This is one of those weeks in the life of a preacher when you come with a sermon plan but the news of the day wants to take over.  This week we’ll inaugurate a new US President, on Martin Luther King Day; this week saw a tenuous breakthrough in the peace talks between Hamas and Israel, and progress but still fear in the California fires.  Closer to home, desperately cold temperatures will threaten lives this week and may make it harder for children to get meals and stay warm, and all of this is to say nothing of the personal concerns that may be eclipsing these public issues for any one of you.  Still others in this room cannot hear a word I am saying, so consumed are they with tomorrow’s Ohio State game.  I will not be able to do justice for any of these concerns; I pray that the Word of God will do its work as we talk about the story of Jesus Christ and ask what it means for today.
In the current sermon series, we’ve been talking about the question “Who Is Jesus?”.  Who is this baby who has been born in a manger, who will he grow up to be, and how do people who follow him come to know him?  The first week I looked at the role of curiosity in faith, and how the magi or wise men model a life of wonder, questioning, and seeking as a part of knowing Jesus.  The second week we talked about ritual—the repeated stories and practices of religion, as a way of knowing Jesus.  Next week, Jana will conclude the series with an exploration of what we know about Jesus’ inner, spiritual life.  And today, I’ll talk about the outer expressions of Jesus’ life—the things he does and that he calls upon us to do also.
There’s a risk with a sermon series like this—one that goes along with the many public issues I mentioned—the risk is that you get overwhelmed and just give up.  We tell you to be curious, and engage in rituals, and work on your inner life, and go out and take action, and pretty soon it starts to sound like a long to-do list that will get you into heaven.  Please don’t think of it that way.
I’d much rather you thought about this sermon series kind of like an invitation to a buffet.  We’re all different, right?  And we connect with Jesus differently depending on who God has made each one of us to be.  And one of the magnificent things about Jesus is that his life story meets people in so many different ways, right where we are.  As you listen to this whole series, and in particular the story I’ll tell today, I hope you won’t be overwhelmed by it all.  Instead of trying to take in every bit of who Jesus was, try to pay attention to what calls to you most.  If there is one thing that makes a difference for you, and that moves you in your walk with God, that’s probably enough.
So let’s take a look into today’s story; it’s from Luke 4 and its commonly called the Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth.  In this story, Jesus, all grown up, returns to his hometown of Nazareth to teach in the synagogue.  It’s Bible study day, and the elders of the town were gathering for prayer and scripture reading.  They are thrilled that Joseph’s son has joined them; they have heard that the young Rabbi has been traveling through the countryside and that he is earning quite a following as a teacher.  So they invite him up, and he opens the scroll to a place of his choosing, and this is what he reads:
‘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 favour.’
It’s a scripture from the Prophet Isaiah and it points out the importance of humble service to others in God’s name.  And when Jesus is finished reading, he looks up at them and says, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Now, at first the people love this, for the way they hear it, it makes them feel great about themselves.  What they hear Jesus saying is congratulations: ‘all along, you have been about this good work—well done!’ and they sit back and expect that Jesus, who has been traveling through the countryside healing and teaching and serving others, has now returned home to serve them.
Not so, I’m afraid.  Because Jesus follows it up by referencing two other stories from the Hebrew Scriptures.  First, he references the story of the Widow of Zerephath and then the story of Naaman the Syrian.  Jesus names both stories intentionally because they are about when God helps people outside of the synagogue community—not the insiders, not the hometowners, not the people who we know; these stories are about the way God’s love reaches beyond the ones who are closest to us.  Jesus plans to continue on his way, taking the love of God to people who have not yet experienced it, and as for the people in the synagogue of his own town, what he tells them is, “Now, you get to work.  There are people in your community who need help.  You’ve heard the wisdom of the scriptures.  Care for them yourself.”  This, they do not like, and they run him out of town threatening his life.  But the lesson is clear enough:  Jesus is willing to offend us, if necessary, to send the message that we, all of us, especially the church insiders, need to be hard at work loving and serving others—that is how we come to know Jesus.
