Jesus: Hometown Prophet

 Luke 4:21-30

Have you ever returned to your hometown, the place you grew up in, after being away for some time?  If your hometown was small, like mine was, it is likely that you go back and pick up right where you left off.  People still remember you and they are excited to hear about your life, or maybe they have been kept up to date about your life by another family member living in the area.  Often you can quickly catch up on all the gossip and local happenings.  But have you ever tried to be a prophet in your hometown?  Have you mentioned that the schools should consolidate?  Have you mentioned that the local pizza joint seems quiet these days?  Have you suggested that new mayor is needed?  Have you ever tried to speak a word that the locals were maybe not ready to hear?  Today Jesus heads to his hometown.  The lesson he proclaims, after being asked to do in Nazareth what he had done in Capernaum, is that “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

This is the exact reason I used, in not so eloquent terms, when someone asked me if I wanted to come back to my home church and be their pastor someday.  I remember saying, you all know me and I know you.  I can’t possibly be your pastor.  Now, I have been back to my home church to preach and lead worship.  They are a very loving group of people and are always very affirmative in my call to ministry.  The day I was ordained, a first for them, was likely one of the proudest moments in their over 120 year history.  Yet, I know there are words that they need to hear that I cannot say to them, because I know them.  There are words they may need to say to me that I cannot hear, because they know me.  There are realities that lie ahead of them that they are not prepared to receive.  There are likely critiques I need to hear that they are not able to tell me.

On a second occasion, after a few years in seminary, the parent of one of my high school classmates and a member of another church in town stopped me in a restaurant to ask if I would come back and be their pastor.  Again, I said no, I would not be a good pastor of the local town church.  I knew those people and they knew me, too.  They knew about who I was as a kid.  They knew about my family.  They knew the car I drove.  They knew about all the choices I had made growing up.  Some of them were even related to me.  Besides it not typically being a good practice to be a pastor in your home church, I knew that I would not be a good pastor for these people.  I knew it would be difficult to be a prophet in my hometown.

Part of the difficulty of being a prophet in your own hometown is that the listeners or the audience know you.  I came here as someone you did not know.  But really the difficulty of being a prophet in your own hometown is two-fold.  The other factor is that you know the other people.  I came here as someone who did not know you.  In my hometown people knew me and I knew them.  I knew about relationships gone bad.  I knew about the personalities they had in school.  I knew who had money and who didn’t.  I knew how they treated other people.  I knew them just as well as they knew me.

The same was true of Jesus.  He knew everything about the people in Nazareth.  In fact, he knew more than the average person would know.  After all, he was God.  So, Jesus shows up in his own hometown and speaks prophetic words.  Just before our text today, Jesus, while in the synagogue, stood up and read this text from the prophet Isaiah, “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, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  After hearing that the locals expected to perform, to be a prophet, to be the person he is in other places.  His response seems to be filled with some reservations.  And I think some of his reservation about this is that he knows these people and they know him.  He doesn’t just know these people; he knows them!  He knows the good, the bad, and even the ugly.  Yet, because the locals know Jesus as their hometown hero they feel entitled.  They feel like they deserve to have Jesus’ care, concern, healing hand, and prophetic nature, because of who they are in relation to Jesus.  They fill entitled to his divine power because they knew him from when he was a kid.  We know that is not how God works though.  God doesn’t work out of requirement or entitlement.  God works where God needs to work, regardless of where we think God should place God’s divine energy and time.

If we look back to the Old Testament, Jeremiah is in a similar situation.  He is being appointed to go and be a prophet, not only in Judah, but to all the nations.  Jeremiah uses his age, his youth, as an excuse to God to use someone else, someone more fit for the job.  He is appointed “over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”  That is a big job.  He is to be a prophet in his hometown.  He is to proclaim a message to people he knows and people that know him.  He is to speak a word that people may not be ready to hear, let alone to receive.  And Jeremiah is filled with reservations. 

We, too, are often filled with reservations when it comes to being prophets in our own town, our own schools, our own church, We are filled with reservations when it comes to speaking a word that people might not be ready to hear in our own neighborhoods, our own jobs, and our own families.  We know the people whom we are called to speak to and they know us.  Despite the odds we may feel we are against, we are surrounded by a promise of protection.  In Jeremiah, we hear the words, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”  And in Luke as the townspeople drove Jesus out of town in hopes to “hurl him off the cliff,” he was protected as “he passed through the midst of them.”  I firmly believe if God protects these two prophets, Jesus and Jeremiah, then God will protect us, too.  Specifically, I find these words of protection are very comforting.  Before we were formed God knew us.  Before we took our first breath on earth God knew us.  Before we spoke words of wisdom and intellect God knew us.  So, I would challenge us to speak that word that others might not be ready to hear and trust that God will protect us.  I would challenge us to be prophets in this town and know that God will not let us be hurled off the cliff.  If God protected the speakers of prophetic words in the past then God will protect us as we speak prophetic words in today’s world.  Amen.