Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
In the 2011 NFC championship, the final game
before last year’s Super Bowl, a second-year wide receiver named Kyle Williams
was fielding punts for the San Francisco 49ers.
In the 4th quarter of the game, with the 49ers leading by 3
points, Williams made a critical mistake, failing to catch a punt, but allowing
it to bounce off his knee, at which point it became anybody’s ball. A New York Giants player fell on it, and New
York scored a touchdown a few plays later, going ahead 17-14.
The 49ers came back to kick a field goal, tying
the game, and sending it into overtime, and with 9 minutes left in the overtime
period, the 49ers forced the Giants to punt. Kyle Williams fielded the ball at the 20-yard
line and returned it about 4 yards before a member of the punt coverage team punched
it out of his grasp. A Giants player
recovered the fumble, and their placekicker scored the game-winning field goal,
sending New York to the Super Bowl, and San Francisco in defeat.
Following the game, Kyle Williams’ Twitter
account was flooded with hateful messages from disappointed fans. "I hope you, youre [sic] wife, kids and
family die," said one. Another read
“HOPE U RUN n2 A BULLET DA WAY U RAN INTO DAT BALL…” Ugly sentiments like these are other side of
the coin of the adulation that star athletes receive from their fans. We identify with their exploits as if they
were our own, as if our own honor and prestige were at stake when they take the
field. When they are victorious, we feel
vindicated for all the years we had to watch the colors of our once-proud
franchise worn by inferior teams. And for
some 49ers fans, the sting of coming so close to the ultimate prize, and then
losing, was a personal disgrace. And
taking it so personally, they looked for someone to blame.
Something like this happens in the story of
Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth. When
he reads from the prophet Isaiah about how he has been anointed by the Spirit
to proclaim good news to the poor, and release to the captives, to let the
oppressed go free, and then he sits down and says "Today this scripture
has been fulfilled in your hearing," the people of Nazareth start to taste
victory. They start to imagine
vindication for all the humiliations they have endured--the heavy taxation and usurious
debt, the encroachment of foreign aristocrats and occupying armies on their
land. They know Jesus, and so they
imagine that when he sets out to right these wrongs, their needs will be uppermost in his mind.
They ask, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” and there
are other places in the Gospels where this question is asked with a kind of a
sneer. But in this context, the people
of Nazareth say it with wonderment and just a hint of self-satisfaction. They are impressed by the gracious words
that come from Jesus’ mouth, because they think they belong to them. They’ve heard rumors of the powerful and
inspiring sermons he’s been giving in the neighboring towns, and now he’s come
home and they’ve seen and heard him for themselves. No doubt the great and powerful deeds that will
follow on these words will be to their particular advantage.
We discover that is what they are thinking
because Jesus knows them. He knows them
better than they know themselves, and he provokes them to reveal how shallow
and self-serving their faith in him is. They
want him to be their prophet, and so he tells them stories about the great
prophets of old, of Elijah and Elisha, who acted in obedience to the purpose of
God, not in order to be the home-town hero.
In times when Israel suffered
famine and foreign hegemony, those great prophets performed miracles on behalf,
not of their neighbors, or any of their own people, but of foreigners. And
when Jesus tells these, the fond hopes of the Nazarenes are dashed, and as
quickly as they embraced Jesus as the instrument of their victory, their admiration
turns to a murderous hatred.
There are a couple of taquerÃas here in town
where I like to eat burritos, and one of the things I like best about these
places is watching Mexican soccer. Now, I
am a sucker for sports on TV. If I had a
TV that was compatible with digital technology, and it was hooked up to a
network that carried sports, and if I had control of the channel selection in
my house, all of which are extremely big “ifs”, sports is mostly what I would
watch. And as much as I enjoy watching televised
sports, I find Mexican soccer to be a uniquely satisfying form of entertainment.
There are several reasons for this. First of all, there are no commercials. In a soccer game, play never stops, so there’s
no way to fit them in. Secondly,
watching five minutes is just as good as watching an hour. There’s no feeling of “if I leave now I might
miss something exciting,” because nothing exciting ever happens. The teams rarely if ever score. They just play soccer.
Finally, I like watching Mexican soccer because I
don’t have to choose sides. I have no
need to root for the guys in the blue stripes over the guys in the solid green
jerseys because I know nothing about either team, and there’s a wonderful freedom
in this. I know that somewhere in Mexico
a stadium is full of tens of thousands of people who care passionately, and hundreds
of thousands more are glued to their TVs, and maybe even here in this
restaurant there’s a guy over across the room getting sweaty and clenching his
fingers and feeling his stomach tense up in his gut the way I know I’m going to
feel during those short breaks between the commercials this afternoon, and yet
I’m blissfully oblivious to it all.
I just eat my burrito, watching some guys who
love to play soccer doing what they do best, and enjoying the beauty of the
game. When I finish eating and leave the
restaurant, they are still at it, and for all I know it will go on for eternity. I’ll get to heaven and blue stripes and green
jerseys will be there, playing soccer, still tied at one goal apiece.
Now I’m sure most Christian preachers in America today would
agree that we should root for the gospel of Jesus Christ as if it were our home
town team, playing in the Super Bowl.
There are probably more than a few sermons being preached on that theme
today, right here in the Bay Area and in the vicinity of Baltimore, Maryland. And I’m sure those preachers are right, and that
they are preaching better sermons than this one. But for all the value that we place on our
religion, and for all our culture of passion and fervor, for all our emotional
investment in excellence and victory and vindication, I wonder sometimes if we
might be closer to the mark if we embraced the gospel more like Mexican
soccer. In the 13th Chapter
of his 1st Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul seems to be
suggesting something like that when he writes about Christian love.
Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, and endures all things, love that never ends, is a love that is
profoundly disinterested in particular outcomes. It does not set out with a personal investment
in how we ought to be transformed by love, but only with the hope that we can
love, and the faith that transformation happens. Such love does not press its advantages, or trade
on its own importance, and so it does not turn to hate when it is delayed or
defeated.
When Jesus says that “today this scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing” he is not seeking fans for his team. He is inviting us to join him in celebrating
the freedom of life in the Spirit. He is
urging us to put aside our partiality concerning God’s work in the world. He is telling us to let go of our self-centered,
childish anxieties about when it will happen and what we will become and to
trust that love is bringing everything to completion, and to look for the ways it
is happening now.
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