Jesus serves others in a dramatic variety of ways, and we see this echoed in all of the things Christians have done past and present in the church.  He heals the sick, so Christians have done everything from giving blood to starting hospitals.  He feeds the hungry and clothes the naked, so we run food pantries and coat drives; more ambitious ones among us have started organizations like Childhood Food Solutions or Bread for the World.  He binds us the brokenhearted, so we hold grief groups and 12-step groups, visit the homebound and the prisoner.  And if you aren’t doing something to show the love of God to others who are in need of it, you probably should be.
There are others who have dug even deeper to follow Jesus lead in loving others.  This week I returned to an interview Dr. King gave in 1965.  In it, he talks about his many commitments.  It’s easy to forget that Dr. King did not ask for the notoriety that he found in life and that in many ways it was undesirable.  He was thrust into the public eye in 1955 during the Montgomery Bus Boycott at the young age of 27.  During that boycott his home was bombed—it was the first of three times that happened.  Following upon the success of the bus boycott, King entered into an intense period—14 years—of working what was widely reported as 20 hour days, speaking as many as 450 times a year.  He had precious little time with his family, even though the greatest inspiration for his work was to create a better world for his children.
Every time I read about King’s life, I feel profoundly inadequate in my own ministry.  And then my mind goes even further to the countless activists of the Civil Rights Movement whose go unnamed and uncelebrated, even though, in the name of God’s justice, freedom and peace, they were blasted by firehoses and beaten by billy clubs and spent nights in jail.  These are the acts of love and self-sacrifice by which people have come to know Jesus.  And the challenge to each of us is to ask what opportunities exist for you and me, today.  What are we called to do?  Is it through speaking up for Palestinians or working for less gun violence; is it through helping to expunge criminal records, or packing food for children who have empty pantries at home.  Is it in helping with our benevolence ministry to assist people with rent or utilities, or is it in giving more of your money away because that’s the thing that you can do.
The thing to remember here is that these acts of service are a way of knowing Jesus—and that it’s worth thinking about them in that way.  Again, I know that these many things one can do to help others can sound like a list of things one needs to do to get into heaven, but that’s not what they are.  They are invitations to know Jesus.  Because he lived a life of service and sacrifice for others, when we do the same thing, we get to see the face of Christ in the faces of the people we help.  When we consider the needs of someone else before our own preferences, we get a chance to know the Jesus Christ who spent his whole life in that way.  And if we are lucky, we will come to understand something:  that even though this way of living led Jesus to his death, he would do it again.  For it is the best and richest life there is—to show God’s love to someone else.
Jesus reads:  “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, to bring good news to the poor…to let the oppressed go free…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…”  I read a comment on the story this week, I was convicted by it.  The writer this:  “it is quite popular in American culture to lift up the importance of knowing and clarifying one’s purpose…  There are best selling books about it…  Many of them are written by Christians who never bother to quote Luke, chapter 4, even though that is where Jesus speaks so clearly about his purpose.” (Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1)  That author reminded me that often the best way to find purpose, peace, meaning in your own life is to stop worrying so much about yourself and go help someone else.  This is one of he ways we come to know Jesus, it is what the church is for.  Stop worrying so much.  Don’t get overwhelmed with your own concerns.  Go help someone else.
When Jesus visited Nazareth, he told his congregation to get to work and they ran him out in anger.  I’ve given you some similar challenges today, so I’m going to end with something a bit gentler, returning to how this sermon started:  There are so many concerns out there, and if we wish to make a difference we must first resist being overwhelmed.
Kate Bowler, who teaches at Duke Divinity School, made a remark I heard about the kinds of commitments we make in January (for more, listen to Bowler on this week’s Wild Card podcast with Rachel Martin).  She spoke about how crazy it is that we so often expect that we can get better at everything we do.  Isn’t it obvious, she asks, that by focusing more energy on one aspect of our lives, we will necessarily have less time and energy for something else.  So its almost by necessity that if you want to get better at one thing, you’ll get worse at something else.  Maybe this year you’ll find yourself mentoring a young person or serving as an overnight host for our homeless guests, or visiting people as part of our jail ministry; as a result you may have less time for a study group or to read your Bible, or spend your leisure time in other ways.  We make choices.  Next year’s choices may be different.  Time is our most precious commodity.  Give yourself some grace.  As they say, keep calm and carry on.  The word for today:  if you want to worry less about yourself and about our world, take time to help someone else.  It is a way of knowing who Jesus is.  Amen.