Saving Jesus from the Cliff
Luke 4: 21-30
Beaumont Presbyterian Church
February 3, 2013
The Rev. Susan Warren
My office colleagues – which is to say Wayne and Jessica – entered into some debate
with me last week about the title of my sermon. We were proofing a draft of the bulletin. Wayne
read, “Giving Jesus the Heave-Ho.” You see, that was my first title.
“What’s the problem?” I asked. Wayne raised his eyebrows. I asked Jessica if she
through the title was problematic. She seemed to hesitate. I was expecting her to say, “Oh it’s
fine,” but she did not. “What?” I wanted to know.
Wayne decided to explain to me the meaning of the phrase “heave-ho.” “It’s like, getting
rid of, tossing away.”
“I know what ‘heave ho’ means,” I said. “That’s the whole point. That’s what the crowd
wanted to do with Jesus, toss him off the cliff. How about this,” I suggested, “Hurling Jesus
From the Cliff.”
“It’s . . . out there,” Jessica laughed.
I retreated to my inner sanctum. Late that day I revisited the text and my sermon and the
title. Maybe there was a better way to convey the message, I decided. Maybe what we want to do
is save, not hurl or heave ho. Maybe I want to focus on what in my mind we should do, rather
than on what the crowds in the synagogue in Nazareth wanted to do.
So I changed the title. I don’t know. Would it have upset you to see a sermon entitled
“Giving Jesus the Heave Ho”? Because that’s what it says right here. “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.”
As you know we don’t read the bible literally, so I’m not saying this is precisely what
happened that day when Joseph’s son showed up in his hometown. But that is the way Luke
chooses to tell the story. So at least we need to try to figure out what’s going on. To do that we
have to go back to last week’s text, which the choir so beautifully sang for us in our Worship
Through Music time. Let me highlight the text to refresh your memory, or in case you weren’t
here. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sing it.
It’s early in Jesus’ ministry; he’s emerged from the desert victorious over the devil; and
he’s been preaching around Galilee, including in the little fishing village of Capernaum.
He decides to go home to Nazareth, where he goes to the synagogue to preach. When
Jesus is handed the Hebrew scroll to read, he picks this text from Isaiah. Listen carefully:
“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 favor.”
All eyes are fixed on Jesus. That’s when he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled
in your hearing.”
So, today we hear the rest of the story. The friendly crowd turns angry and then
murderous. Why? In a nutshell, Jesus tells these faithful Jews that he won’t be healing them as
he has the gentiles over in Capernaum. And he uses their own bible – the Hebrew scripture, the
great prophets Elijah and Elisha – to back him up. The ancient stories of Elijah and Elisha also
contain chapters in which help is reserved for foreigners.
We talk a lot about God’s covenant with Israel, our ancestors in faith. But the Old
Testament is full of stories about God looking favorably on foreigners, outsiders. Ruth and
Naomi; Jonah and the Ninevites; Elisha and Elijah . . . the list goes on and on. So these folks
shouldn’t have been surprised at the direction of this conversation. Maybe we sometimes just
don’t like to be reminded of the truth that is right before us.
But maybe reminding ourselves is how we save Jesus from the cliff, rather than hurling
him over.
I love what the great preacher Fred Craddock says about this incident in the synagogue.
He says it announces “who Jesus is, of what his ministry consists, what his church will be and
do, and what will be the response to both Jesus and the church.”i
Jesus is right wasn’t he? “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” Jesus’
church was never able to embrace him, he didn’t turn out to be the kind of messiah Israel called
for. But he knew exactly who he was and he found the description so clearly in Isaiah: the one
anointed by the Lord – that’s important – anointed by the Lord to bring good news to the poor, to
let the oppressed go free. He’s that kind of messiah.
When is it happening? Today. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Not long, long ago, not at some distant point in the future. Jesus comes into our midst today and
says, “here I am,” “it’s me,” “I’m the one in whom and through whom God speaks.” What does
God speak? Good news to the poor, sight to the blind, release to the captives . . .
How often have you heard it? You know this, people!
Yet I wonder, if Jesus stopped by here today and suggested that we find a way to install a
washer and dryer and invite foreigners in to do laundry; or he suggested a prison ministry to free
the captives from isolation, loneliness and despair; or if he said “everybody glean!” or at least
volunteer at God’s pantry – I wonder what we’d do. Probably we would not try to kill him. More
likely, we would ignore him.
I plead guilty. That’s not my committee, I’m too busy running this church, too old, too
young, bad back, bad feet, not my thing, but I do sooo love you Jesus!
I guess I’m laying it on pretty thick. Part of me feels like this isn’t the time to preach this
kind of message, not when you’ve gone to all the effort to come out to church on such a yucky
day. But, then, when is the time? And frankly, I find it hard to preach this kind of message
because it might mean that I have to change! But it’s true. We find all kinds of reasons to not do
what we’re called as Christians to do. There are so many ways, I’m willing to bet – little ways,
relatively painless ways – that we could help care for “the least of these.”
We talk about the radical message of Jesus, and then we sort of de-radicalize him. That,
to me, is like metaphorically hurling him off the cliff. I read a commentary by the Rev. David
Ostendorf, a United Church of Christ minister and activist, who captured my sentiments.
“In this brief text Luke has passed on the history of God,” he writes, “as well as
indicators for the new and renewing narratives that God is unfolding with or without us, and
usually in spite of us. God gives us opportunity to respond. We can listen but not hear, hear but
not respond, respond but not follow. We can be filled with wrath, as were those in the temple
who heard the young, upstart Jesus when he came home and spoke of the new narrative. We can
be quietly indifferent. Or we can – indeed we are called to – follow, and by following contribute
to that renewing, redeeming narrative that is God’s relentlessly powerful story, come alive on the
edges of the human family and the faith community.”ii
God’s power coming alive on the edges of the human family and the faith community.
We don’t often go to the edges. That’s not where we’re comfortable. It’s not where the Jews in
the temple that day were comfortable.
To follow and to participate, we must be open to the cost, he writes. “It is to be with and
to become the outsider. It is to live with . . . the edge people, through whom God is manifest.”iii
It is to risk. It is to risk crawling out on the edge of the cliff to save Jesus. Amen.
i
Fred B. Craddock, Luke: in Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. John Knox Press,
Louisville: 1990.
ii
David L. Ostendorf, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, 312.
iii
Ibid