When the Hometown Boy Returns…
A message about prophets and poverty for West Hills Friends Hunger Month 2022. Delivered at WHF on Sunday, March 20, 2022
The Gospel Reading today comes from the book of Luke chapter 4:16-30 (Click on the link to see the translation I shared)
I was asked by the hunger committee to explore the theme of hunger for one of my messages in the month of March. As I sat with God, trying to mine the familiar stories for a message, I was reminded of all the messages I’ve given here at West Hills that have to do with food. I’ve talked about dumpster diving in college. I recounted my days throwing tons of bread away as part of my job as a factory worker at Pepperidge Farm. I also shared about days working at Starbucks and emptying unsold pastries into the trash can at night.
My journey with food has been a complicated one. I know that is true for many people hearing my voice right now. A message about hunger or food may trigger some of us who have either experienced hunger or who have eating disorders. I hope that you watch over your heart with tremendous grace and gentleness today.
As I continued to listen to Spirit in preparation for this message I was continually reminded of a message I gave in July. It was about the pop art nun, (yes, you heard that right, the pop art nun) Sister Mary Corita. One of her most famous pieces of artwork is a square piece with a red and blue background with white text that says, “god’s not dead he’s bread. they say the poor have it hard, well the hardest thing they have is us.”
My main point in that message was “It is us. Ordinary people. Fragile, tender, sparkling, rainbow splendor people who carry that of God in our hearts, our bodies. We don’t need to work so hard, to study theology for years, to close our eyes, and focus hard to hear God’s voice. It is here, visible with our two eyes. We taste it on our lips. We sip it up with a spoon. We water it with a hose in the morning, we dip our feet into it. “god’s not dead. god is bread.”
I didn’t explore the second half of that piece of artwork, where Sister Mary says,” they say the poor have it hard, well the hardest thing they have is us.” As I sat with this part of the piece I was reminded of this fascinating story in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus has just returned home to Nazareth after his tussle with the devil in the desert, where he was tempted to use his power for evil. Emerging from the desert, Jesus is even more clear about his purpose.
So his first encounter with people after this time of testing and receiving clarity is in his home synagogue. He is asked to read the text on this sabbath, and it just so happens to be from Isaiah 61.
God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s time to shine!”
Jesus reads the text, rolls up the scroll, and says, boldly in front of everyone gathered, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.”
I imagine that Jesus went and found his seat, and everyone started whispering to one another in the pews, “Isn’t that Joseph and Mary’s son! How sweet is he? He speaks so well and clearly, they must be so proud of him! How cute!” He is in his hometown synagogue, safe and sound, right?
Maybe Jesus should have quit while he was ahead. He then says, “Y’all remember that famine back when Elijah was alive? There were a lot of of our own people who needed help during that time, but Elijah, our own Israelite prophet comforted a foreigner.” Wait, the congregation must have been thinking, shouldn’t God be taking care of us, his own people first? Jesus likely picked up on the discomfort growing in the room, but he went on. “Y’all remember the leprosy epidemic back when Elisha was alive? There were a lot of our own people suffering, but Elisha didn’t go to any of them. He ended up curing an enemy army commander, an outsider, guess what…a Syrian!”
Professor Robert McAfee Brown summarizes what must have been happening in the synagogue in that moment with so much clarity:
As Jesus develops these unwelcome thoughts, the spell he was is broken. The temperature in the synagogue drops well below freezing. What kind of talk is this? Who does this young upstart think he is to tell us that the nonbelievers, the people who are sitting at home watching TV instead of coming to church, are of more concern to God than those of us who shot up regularly to honor God’s name? Is that what he thinks those memorable words in Isaiah are all about? Heresy. Abomination. So the temperature rapidly shoots up past the boiling point. As Clarence Jordan translates the verse describing the people’s reaction, “When they heard that, the whole congregation blew a gasket. The story literally becomes a cliff-hanger. The irate listeners hustle Jesus out of the synagogue, and all of them jostle their way to the top of one of the high hills surrounding Nazareth. They have a plan: they are going to swing him three times out over the steepest cliff they can find and let go on the third swing. So much for hometown boys who come back and try to tell off their elders.”
Thankfully, Jesus gives the slip to the lynch mob and disappears into the night. We know that this is just the first run in that Jesus has with an angry crowd. We also know that the angry crowd does eventually get their hands on him, thinking they’ve shut this kid up for good. We know that the tomb doesn’t contain him.
So why does this story come to mind when I think about Sister Mary’s second part of her “god is bread” art piece, where she says that the hardest thing the poor have is us? I think that we are often tempted to spiritualize the teachings and urgings of Jesus. Surely, when Jesus is talking about the poor, or about the drastic measures we should take to disrupt systems of poverty, he is just being metaphorical…all of that revolutionary stuff will happen when we get to heaven…we are just making it through for now.
I think Jesus almost getting lynched in his hometown, and all the other times’ powerful people tried to off him demonstrates that Jesus wasn’t suggesting some kind of metaphorical or spiritual liberation for the poor, he was suggesting a radical and disruptive change that made those with privilege and power so uneasy that they wanted to kill him. Note that Jesus never stopped making these proclamations after his life was threatened, he kept on doing it, if he had meant for us to take all of that radical talk symbolically, I doubt he would have continued risking his life for the message and I doubt that folks would have felt so threatened to take such drastic actions to silence him.
As our community highlights the suffering of those who are hungry this month, I think it is important for us to step into a calling to disrupt the conditions that continue to allow people to starve. And yes, this will mean that we will have to get uncomfortable with the injustices of financial systems, and income inequality. We should expect pushback, we should anticipate people getting defensive and angry.
But a way that we can stand firm in this is that we can be showing folks the promise of another way of doing things. I still feel the pressure for us to figure out what place the church has in the lives of people here in our city. It is clear that doing the same thing is not the solution. We are a part of a religious tradition that championed a cyclical redistribution of wealth, debt forgiveness, and liberation of those who are enslaved. It was called the year of Jubilee. Imagine the response we would receive should we suggest Jubilee as part of the solution to poverty that leads to our brothers and sisters going hungry? While this may seem improbable on a large scale, I cannot help but wonder what it would look like for communities like ours to dream about it here locally. What if maybe the solution to the dire outlook of the Church is to do precisely what Jesus asked of us, and that made his message so irresistible and hopeful in the first place?
Here are some queries :
Jesus reminds us that “No prophet is ever welcomed in their hometown.” Who are the hometown prophets that we have had a hard time welcoming? Why is that so?
As we think about what is needed to relieve the suffering of those who are hungry, how are we addressing the systemic issues that create the conditions for hunger to continue to exist?
How are you either enlivened or intimidated by the disruptive possibilities offered to us as a faith community? How might we be called into new ways of being a church to create freedom from poverty?