Jesus’ Inaugural Message Part Two: The Crowd Turns Against Him by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

Let me give a quick recap from last week, in case you were not here, or in case you have forgotten. We are at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He has gone off into the wilderness for 40 days of prayer and fasting. 

He comes home to Nazareth in Galilee and goes to the local synagogue. He takes his turn, as a good Jew, to read the Holy Scripture. He reads a wonderful passage from Isaiah. 

God’s Spirit is on me;
    God has chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
    recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,”
    to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”

This is what we call his “inaugural message” because it kicks off his ministry. It’s great. Such inspiring words! We want to join this movement, don’t we? We want to be pardoned and set free from your burdens. Let’s go. 

Did you see that moment at the end of President Obama’s inauguration a couple of weeks ago? Just as he was about to leave the Capitol, he turned and faced the one million people on the Mall and said to those with him, “Wait, I want to get one more look. I’m not going to see this again.” Of course, it’s his last inauguration. These were his people – cheering. They had just heard a speech, they were waving flags. It was epic. 

But while I wanted to celebrate the joy of the moment with him, I had to admit his words seemed a bit ominous to me. Sure it was a great day with the parade and the balls. Michelle looked great in the red dress and all that. 

But I think he knew, that Tuesday was coming, and he would have to get back to work, and it would get ugly. He would have to face John Boehner and a Congress that won’t pass a single piece of legislation that he proposes, and a country where he gets hundreds of death threats every day. It’s not easy being a leader.

Well, guess what happens to Jesus.  As soon as he stops reading scripture and giving them the amazing news that the scripture is fulfilled just as he reads it, they start reacting. 

They say, “Wait a minute, isn’t this Joseph’s boy? The one we have known all his life?” You see no one really thinks anyone they have seen since they were a little rug rat can be all that, even if there are stories about heavenly angels and shepherds with wild tales.

And then Jesus goes and sets them off. He says, “I know a prophet is not welcome in his own town. And he begins to talk about Capernaum where he has just been. And then he talks about the work that Elijah and Elisha did. Now I had to do a little research to understand all this. But here is what it means. Elijah and Elisha did not heal their own people. They were sent to outsiders. And Capernaum was not Jesus’ home town. It was another place. What he was saying way, “I’m not going to spend all my time just here with you.” God sent me for bigger things. You’re not going to appreciate me anyway. Ouch.

Well, that was all it took. They got angry. They banished him from the village. They took him out to the edge of town and were going to throw him off the edge of a cliff and kill him, but somehow he gave them the slip and got away.

Wow!  This story is crazy, crazy. It turns on a dime.

One minute the story is all about the good news and how Jesus and the people are going to change the world together, the blind are going to see, they are going to be set free from their bondage, etc. It seems like he has the crowd in the palm of his hand, and then just like that, they want to kill him. They are DONE with Jesus and his ways. 

How can that happen so quickly? Well I started thinking about the thin line we walk with Jesus. I call it the line between the good and the hard.

You see the good is what Jesus asks us to do things that makes us feel good. And the hard is when Jesus pushes just a little too far. We get mad and we want throw him off a cliff. Or in my case, the good is when the pastor asks us to do something that makes us feel good, or when the pastor asks us to do something hard and pushes us just a little too far then we want to run her out of town. You see that’s what Methodists do – they call the Bishop and ask the Bishop for a new pastor and run the old one out of town. Bet you didn’t know you could do that.

So here is a good thing. We like it when Jesus demands equality for all people. We love that about Jesus. We can go all day with Jesus with this one. Because when someone we love is being treated unjustly we can pull out the Jesus card. No, no, no! This will not do. We are followers of Jesus and Jesus says that everyone will be treated with fairness and respect. There is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, all are one in Jesus Christ, equal in the kingdom of God. This is a good thing. We like this. 

Here’s another good thing. We like it when Jesus says we need to give our time to feed hungry people. We will go down to the Food Bank next Saturday and fill 500 or 600 boxes of food for the elderly. We will feel good about ourselves. (maybe a little self-righteous; we need to be careful about that) but Jesus asks us to be caring and compassionate, even sacrificial with our time and we can do that and feel good. 

We can even give our money to help others and that is a good thing.  Now here is when a good thing, though, can become a hard thing: When Jesus asks us to give up spending money on something we “want,” not something we “need,” but something we “want.”   You know the difference between need & want, right?  We want a big, flat screen TV, we need to pay our utilities so we are warm.  

Jesus asks us to give up spending money on something we want so that we can give money for something that someone else needs – like food, or money for our Christmas offering to give education for children in Africa who won’t have any way to earn a living without education or money so that Rock and Beth have insulation in their house and aren’t cold in the winter. These are hard things. 

These are the kinds of things that get Jesus thrown off a cliff and get the pastor run out of town. How about this hard thing? Jesus said, “I’m not going to stay around my home town for long. I’m going to heal and care for the outsiders.” The implication is that this is what his followers should do. 

What person or group do you hate? Or strongly dislike? The hard thing Jesus calls us to do, is to take the high road and reach out to those people we strongly dislike, with kindness and compassion and expect nothing in return. Jesus wants us to choose to be on their team at work, and to sit with them in the break room. To share with them. 

We encourage our kids, on the playground, to look for the child who is left out and try to include that child, but how often as adults do we avoid the person who has become the social misfit because they are obnoxious and deserve to be left out?

 One of my friends told me this week that the people she finds it most difficult to love are people who call themselves Christian but do stupid things in Jesus’ name. Did you hear about the pastor this week, who got a bill at a restaurant with an 18% tip added. She wrote, “God only gets 10%, why should I give you 18%?” One of the waitresses posted the bill on line and it went viral. The waitress got fired because the pastor was embarrassed that it got posted. Of course if she had never written it then this never would have happened. How about a little more respect for servers who work really hard.  I always tip well, because I’ve never had to be a server and I never want to work that hard.   I have never known a restaurant server who got rich doing that work. 

Which leads me to the next hard thing Jesus asks us to do: have patience with one another. You know, I believe most marriages and primary relationships would last longer, if people would learn some patience, and some grace. Jesus asks us to treat one another with some grace. Rather than always thinking the worst of another human being, why not give them the benefit of the doubt? Why not be patient? But you know what? I believe if Jesus stood here and said that our lives depended on us being patient with one another, we might just throw him off the cliff? Why is that? Because it is just too hard.  People are just too annoying.  I mean Jesus was only with us for 33 years or so.   

You see, we want following Jesus to be easy. We want it to be filled with things that make us feel good. But I am here to tell you that when we do the hard things it does feel good. When we experience the generosity of someone else who helps us when we need their help, it does feel really good. When we experience someone who reaches out to us with compassion, even when we know we don’t deserve it, it does feel really good. And when we are on the receiving end of patience it feels great. Jesus asks us to do the hard things because we are his people and he knows that we can make a difference in the world, if we surrender our whole lives to him.

So my question for you is this: what is the hardest thing for you to surrender? What does Jesus ask you do to, that is the most difficult for you to do? Honestly, what makes you want to just throw Jesus off a cliff when he asks you to do it? And are you willing to give that a try, so that Jesus can use you, to make the world a better place?