“USE IT – OR LOSE IT!”
Given at Church of the Redeemer, Cairo, IL on Sunday, January 28th, 2007
“Use it – or lose it!”
“Use it or lose it” was a favorite expression during my Army days … it applied to all sorts of things, from budgets (if you didn’t spend what you asked for in the previous year, you ran the risk of not getting it in the following year (no wonder it’s so hard to cut government budgets!)), to semi-annual physical fitness tests (if you didn’t keep in shape in between times, it became increasingly harder and harder to “tough it out” and pass).
“Use it or lose it” is the bottom line of Jesus’ encounter with the people in His hometown of Nazareth, who had gathered in the synagogue one Sabbath day….
We’ll come back to this theme, “use it or lose it” in a moment. First, we need to remind ourselves of the setting for today’s Gospel reading.
Today’s reading follows immediately on last week’s reading … Remember that Jesus has gone to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stands to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah (chapter 61, verses one and two). The text says, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then, Luke tells, us, He sat down, saying, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
But a dramatic shift occurs in today’s reading … We begin by noticing that Luke tells us that everyone “spoke well of him”, and were “amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips” (verse 22). Only six verses later, however, (verse 28), Luke says that the crowd took Jesus out to the brow of the hill on which Nazareth is built, intending to thrown him over the cliff.
Why this sudden and dramatic change of heart?
The key is found in Jesus’ citation of two Old Testament stories, one from I Kings 17: 1 – 16 concerning the widow of Zarephath, a Gentile from the region of Sidon, and the other concerns the healing of Naaman, a leper from Syria (II Kings 5: 1 – 14). Jesus’ hearers would have known each story intimately, and it apparently didn’t take them very long to figure out that Jesus was confronting them with a story in which outsiders (Gentiles – one from the region of Southern Lebanon and the other from Syria) found favor with God, at a time when God’s chosen people, the Israelites, did not.
Let’s review the stories of the widow of Zarephath and Naaman briefly … the two stories have some common threads:
The widow was asked by Elijah, the prophet, to bring him a drink of water and some bread. In response, the widow tells him that she and her son have only enough food for one meal, after which she and her son will die. Elijah tells her again to bring him a piece of bread, and she does so. Thereupon, the supply of meal did not lapse until the famine was over.
The story of Naaman is somewhat similar: Naaman is told by a captured servant girl from Israel about the prophet Elisha’s power to heal. (Now, Naaman was commander of the army that was at war with Israel at the time, but he suffered from leprosy.) Eventually, Naaman seeks Elisha out, and he is told to go bathe in the Jordan River seven times. Initially, Naaman balks at this suggestion, saying “aren’t the rivers of Damascus better than the rivers of Israel? Can’t I bathe in them and be healed?” So, Naaman stalks off in a rage. But Naaman’s servants kept after him, eventually convincing him to go and follow Elisha’s commands. When he does so, he is healed of his leprosy.
The two stories have the following in common: Each person:
- Is oppressed: the widow by starvation, Naaman by leprosy
- Balks at the suggestions given them initially
- Has their faith tested
- Follows the instructions given
- Are blessed as a result of their faithfulness
No wonder that Jesus’ recounting these two stories had such an effect….I can
just imagine what they might have been thinking:
“How dare you challenge our special status as God’s chosen people, descendants of Abraham and followers of the Law of Moses”, they might have said. That sentiment might describe their reactions, judging from the interchanges Jesus frequently had in the four Gospel accounts with the Scribes, the Pharisees, the Chief Priests and leaders of the people.
“We’ve got an inheritance we can’t lose, and which nobody can take away from us,” they might have thought….
But, as Luke will point out, lose their inheritance, they did … Jesus’ proclamation that Isaiah’s words have been fulfilled with the beginning of His ministry will unfold in the pages that Luke will write…The poor and the oppressed find favor with God, the sick and the lame are healed, and in the process, the high and the mighty are thrown down from their seats of pride and of power….
And, as Luke writes the Book of Acts, he will record Jesus’ words “you are to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1: 8).
Along the way, those who rejected Jesus as Son of Man, as the fulfillment of the prophetic line stretching back into Old Testament times, would lose their spiritual inheritance, to be replaced by others who would respond, both Jew and non-Jew alike.
Now, let’s “fast forward” into our own lives … How does Jesus’ message apply to us today?
Where do we find ourselves? Are we like Jesus’ townspeople from Nazareth: full of pride in our heritage?
How might we find ourselves in their shoes today?
Do we claim special status as a result of our:
- Spiritual ancestry (I am a member of ___________ (fill in name of church, denomination, etc, here), e.g.)
- Past spiritual practices (We could be like the Pharisee in the “Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican” – “I do this, I do that, I am thankful I am not like that other guy” (my paraphrase)
Or, are we like the widow of Zarephath or like Naaman, oppressed and in need of deliverance?
If we are like the widow or like Naaman, are we able to overcome our reservations, to “zero out” our pride and claims in order to follow God’s commands?
For the widow and Naaman eventually both came to understand that they were in total need of God’s grace … they couldn’t claim any status or abilities of their own to deliver themselves. Moreover, their faith in God’s ability to deliver them was tested. Only by asking them to give up what little they still had left, were they able to receive God’s grace. In so doing, they reversed the saying we began with today: they lost everything they had, in order to gain the use of God’s gifts in return.
May God’s Holy Spirit enable us to do the same.
AMEN.
