When I was growing up, we had a set of Tupperware cereal bowls we used every morning for breakfast. They were shallow, each in a different neon color - green, pink, yellow, orange - with matching cups. We also had a red cereal bowl, still plastic, but a different shape than the other ones. Plenty of cereal bowls for everyone to have one. All worked equally well and held the same amount of cereal.
Every morning at breakfast, my brothers and I would fight. Can you guess why? We fought about who got to use the red bowl, or, as we called it, the “special bowl” (there was also a "special spoon" - surprised?). We cried, cajoled, bargained, rushed to be the first one to the table. My poor mother played referee, instituted a “schedule”, threatened to get rid of the bowl, but still we fought.
It was once suggested that we could just get three red bowls, and then each of us could use one, but that solution was also unsatisfactory. To have three bowls would defeat the entire purpose! To have three bowls meant that it wouldn’t be the “special bowl” any longer - and then what would be the point?
I wish I could say I had no idea what made it seem so important to have the “special bowl”. I wish I could say that we quickly grew out of this mindset, leaving it behind with all our childhood toys and too-small clothes. The truth is that even if it’s not a bowl, it’s always something else. This fixation on scarcity rather than abundance, this insistence that if you’re not special, then what’s the point, seems to be ingrained in us, an unfortunate and even ugly facet of our sinful and fallen human nature.
As we reached the end of today’s Gospel reading from Luke, I wonder if you were surprised at this sudden turn of events. In one moment the people are welcoming the hometown boy into their synagogue, amazed at his words of grace, and in the next moment a rage-filled mob of the same people rushes to the edge of a cliff intending to throw Jesus to his death. Not quite a Hallmark movie, you know?
What did Jesus say that made them so angry?
Gathered in the synagogue in Nazareth are people who understand themselves to be God’s chosen and beloved and special people. And they are! But what Jesus tells them is that God is doing something new. God is doing something new, and it’s not necessarily going to be here, or exclusively for them. God cares deeply about all people, each created by God, and especially cares for those who are poor, hungry, vulnerable, and in need.
Yes, those gathered in Nazareth are special, but so are the others - not because any of them have earned it, or deserve it, but because God declares it to be so. But the people aren’t satisfied - as we all know, if everyone is special, then no one is special.
Turns out, this has always been how God operates. Waaaay back in the time of Elijah, there was a famine. Plenty of God’s chosen people were starving, plenty of widows in Israel could have used never-ending jars of oil and meal. And yet, to whom does Elijah go? To a widow in Zarephath in Sidon. Outside of Israel, outside of God’s chosen people.
Waaaay back in the time of Elisha, there were many people with leprosy. It was an awful skin disease - painful, isolating. Plenty of God’s chosen people suffered from leprosy, plenty of those in Israel would have delighted in being made well, restored to health and community. And yet, it is Naaman - a foreigner from Syria - who is instructed to wash seven times in the Jordan River and returns home, healed.
While we may like to think this story has nothing to do with us, the reactions of the people of Nazareth are, all too often, our own. Time and again, God’s power and grace are shown to and through people we consider outside of the tiny bubble we call the family of God. And time and again, our instinct is to draw the circle tighter, put up stricter restrictions, define clearly who is “in” (always us) and who is “out” (people who are different from us, or who make us uncomfortable, or who don’t follow our rules and customs). Too often, we find ourselves shocked, upset, and even raging that God would choose those people and that place. Aren’t we good enough? What’s wrong with us that God chooses them? Why won’t God just do things the way I think is best?
We are absolutely doing it wrong when we think that God’s love and grace are finite, limited commodities. Scarcity has no place in the kingdom of God. The lies that a scarcity mindset tells us have no place in the kingdom of God. It’s simply not true that God’s love is only for insiders who have followed the right path and checked off all the boxes. It’s simply not true that if God cares for them, God can’t care for me. It’s simply not true that God’s grace is an endangered resource that must be conserved lest it goes extinct.
What is true? God’s love never ends. God’s grace is limitless. God’s mission and methods and perspectives are bigger, broader, and wider than we can imagine. There is always enough to go around, always room for one more, always space for something different than “the way we’ve always done things”.
