Preaching can be
hazardous to your health and this story should make every preacher shake in his
boots. I tremble every time I read it. I learned a long time ago that, when you
preach, the safest approach is to tell people what they want to hear. You can,
like Jesus, be run out of town on a rail if you cross the line and tell people
what they don’t want to hear.
What went wrong in the pulpit that day that turned the people of
his hometown against Jesus? We learned today that Jesus had gone back home
to Nazareth where he had been reared. On arriving at the local synagogue, he
was asked to do the reading and give the homily. The first part of the homily
went well. In fact, it says that “they were amazed at the gracious words that
came from his lips.”
As he continued to preach, all of a sudden, things turned ugly.
What ticked the congregation off so quickly? Well, you have to remember that
Jews in those days taught that God’s love was exclusive to Jews
alone. Gentiles, or non-Jews, were merely fuel for the fires of
hell. In his homily, Jesus challenged that long-held belief by citing two
examples from their own history. Jesus pointed out that in the days of the
great prophet, Elijah, there were many hungry Jewish widows during a great famine,
but God sent Elijah, not to them, but to a Gentile widow of
Zarephath. Jesus also pointed out that in the days of the great
prophet Elisha, there were many Jewish lepers, but God sent Elisha to cleanse
none of them, but only a Gentile leper from Syria. In today's text, Jesus is
telling them that God’s love is not restricted to Jews,
but includes everyone. This was heresy and they didn't want to hear any more of
it, so they dragged him out of the pulpit, to a cliff outside town, intending
to throw him over. He escaped “by the skin of his teeth” so to speak.
I have been there and done that! When I was first ordained, I was
regularly pointed out, in print and on the radio, as an example of the
“unsaved” by fundamentalist preachers in southern Kentucky during my ten-year
stint down there. Here is Louisville, I was regularly attacked on multiple
fronts by an anonymous group of fundamentalist Catholics when I was pastor of
the Cathedral. As a result, I even had a knife pulled on me in the Cathedral
over a homily during those years for reaching out to marginalized and
fallen-away Catholics. The mistake I made, at least in their books, was to get
up in the pulpit and tell those people that God loved them too. One
man walked up and down the side walk at the Cathedral with a big sign that
said, called us “Welcome to the church of Satan.” They wanted these people
excluded, condemned, shunned and banished from any hint of God’s love.
What is it about people who have a such a burning desire to dig
holes for other people? This need to exclude others must be a cheap way of
feeling superior and special, as if there was a shortage of love when it comes
to God. This is not the view of Jesus. Jesus teaches us in the parables that
God’s loves is universal and inclusive. The parables of the Prodigal Son, the
Vineyard Workers, the Wedding Feast and the Lost Sheep have always given me
personal encouragement and a clear vision for ministry. In the parable of the
Prodigal Son, the Father loves both his sons: the one who left home and got
down with the pigs, as well as the one who stayed home and did all the right
things. In the parable of the Vineyard Workers all got a full-day’s pay, not
matter how much or how little they worked. In the parable of the Wedding Feast,
the good and bad alike are invited to the feast. In the parable of the Lost
Sheep, the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine good sheep and goes off looking for
the one who got lost. Inspired by that message, every week for 15 years, I
wrote a column in The Record called An Encouraging
Word where I looked for goodness to affirm, rather than sins to
condemn. After I retired from my column in The Record, I have
continued An Encouraging Word in my blog.
I am not just a “catholic” by birth. I am a “catholic” by choice.
“Catholic” means “universal” and “inclusive.” For that reason, I am “catholic”
and proud of it. As a “catholic,” I do not hope to be among the “few in number
who will be saved,” as one of the critics of Jesus put it! I pray that we all make
it somehow: Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Methodists, Moslems, agnostics, atheists
and everything in between!
By the way, I left my car running in the parking lot, just in case
somebody here today wants to drag me out of this pulpit and throw me off
a cliff somewhere!
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