Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Seeking and Building

Belonging is important to all of us.  The need usually seems to surface very early as we play among our friends on the playground; alliances begin, juvenile subterfuge accommodates the many conflicting passions that arise, and alliances crumble only to be reinvigorated by something (or someone) new.  Jesus, in his self-declaration from last week’s gospel, seems to have been such a novelty.  The crowd in the local house of worship responds to Jesus' declaration of "This has been fulfilled in your hearing" with “Is this not the son of Joseph?” , and was quickly followed by a demand that Jesus perform miracles he allegedly performed in another town, Capernaum.  Jesus responds with the adage that a prophet receives honor except at home followed by a list of events in which God worked outside the people of Israel and showed favor to those not part of the club of God’s Chosen Ones.

It is a very compelling narrative to imagine Jesus being run out of his hometown “on a rail” like some freewheeling carpet-bagging preacher, his shabby entourage of fisherman-turned-disciples in dismayed pursuit.  I imagine Peter raising an eyebrow and remarking “Well, that went well” as they headed for the cliff they were being chased towards.

The account of Jesus being run out of town by hostile hometown folk is a metaphor for the rejection of Jesus as Christ and rejection of his liberation gospel; it helps the early Christian community—especially the gentile communities of Luke—understand how the God of the Jews is now courting a much wider audience.  It is a common theme in Luke’s gospel that God’s favor extends to the Gentiles. How does this Good News for the first century Christians become good news for us?

God’s revelation broke into a community already fractured between the Temple authorities and the “grass root” Torah interpreters, the Pharisees, and Scribes.  Under Roman occupation, these tensions simmered just beneath the surface.  Into this mix came folks like John the Baptist, Jesus and a host of itinerant preachers (mostly in the northern sections like the Galilee).  Jesus, however, healed as a sign of God’s favor with those out of favor with all factions of Jewish life.  His miracles were signs of God’s reign, not spectacles to lend him credibility; the authority of Jesus resided in the manifestation of faith by those seeking him for a cure. 

Our community is always in danger of losing the “seeking” attribute of those searching out Jesus for a cure.  We spend so much energy and money “defending” the faith, defining who’s in and who’s out, promulgating laws and doctrine, that it is easy to miss the need to seek continually the Kingdom as a community; we don’t “build” the Kingdom of God, we seek the Kingdom of God as our primary mission.  The “building” metaphor implies the need for walls; the “seeking” metaphor implies the need for humility and community.  The gospels, Paul’s letters, and early Church wisdom is all a product of actively seeking to explain the faithful's encounter with The Christ.  When we sit fat and happy with a well-worn Bible, which we can direct as an instrument of condemnation of the “outsider,” used as a manual of organization rather than a source of inspiration, we mistake the sign for the city to which the sign points, and inevitably lose our way.  But there is another way.

 We can use the image of one walking with a single candle in the dark to understand "seeking".  The candle provides light enough to see a few feet in front but provides us no real sense of where we are going and where we have been.  As folks join us, the area we can see expands and those who follow us remind us of where we have been.  Although we can never see as far as we might like, the path is broad, the company is engulfed in light, and we find our home as week make our way seeking the Kingdom together.