You know how this gets easier to hear? It gets a little easier to hear when we constantly remind ourselves that WE are also the ones on the outside, the ones who are surprised by the ways God shows up for us because we clearly don’t deserve it. Not one of us has lived a good enough life to merit God’s grace and favor. It is just not possible. Not one of us deserves what we have - all of it is a gift of God.
God is at work in the world. God is at work in the world in unexpected places and through unexpected people. God is at work in the world in unexpected places and through unexpected people - sometimes even us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Every morning at breakfast, my brothers and I would fight. Can you guess why? We fought about who got to use the red bowl, or, as we called it, the “special bowl” (there was also a "special spoon" - surprised?). We cried, cajoled, bargained, rushed to be the first one to the table. My poor mother played referee, instituted a “schedule”, threatened to get rid of the bowl, but still we fought.
It was once suggested that we could just get three red bowls, and then each of us could use one, but that solution was also unsatisfactory. To have three bowls would defeat the entire purpose! To have three bowls meant that it wouldn’t be the “special bowl” any longer - and then what would be the point?
As we reached the end of today’s Gospel reading from Luke, I wonder if you were surprised at this sudden turn of events. In one moment the people are welcoming the hometown boy into their synagogue, amazed at his words of grace, and in the next moment a rage-filled mob of the same people rushes to the edge of a cliff intending to throw Jesus to his death. Not quite a Hallmark movie, you know?
What did Jesus say that made them so angry?
Gathered in the synagogue in Nazareth are people who understand themselves to be God’s chosen and beloved and special people. And they are! But what Jesus tells them is that God is doing something new. God is doing something new, and it’s not necessarily going to be here, or exclusively for them. God cares deeply about all people, each created by God, and especially cares for those who are poor, hungry, vulnerable, and in need.
Yes, those gathered in Nazareth are special, but so are the others - not because any of them have earned it, or deserve it, but because God declares it to be so. But the people aren’t satisfied - as we all know, if everyone is special, then no one is special.
Turns out, this has always been how God operates. Waaaay back in the time of Elijah, there was a famine. Plenty of God’s chosen people were starving, plenty of widows in Israel could have used never-ending jars of oil and meal. And yet, to whom does Elijah go? To a widow in Zarephath in Sidon. Outside of Israel, outside of God’s chosen people.
Waaaay back in the time of Elisha, there were many people with leprosy. It was an awful skin disease - painful, isolating. Plenty of God’s chosen people suffered from leprosy, plenty of those in Israel would have delighted in being made well, restored to health and community. And yet, it is Naaman - a foreigner from Syria - who is instructed to wash seven times in the Jordan River and returns home, healed.
While we may like to think this story has nothing to do with us, the reactions of the people of Nazareth are, all too often, our own. Time and again, God’s power and grace are shown to and through people we consider outside of the tiny bubble we call the family of God. And time and again, our instinct is to draw the circle tighter, put up stricter restrictions, define clearly who is “in” (always us) and who is “out” (people who are different from us, or who make us uncomfortable, or who don’t follow our rules and customs). Too often, we find ourselves shocked, upset, and even raging that God would choose those people and that place. Aren’t we good enough? What’s wrong with us that God chooses them? Why won’t God just do things the way I think is best?
We are absolutely doing it wrong when we think that God’s love and grace are finite, limited commodities. Scarcity has no place in the kingdom of God. The lies that a scarcity mindset tells us have no place in the kingdom of God. It’s simply not true that God’s love is only for insiders who have followed the right path and checked off all the boxes. It’s simply not true that if God cares for them, God can’t care for me. It’s simply not true that God’s grace is an endangered resource that must be conserved lest it goes extinct.
What is true? God’s love never ends. God’s grace is limitless. God’s mission and methods and perspectives are bigger, broader, and wider than we can imagine. There is always enough to go around, always room for one more, always space for something different than “the way we’ve always done things”.
You know how this gets easier to hear? It gets a little easier to hear when we constantly remind ourselves that WE are also the ones on the outside, the ones who are surprised by the ways God shows up for us because we clearly don’t deserve it. Not one of us has lived a good enough life to merit God’s grace and favor. It is just not possible. Not one of us deserves what we have - all of it is a gift of God.
God is at work in the world. God is at work in the world in unexpected places and through unexpected people. God is at work in the world in unexpected places and through unexpected people - sometimes even us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment