Excusing Ourselves
from the Table
Chicago pastor Matt Fitzgerald shares quite vulnerably a story from early in his pastoral ministry, when he had the extraordinary opportunity to visit with a death-row inmate, who had been convicted of killing a teenage girl. The man had been awaiting his execution for twenty-one years at the time that Matt met with him. Needless to say, he had had plenty of time to think. To pray.
Seated at a table, his wrists chained together, the prisoner spoke to Matt about how his life had changed the last twenty-one years. “The gospel requires us not simply to be sorry,” he said, “but to be transformed by our sorrow. For me, this is a daily transformation.” He continued, “I will never forget my crime. But there has to come a point where you receive forgiveness and then forgive yourself. Not to justify your actions, but to accept God’s love….It does not matter where you are. It is who you are that matters. I am a person loved and forgiven by God.” Then he lifted his hand and shook his chains dismissively, as though they were false. Not true. As though they were pointless and had no hold on him.
Matt jumped back from the table, unable to stomach what he was hearing. It was the gospel, sure enough, the same gospel he preached on Sundays, but from a man who had committed a most monstrous crime. This man, Matt explains, “[was] claim[ing] the love of God as his own. He claimed that Jesus had already set him free. I could not stand it.” As far as Matt was concerned at the time, the man sitting at the table was a monster. That God’s love could heal him and reveal his true self to be a gentle child of God—that simply did not compute. Matt left shortly after that exchange, unable to remain at the same table, unable to see Christ in the man across the table.
Reversals
The gospel of Luke revels in reversals. The lowly lifted up. The outsiders welcomed in. These reversals and more come to typify the kingdom of God.
Consider a few of the parables that are unique to Luke, that only Luke tells. There is the parable of the rich man and his poor neighbor Lazarus, where the lowly Lazarus is lifted up by the angels and comforted, but the rich man suffers in his own alienation. There is the parable of the good Samaritan, where we find an outsider acting compassionately and receiving Jesus’ commendation while all the insiders think only of themselves. There is the parable of the tax collector and Pharisee, where the tax collector receives God’s mercy but the Pharisee receives only his own flimsy self-justification.
Today’s scripture, which presents us with Jesus’ first recorded sermon (so to speak), is filled with reversals that characterize Luke. To begin, we have Jesus reading Isaiah’s prophecy of “good news to the poor” and “release to the captives” (Luke 4:18-19; cf. Isa 61:1-2). In other words, we have Jesus lifting up the lowly. And as far as his hometown audience is concerned, so far, so good. They are all “amazed at [his] gracious words,” says Luke (4:20). The lifting up of the lowly does not really offend his audience. Most people can get on board with an idea like that, at least in the abstract. It’s a little like saying, wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had the food they need, the clothing, the shelter?
The Insiders Find
Themselves Outside
It's what comes next that gets Jesus into hot water. And he had to know it was coming. In response to their awe and acclamation, he pivots hard and tells two stories from the scriptures of the time (our “Old Testament”) about how God provided food for a starving Sidonian widow and healed an enemy commander from Syria of his leprosy. Perhaps these stories of God’s grace would have been tolerable if Jesus had left them without any of his own commentary. But he doesn’t. He adds his own spin to the stories by pointing out that, at the time of the stories, there were plenty of hungry widows in Israel. But God’s grace went specifically to a foreign widow. And there were plenty of lepers in Israel. But God’s grace went specifically to a foreign army general. In other words, Jesus emphasizes the extensive reach of God’s grace. It’s not just for “us,” he implies, it’s for “them.” In fact, it’s so wide and inclusive, that it even threatens our distinctions of “us” and “them.”
If you think about it, the dynamic here is like how almost everyone agrees that love is a good thing. But the unspoken assumption is that love is reserved for good or deserving people. Talk to someone in the middle of a nasty divorce, or a nation at war, or a minority people oppressed by the prevailing culture, and “love” is likely not considered a good or even viable action plan. The mere mention of it might be enough to fill the person or people with rage.
Certainly it fills the synagogue with rage (cf. 4:28). The old prophet Simeon had foreseen that Jesus would be “destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and … a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed” (2:34-35). Well, that’s what we see here, as Jesus’ fellow Israelites fall hard against the mention of God’s mercy and find themselves standing opposed to it.
Which suggests that, in the scheme of the gospel, when the so-called insiders find themselves on the outside, it’s not because God has removed them there forcibly. They’re standing on the outside of their own free will—simply because they’re not able to tolerate the mercy of God.
“Come home!”
If one of the main themes of Luke is the reversals of God’s kingdom, another theme is the homecoming of God’s kingdom. Last week, we heard John the Baptizer introduced with a snippet of Isaiah, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’” (3:4; cf. Isa 40:3). When Isaiah first proclaimed these words, the people of Israel were living in exile. The good news that Isaiah was delivering was that God and God’s people would be going home. All four gospels introduce John the Baptizer with this prophecy from Isaiah, which suggests that John the Baptizer is proclaiming this same homecoming. Only this time, it’s not from one place to another place (Babylon to Judea), but from one way of living (the world) to God’s way of living (the kingdom). “Come home!” John calls.
In today’s scripture, Jesus continues the theme, as the scripture that he reads in the synagogue—also from Isaiah!—refers to “the year of the Lord’s favor” (4:19). Which is the Jubilee year, an almost mythical time legislated in Leviticus (but in all likelihood rarely if ever fulfilled in practice) when all land returns to its original owners and debts are cancelled and slaves are freed. In other words, the Jubilee year is a year of homecoming. If you had lost your land, or even lost your freedom, the Jubilee year is when you returned home. Like John, Jesus is proclaiming, “Come home!”
Welcoming Others Home
The paradox that we see in today’s scripture is that coming home is perhaps harder for the so-called “insiders” than for “outsiders.” We only have to think of another parable unique to Luke, the parable of the prodigal son. It is the good son, who has lived his whole life at home, who misses out on the party.
Matt, the pastor who visited the death-row inmate, was unable to compute that the man in front of him was not the monster he’d expected. He was unable to sit with him any longer at the same table. But years later, he reflected on the encounter in the light of today’s scripture, particularly where Jesus says, “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives” (4:18). “What does it mean,” he ponders, “to believe in a God who opposes imprisonment, be it behind bars of iron or bars of guilt? It is good news to the captives, but those of us who think that we are free tend to receive it as the opposite”—as Matt himself received it on that day. I think that as long as we see other people through the eyes of our culture, as deserving and undeserving, as good and evil, the mercy of God will enrage us. It will be intolerable. Like the good son, we will miss out on the party.
The good news is that the invitation that Jesus offers us never expires. “Come home!” he calls. The difficult part of the good news, is that to come home may actually be a matter not of where we go, but whom we receive. To come home may mean welcoming others home—especially the people whom we cannot comprehend, or whom we think extremely annoying, or whom we think undeserving.
The Jesuit priest Greg Boyle, who founded Homeboy Industries, which has become the largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program in the world, recounts a story where he finds one of the program participants, a former gang member and drug addict, Maria, distressed at the possibility that she might not get into heaven. Maria had gone to a church and heard a sermon that had warned about God’s judgment. After numerous attempts to assure her of God’s love and mercy and forgiveness, Greg looked into the eyes of the gang member and said, “Maria, how about this? If you’re not heaven when I show up…then I’m not going! I’ll go wherever you are.”
It’s certainly an unconventional take on our perennial speculations about the afterlife, but I think it captures very well the Spirit of the Lord that was upon Jesus in his hometown synagogue.
The irony is that when so-called “insiders,” such as Jesus’ audience in Nazareth, claim their inside privilege or heritage against others who are undeserving, they find themselves standing opposed to their own God, a God of mercy. They find themselves on the outside. Like the good son, missing the party. Like Pastor Matt years ago, excusing himself from the table.
On the flipside, Jesus invites “insiders” to join him as he goes outside to extend God’s mercy and God’s welcome home. So, when Greg believes so much in God’s mercy for Maria that he would prefer to join her on the outside, I think ironically enough he finds himself ever deeper inside the heart of God. He turns things inside out, just as Jesus is always doing. In the process, a beautiful thing happens. Both he and Maria find themselves home. At a party, at a banquet. Together in God’s mercy.
Prayer
Whose love makes possible
The most stunning reversals:
Attune our hearts to our own need
…
That we might know our common humanity
With others, who have the same need;
That we might know our homecoming
To be one and the same as their homecoming;
And that we might indeed
Come home
To the banquet of your love.
In Christ, the welcome of God in the flesh: Amen.