When the sharpest words wanna cut me down / I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out / I am brave, I am bruised / I am who I'm meant to be, this is me / Look out 'cause here I come / And I'm marching on to the beat I drum / I'm not scared to be seen / I make no apologies, this is me
We’re week three into our Showstoppers series here at Southport. And turning to one of my all time favorite new show stopping tunes. Elsewhere I wrote that “This is Me”is an anthem of identity and worth and determination. It is about the outcast becoming the center of attention. It is a recognition that the place the world gives to us is not always the place Jesus gives to us. And He shows that in His very first encounter with the opposition, with those who don’t want Him to be who He came to be, but they want Him to be who they want him to be. Jesus always issues an invitation – follow me. Join me, be a part of what I’m doing, what I’m bringing. But He is going to do it His way, that’s what the wrestling in the desert was all about. He chose His path. We’re invited to come along, but we’re to walk His way.
OK, full disclosure, I’m not at the top of my game this afternoon. I just spent the day teaching for Course of Study. Plus I woke up (actually went to bed) with the beginnings of the cold that has been running around our office. So, I’m taking the easy way out and rerunning a commentary on this passage that I have done before. It may sound familiar to some of you who have been reading for a while. But that’s OK, it is still relevant.
All I ask is that as you read you hear the great singer and actress Keala Settle sing This is Me from the Greatest Showman while you read. And see if some of these words (like those printed above) sound faintly like what Jesus might have been singing as He passed through a murderous crowd and went on His way.
Luke 4:21-30 21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" 23 He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'" 24 And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
Everything was going so well. Jesus makes his proclamation, preaches his nine word sermon and the applause rains down. I know, that isn’t the way you remember the story. Wasn’t he rejected, didn’t they say he was just a hometown boy getting too big for his britches? Well, not exactly. Not at first. Look again. “All spoke well of him.” They thought, wow! A hometown boy made good. He’s one of us! He’s ours. Aren’t we special? Aren’t we cool? That little phrase at the end of verse 22 wasn’t disparaging, it was pride. He’s like us.
If Jesus has stopped there, it would have been a glorious homecoming. They would have slapped him on the back and invited him to dinner and talked about the good old days when he was a boy and things were so much better back in the Nazareth that used to be once upon a time. Jesus would have been a minor celebrity and they’d all wave to him in the Walgreen’s parking lot, and want to sit by him in the bleachers at the high school basketball games. He could have done well back there in the little town.
But he didn’t stop talking. He had a bigger vision than one small town in the hill country of Galilee. So he says, I know you want me to settle down here, because here is where all the people that matter are. I know you don’t understand why anyone would want to leave Nazareth and go on to other towns and other countries. But you don’t need me here. You won’t hear me here.
Wait, he said that? “No prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.” Different translations have us remember those words in different ways. But what does it mean? Why did he say it? Because he knew what was underneath their approval. And he knew they didn’t want to hear what he came to say. He came to say they were important - that much they heard. God is going to get the kingdom going right here, in Nazareth. That’ll show the folks down the road, in the next county, in the next country. God’s kicking things off right here! Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Yee haw. He came to say that they were important. But that they weren’t the only important ones in the world. He came to say that God thinks even the stranger, even the foreigner, even the enemy is important. Important enough to save. Important enough to love.
This has been God’s plan from the beginning, Jesus says. You remember Elijah? You remember that story of the widow? God thought she was important, saved her, blessed her, loved her. She wasn’t one of us. You remember Elisha? You remember that guy, that foreign general guy, with the skin problem? That guy was an enemy, a conqueror of people like you. God healed him. God blessed him. God loved him. Get this, he was Syrian.
Syrian? Wait a minute here Jesus. A refugee from Syria? He might be wanting to hurt us. He might be hating us. He might tell us he’s running for his life, but maybe it is just a plot. To catch us with our guard down. Maybe he isn’t really sick. Maybe they aren’t really refugees. Maybe they haven’t lived their whole lives in fear of their lives, surrounded by war and killing and living in an unjust system that doesn’t value them as human beings but rather sees them as pawns in a terrible game of power. Maybe we should protect ourselves first, think of ourselves first.
How dare you, Jesus, tell us to love even those who are different from us. Heck, we struggle to love the others in our pew, don’t go asking us to love across the boundaries that are there to keep us safe. No wonder they got angry. No wonder they turned into a mob. You can’t blame them really. Jesus was inconveniencing them something awful. Asking them to make accommodations, to change ingrained habits, to think differently about who and what a neighbor really is. That’s crazy talk. So, they barked and barked and barked, drove him out of town, wanted to toss him off a cliff. But he just left. He had places to go, a Word to proclaim, a world to save. He went on His way.
Perhaps the saddest verse in the whole Bible. Evidence that God doesn’t force us to change, to grow, to love like He loves. Doesn’t demand that we become something more, something riskier, something with the potential to change the world for the better. To be more like it was supposed to be in the beginning. When God created the heavens and the earth and said it was good! It was good. We don’t have to be a part of the making good. But Jesus isn’t hanging around. He says follow me. And goes on His way.
Shalom,
Derek
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