IVth Sunday- C.

Jer. 1:4-5, 17-19: 1 Cor. 12:31-13:13Gosple: Luke 4:21-30
John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States and the son of a former President, reportedly said that he would rather clean filth from the streets than be a President. Scripture tells us that most of the prophets shared John Quincy Adams’ feeling of inadequacy to their calling. Moses tried to convince God that he didn’t speak well enough, and Jeremiah complained to God that he was too young. The prophets trembled at the trials ahead of them – and with good reason. Israel had a long history of rejecting prophets. Jeremiah was threatened with death several times, thrown into an empty, muddy cistern, imprisoned, dragged off to exile in Egypt, and, perhaps most painful of all, was forced to watch the destruction of Jerusalem because its inhabitants would not listen to his message.
After reading scripture when Jesus told them : today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, it seems there appeared immediately a double-reaction: some were amazed; and part of their amazement at his “gracious” speech gets expressed in the line “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” But that question seems to cut two ways, and Jesus’ subsequent words indicate his awareness of this. The question “Isn’t this Joseph’s son” CAN be a source of genuine wonder and appreciation—look how far our local boy has come! But it’s not difficult to see that the same question could be asked with a real edge to it, with a sneer. “Joseph’s kid? Good grief. He was a nobody back in the day and he’s a nobody from a no-account family now. Forget him!” They knew members of his family, and that became the filter through which they heard the content of his sermon. Before that congregation really heard him, they already knew him. Everybody knows him. That is the problem. Of all the sayings of Jesus, one of the few things he said that appears in all four gospels is that a prophet gets no respect in a prophet’s hometown. To put it another way, “You become an expert only after you move more than ten miles from home.”
Jesus then goes on to suggest that may be those very detractors in the crowd that day would be asking him shortly for an authenticating sign. They expected Jesus to use his powers and do some special favor for his own people. After all, they were his own people. When Jesus told them the truth that God has no favorites but relates to all humankind by the same standards, they turned against him in disappointment and ran him out of town.
Jesus is telling his townspeople of Nazareth the truth of the universality of God's grace. The people of Nazareth, like most of the “chosen” people of God in Jesus' time, had come to believe in a God made in their own image and likeness. Not the other way around. They believed in an either-or God -- “if God is for us, then he must be against them.” They believed in a God whose beneficence was limited to the “chosen” people. Jesus tells them that such a God does not exist. The true God is equally available to all humanity -- so long as they approach God with faith and trust. To illustrate his points Jesus cites the cases of the prophets Elijah and Elisha who performed great miracles for people who were outside the confines of the “chosen” people. (Widow of Zeraphath and Naaman, the leper)The people were in error and Jesus tried to give them the truth.

Billy Sunday was the Billy Graham of a previous generation. He was conducting a crusade in a particular city. In one of his sermons he said something critical of the labor conditions for workers in that area. After the service, several prominent businessmen sent a message to him by one of the local pastors. The message was this---Billy, leave labor matters alone. Concentrate on getting people saved. Stay away from political issues. You’re rubbing the fur the wrong way." Billy Sunday sent this message back to them: "If I’m rubbing the fur the wrong way, tell the cats to turn around."
The people could not accept the truth because it went against their long-established beliefs in their own superiority, which made them feel good about themselves.
The people of God have always had two kinds of teachers. There are the prophetic teachers who seek above all to please God; who speak the truth of God even when this would cost them their popularity and the people's patronage. And then there are the popularist teachers who seek above all to please the people, to tell them what they would love to hear and confirm them in their prejudices. Scripture warns us that "the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires" (2 Tim. 4:3).
Jesus' words implied that, like the people of his hometown, the Israelites of those former days were unable to receive miracles because of their disbelief. Consequently, God bestowed miracles on the Gentiles who believed in Him. Jesus, like the earlier prophets, dared to speak the truth to people who did not want to hear it.
Jesus’ reference to the unbelief of the Jews and to the stronger faith of the Gentiles infuriated his listeners. They did not like to be reminded that God can, and does, work through religious systems other than their own, even through individuals who are outside any religious system.
By our baptism, God calls us to be prophets like Jesus, sharing his prophetic mission. The task of a prophet is to speak and to live out God’s truth. We must never be afraid of this call, for it is Jesus who will supply us with the courage, the words and the deeds we will need to oppose the many evils in our society. We must realize that God's power is always available to transform even the most unlikely people, and that His power may come to us through unlikely instruments.
We must have the prophetic courage of our convictions. We need to be kind, charitable, honest, forgiving and clear in speaking out our Christian convictions as Jesus was. Speaking God’s truth by word or by deed is a risky business even today. In our country, the attack has not been so much physical as psychological, with various communications media constantly ridiculing and insulting Christians with unprecedented vengeance.
We think that some of the best homilies, retreats, conferences and lectures we hear are “meant for someone else”. We listen and say, “That’s good advice for my kids,” “My neighbors should have heard this homily,” or “That’s aimed at my office staff,” and so on. And that is precisely what Jesus’ hometown people did. They did not acknowledge that they were poor, blind or prisoners who needed a savior and liberator. Hence, they not only rejected Jesus and His “liberation theology,” but also tried to eliminate Him from the world.
Christ fulfilled his life mission, but it didn't make him popular. If we are to fulfill our life mission we need to be ready to suffer similar consequences. We can measure our success as Christians not by how comfortable our faith is making us, by how uncomfortable it is making us. Let's let God make us a little uncomfortable, so that we can become the saint He made us to be.