love that we are to become God’s hands to the world, but we fail because of our own selfishness desires, our conceit, our pride, and envy.

Some of us think that we must be wealthy to be a blessing to others, however, I say the problem with affluence, is not that there is anything wrong with prosperity itself, but that material abundance often leads to amnesia.

Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Of course he was talking to the people in the synagogue, the home town crowd who had a hard time believing him, but that doesn’t water down the message to us today.

The Bible over and over again insists that Jesus is how God put things in order. This is part of his original plan of creation. Paul said this is how God holds all things together. (Col 1:17, Rom 8:28) Clearly, Jesus is in some mysterious way behind it all.

Rob Bell in his book ‘Velvet Elvis’ (p83) says Jesus is the arrangement. Jesus is the design. Jesus is the intelligence. For us as Christians, Jesus’ teachings are not followed because they are a nice way to live a moral life. They are followed because they are the best possible insight into how the world really works. They teach us how things are!

I’m not a Christian because I think Christianity is the best religion. I follow Jesus because he leads me into ultimate reality. Jesus helps us stay in tune with God’s kingdom, God’s ultimate reality.

You know when someone around you sings off key, out of tune it’s like fingernails on a chalk board. Ok, I guess that’s really dating me. It’s like having a broken speaker on headphones or an iPod or your home stereo. It’s hard to listen to, hard to take.

When we are out of tune with Jesus, with God’s planned order in this world, it’s like being irregular. Some of us, as we get older know life is not fun when we struggle with normal bodily functions. Being irregular in our spiritual life gives us that same uncomfortable feeling.

In order to become regular again we need to be spiritually disciplined as I mentioned last week. Coming to church, being a blessing to others, supporting God’s kingdom with time, talent and treasure is one way of understanding Jesus is the fulfillment of scripture.

Many of us come here for many different reasons. President Franklin Roosevelt often worshiped at a Washington church. One day the rector at that church got phone call. “Tell me,” the voice said eagerly, “Do you expect the President to be in church this Sunday?” Patiently the rector said, “I can’t promise that the President will be here this Sunday. But we expect God to be here.” – Mosley

God is faithful, why aren’t we? When you expect God to be here he is here! We can sight many reasons why we come or don’t come to church. The bottom line has to do with what God is doing in our hearts and lives. If we don’t understand God’s call on our lives, if we don’t believe God brings order to this world in the form of Jesus, our lives will be without meaning, formless and void.

God knew this, God created a plan for each of us, but we must be willing to respond positively to God’s plan for salvation. Having no plan is planning to fail. Not responding is saying NO!

God created us and said it was good. God blessed us so we might be a blessing to others. It’s all a matter of faith, faith in God, faith in Jesus Christ, faith in the plan of resurrection for each of us so that we might have new life now and forever.

Amen

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