“We tend to think in systems and continuities and predictability and schemes and plans. I think the Bible is to some great extent focused on God’s capacity to break those schemes open and violate those formulae.”
-Walter Brueggemann
What in the world could make the people of Jesus’ hometown so upset that they would chase him to the edge of a cliff intending to throw him off (Luke 4:21-30)?
I think it may have been the way in which Jesus’ proclamation disrupted and upset the way (system, scheme, plan) they understood the world and understood God’s mission.
Why do I think this is the reason their reaction is so strong?
Because their first response to Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God, year of jubilee, and release for the captive is first a very positive one, and it is only as Jesus continues to tease out what exactly that means for them that they are filled with rage. Read the full text again Luke 4:14-30. See what I mean?
When they first hear the proclamation of good news for the poor, release for the captive, and the promise of healing and wholeness, I think they hear it through the lens of their own systems and schemes of thought. The people of Nazareth expect they will be the first to receive these things and that the most wonderful acts of God will be for them, not others. After all, they are Jesus’ hometown.
We are not unlike the people of Nazareth. We have our own systems of schemes of thought. Ways that we are sure things are supposed to go. God often brings a holy disruption. And frankly, it can feel most unwelcome. Our view of God and God’s mission is so frequently too narrow.
When God insists that the people who I don’t like and who have been out to get me in one way or another are also recipients of God’s grace, love, and forgiveness, I’m just like Jonah, upset at the goodness, righteousness, and steadfast love of God.
However, I find that it is just on the other side of these moments of disruption when I am most upset, uncomfortable, defensive, that moments of transformation occur. God disrupts my status quo, upsets and overturns the ways I’m sure God and the world and my life are supposed to go. And in doing so, God shows me the wideness of God’s mercy and love for the world and for me. I am able to see through new eyes, with a new lens, to see the people I have previously ignored, to build bridges instead of barriers, to recognize the very image of God in myself, in my friends and family, and even in the ones I would call enemy.
How has God disrupted you when you were set in your ways?
How has your understanding of who God is and what God is up to been expanded?
Let’s close with a prayer that leaves some space for God’s holy disruptions.
O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
-From Evangelical Lutheran Worship Evening Prayer
Blessings on your week,
Pastor Drew
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