Delivered on 31 January 2010
by Rev Dr John Evans
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
Today in our fast paced gospel reading we hear two well known proverbs or sayings that have entered our common language.
“Doctor heal thyself” or “Physician heal thyself “
The second is
“No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown”
or as it is sometimes translated
“Prophets are not without honour except in their own country”
What do they mean in this context? Are they relevant to our own Christian journey? What can we learn from them?
Jesus very rarely uses proverbs. His usual style is to speak in parables, short stories, or expanded similes like “the kingdom of heaven is like . . . a mustard seed, or whatever”. However, it would seem it was these two proverbs that prompts all the action that happens then in this passage.
The story is familiar. Jesus returns to his hometown in Galilee. He attends the synagogue and, reading from the prophet Isaiah, he effectively announces his mission.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and to release the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
All eyes are focused on him, and as we read last week, he asserts. “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
At this point we usually take the mental leap to the end of the passage we heard today. The home-towners, filled with rage, got up and drove Jesus out of the town, took him to the town hill where they were going to throw him off. We assume they didn’t like his message. This message of freedom for prisoners, sight to the blind and the like was not the program that the good folk of Nazareth wanted to hear, so they wanted to get rid of Jesus.
However, that is not why Jesus almost ended his ministry before he began it. It was because of these two proverbs:
“Doctor heal thyself” and “A prophet is not without honour, except in their own country.”
When Jesus finished his reading from Isaiah, and uttered those famous words – “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”, Luke records, “All spoke well of him, they were amazed at his gracious words”. (vs22) All thought well; not just one or two. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son” they said. Again I think we say was the Galilean equivalent of the tall poppy syndrome. He couldn’t do anything, even though he seems to be quite famous – he is just Joseph’s son. However, if all spoke well of him, it actually could have been a comment made with a sense of pride. This is a local boy made good. Gee, hasn’t Joseph’s boy come a long way.
The problem that lead to the incident at the hill top, and his possible rapid descent was not his Isaiah speech: again it was these two proverbs.
Doctor heal thyself – is perhaps not even a proverb. It is more of a taunt or a slur. A taunt like Jesus received when he was on the cross: “He saved others, himself he cannot save.” OK smarty pants. You have done all of these amazing things in other Galilee villages. Now why can’t you do it for yourself or for us?. Jesus says “Doubtless you will quote to me, “physician heal thyself.” He goes on “(you will say) what we have heard you did at Capernaum do here also in your own country”.
Jesus sums up his people; these people he knows very well. He cuts to chase what they might be thinking. They don’t see his message; they are just thinking of some of the benefits they might receive, or some reflected glory. Their warm approval, is really insincere. They want to see something tangible; a bit of here and now confirmation he has fulfilled this prophecy of Isaiah.
Surely this is the story played out many, many times when someone makes good, and they come from a small intimate context. How about sharing your good fortune with the village and the town. Roger Federer could buy his suburb a new community facility, or Bill Gates share his wealth around his old school or something. We expect it.
At the outset of his ministry Jesus pre-empts this attitude of reflected glory. He squashes it. You my friends are not listening; understanding about this new way of life. Then to rub salt into the rawness he has exposed, he uses two famous healing stories form the scriptures: the widow of Zarephath; and Naaman.
Elijah, in the midst of a particularly cruel drought, miraculously kept this widow alive. The meal in her storage jar was constantly being maintained; and indeed there was a time when the widow’s son seem even seemed to have died, and he was restored to life. And Naaman, at the suggestion of Elisha, bathed in the river Jordan, and was healed of his leprosy. Jesus pointedly emphasises that the persons who weree healed or helped were a widow, the lowliest of the low; and a foreigner to boot and Naaman, also a foreigner; a Syrian, but this time at the top of the social tree.
My dear fellow citizens of Nazareth; you do not have s a privileged place. My message breaks all sorts of boundaries:
Rich, Naaman; poor, the widow; male and female; power insider, gentile.
Jesus, here the prophet, was advocating a new way of understanding our relationship with God, which was inclusive. Jesus knew how his people thought; and he knew they would resent what he might say
About the truth of their lives
Perhaps it was the hollowness of their existence
Their resentment that other places and other people seemed to be favoured and not them
As a prophet he was despised in his own town.
Vaclav Havel, the writer who became the Czech president, writing before that fateful year 1989 when the iron curtain fell, speaks of Solzhenitsyn, the Russian dissident, and his prophetic role in these terms:
“Why was Solzhenitsyn driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he represented a unit of real power, that is, not because any of the regime’s representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion was something else: a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness, which in turn might one day produce political debacles unpredictable in their consequences. And so the system behaved in a characteristic way: it defended the integrity of the world of appearances in order to defend itself. For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out :The emperor is naked!” when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game – everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.’
Jesus surely challenges us that as the bearer of all truth Our lives may appear to have a crust, but really are tissue. We would want to throw a person who exposes this off a cliff too.
Somewhere in the very stuff of life there is truth, ultimate meaning, the love of God for us, the way of Christ. This is what Jesus announced that day. And it challenges us – pushes boundaries – of what our little group might think, or what our dominant culture might do. So if we don’t believe God’s love extends to foreign high official males; I can accept the widow – but not Naaman, or vice versa, we are like the good folk of Nazareth.
If the truth be known we all want to bask in the glow of Jesus; and just have that comfortable life. We perhaps want insider’s privileges, or seek the reassurance that our Christian faith can affirm our prejudices. We too can easily exclude people who are not like us. Unconsciously; perhaps consciously, , we do not see the Christian faith pushing boundaries that might challenge us.
The shock of my week came in reading a fascinating book about the British Empire – remember that. In one section it considered how slavery undergirded much of the financial might of British Empire. The example taken of the blindness to all of this this was the story of John Newton, the slaver, the ship’s captain, who wrote the famous hymn, Amazing Grace. In quoting correspondence of Newton and his various journals, Niall Ferguson makes the point that he continued supporting the slave industry, after his “religious experience” and conversion. . . . contrary to what I have ever been told. Ferguson says – what we find hard to believe is that someone like Newtown was not repelled by slavery. (74)
God’s grace, even God’s amazing grace, just extended to people like me; to Newton’s own little world, and not to the widow of Zarephath or the Syrian Naaman.
Right at the start of Jesus ministry, we have all the elements which we, with hindsight, have understood about his mission. Jesus was almost killed because his hometown were challenged to really see the breadth of this coming kingdom of God. Their resistance, may I suggest, was a clear prefiguring of his later death on the cross: a death because of humanity’s sins; or if you prefer the language of Vaclav Havel’s, because authorities, religious and civil, “sought to defend the world of appearances in order to defend itself.” Jesus had the temerity to break through the crust of pretence, expose their falsehood, and actually offer life!
Doctor heal thyself – we too want that miracle; life without the challenges, the simple life, and want to constrain and control who Jesus is for us.
And as to the prophet not regarded in their own country – we can find our boundaries, structures and patterns comfortable; and even as insider Christians, we can find the message of Jesus difficult. He does challenge us.
For all of this, Jesus eventually died, not at his commencement service at the hands of ordinary folk, but a couple of years later at the hands of high officials. Of course his death was not the end. Life was affirmed. The seeds of hope were sown. Today hold that image of the cross of Christ, or a Nazareth hilltop (for they really are the same) and the last verse of today’s passage, for it too is like, perhaps even the same as Easter morn:
(vs 30) But he walked right through the midst of them and went on his way.
Jesus went on; and we too can go on for he goes on with us.
