A Word from Joel - February 5, 2025

“When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 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. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”
Luke 4:28-30

In his first sermon in his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus recounts how Israel’s prophets
had blessed Gentiles while Israelites were in need. Hearing this, the crowd turns on him
and tries to kill him. This story is often cited an example of how Jews hated Gentiles so
much they would rather kill Jesus than imagine God blessing a Gentile. Christians often
assume Jews didn’t understand anything about a loving a gracious God, which is both
false and anti-Semitic. Jesus did not invent the idea of a gracious God. Israel
understood grace and God’s love for the world, including their enemies long before
Jesus arrived.

So, what is going on here? Jesus is not disparaging Jews. He is doing something more
universal than that and therefore more painful. He’s drawing out the poison that lives in
every human heart. We are deeply entrenched in a worldview that tells us that what we
get is what we deserve. If you’ve received blessings, it’s because you worked hard for
them. If you fail, it’s your own fault. While we may sing about amazing grace, the truth is
that there’s part of us that hates grace. We hate the idea of people receiving blessings
they don’t deserve, so when Jesus comes along and announces that blessings are
going to your enemies, that’s a pill too big to swallow. Jesus holds up a mirror to his
hometown that day, inviting them to see how much they resent God’s mercy, and
instead of confronting that hard truth, they hate him for it.

The will to scapegoat it is alive and well today. Seeing our enemies receive blessings
we don’t think they deserve can turn an otherwise good religious crowd into a lynch
mob. If we hear this story and think, how could anyone do this, then we are not looking
closely enough at our capacity to blame other people for our own sin. In a severe act of
mercy, Jesus draws out all our rage and hatred of mercy, so that we might be healed.
Jesus reveals something we don’t want to see, namely that we are his enemy. Within
that hard truth is a mercy that is wider than we can imagine. The Apostle Paul puts it
this way, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died
for us...While we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his
Son” (Romans 5:8,10).

The good news is that God’s blessings have come for the deserving and undeserving
alike, for those we love and for those we hate, not just for us, but for everyone. Jesus
takes our will to blame others for our problems into himself and sends back even more
mercy. Our illness is deeper than we realize. Christ draws out the poison in us all, so
that all might be healed and forgiven.

One Struggle to Love,

Rev. Joel A. Esala