Little White Box

Delivered at Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church, Benson, MN. Epiphany 4C
Texts: Jer 1.4-10;1 Cor 12:31-13:13, Lk 4:14-30

When I was in Sunday school, I learned a funny little rhyme that comes to mind this morning:

If I had a little white box
To put my Jesus in,
I’d take him out and
*smooch* *smooch* *smooch*
And share him with a friend.

And if I had a little red box
To put my devil in,
I’d take him out and
SMASH HIS FACE
And put him right back in.

I thought of this little rhyme because that seems to be what is on the minds of Jesus’ neighbors from Nazareth today, only they get the rhyme a little backwards:

If I had a little white box
To put my Jesus in,
I’d take him out and
He’d say some things that really make me angry and then I’d want to
SMASH HIS FACE
And when I tried to put him back in his box he’d walk off and leave me standing there angry and unfulfilled…

Doesn’t roll of the tongue quite the same as the first, does it?

What we have this morning is a very strange story from Luke’s gospel. Jesus is preaching and doing miracles all around Galilee, and when it comes time to visit his own hometown, people have high hopes; “their” Jesus is coming home, and he’s going to do for them what he’s been doing for everyone else. Everything starts off great—he reads well from the scriptures, and when he sits down to begin preaching, all eyes are on him. At first, everyone is amazed at his eloquent and grace-filled words… but then he keeps talking.

In no uncertain terms, he tells them that he’s not going to do for them what they expect, and these people, the people who love him best in the world, get so angry that they drive him to the top of the hill to throw him off and stone him to death, but he simply walks through the midst of the crowd and goes on his way.

If we are to begin to understand this story, it helps to ask two questions: first, what made everybody so angry at him, and second, why didn’t he just keep his mouth shut?

The answer to the first question is a little easier to get at if we understand our Bible stories. Jesus reminds us that the prophet Elijah was sent to help a widow in Zarephath and that the prophet Elisha healed a Syrian called Naaman. Not only were these people foreigners—gentiles, considered dirty to Jews—they were also enemies. Zarephath is in the region of Sidon, the home of Queen Jezebel, the wife of wicked King Ahab. The two of them instituted the worship of Baal in Israel and killed God’s prophets. Similarly, Naaman was a Syrian general and frequently raided Israel, looting towns and taking prisoners.

In his sermon, Jesus is suggesting that God is sending him not just to God’s chosen people, the Jews, but also the outsiders, and the worst of the worst at that. These people get mad because Jesus is suggesting that God doesn’t belong to them. They react as you might if I were to stand in this pulpit and suggest that after the resurrection when we gather before God’s throne, you might look across the crowd and see the faces of Osama bin Laden, Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler gathering with you.

This is hard for us. It is easy for us to love our family, our friends, our neighbors, but God is not asking us to do that; everyone does that. God is asking us to love the unlovable, because that is what God does. We are seldom capable of this at our best, because what we call “love” is just a pale reflection of love as God intended it; as St. Paul says, “now we see as in a mirror, dimly.”

This answers our second question, why Jesus rocked the boat and intentionally made his neighbors angry. God is not about preferential treatment for the ‘in crowd.’ Of all the people in the world, the people of Nazareth could expect Jesus to come work miracles and heal the sick because he owed it to them; but that’s not how God works. God doesn’t exist to serve us, God doesn’t belong to us, and so Jesus refuses to fit in the box they constructed for him and insists instead on sharing the gospel.

Like the Nazarenes, we are condemned by Jesus’ message. His words in the synagogue point out to us how petty and exclusive we can be, they show us how our love so often falls short of what God expects. We come here and give our offerings and attend Sunday School and listen to the sermons, but when the rubber meets the road, we all know that there are people who would not be welcome in this building because of what they believe, or what they’ve done; people who don’t fit in our box. This gospel story tells us the ugly truth about how we receive Jesus’ message, and therefore how we receive Jesus.

While this story condemns us, it also forgives us. Jesus’ words are a reminder that where our love fails, where it falls short, God’s love is bigger: it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. This story reassures us that God knows our failings and our shortcomings, but loves and walks with us anyway. Not only that, it also promises that while our “love” may be a pale reflection, seen dimly in a mirror, there will come a time when we will love and be loved fully, when “we will see face to face.”

Let’s take a look at how the story ends. The people drive Jesus to the top of the hill to throw him off and stone him, but he simply walks through the midst of the crowd and goes on his way. We never find out what happens to the Nazarenes, if they ever realize what Jesus was telling them, but we do know what happens to Jesus. Instead of being killed by these angry people, he leaves that place and continues to spread the gospel; his message that day was not silenced by his desire to please his friends and neighbors or by their jealousy.

We also know that, before the end of his story, he will be taken to the top of another hill to be killed, and that he will walk away from that one, too, even if it does take a little longer. This story in Nazareth foreshadows Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection; it is a promise to us that this message of God’s box-busting love can’t be silenced, not by petty, jealous people like you and I, not by death, not even by God, because this message is True.

There is no little white box for us to keep our Jesus in, because Jesus won’t fit in a box: this is both good and bad news for us. The bad news is that Jesus will consistently step outside of the boxes we make: little, white or otherwise. The defining characteristic of his ministry is finding out where those boxes exist and then standing intentionally outside of them. This is why he spent so much time with fishermen and tax collectors and hookers, and so little time with priests and Pharisees and politicians. This story is Jesus’ way of letting us know, in no uncertain terms, that to follow him, we are going to have to let go of our boxes.

But here’s the good news: we will inevitably find ourselves outside of other people’s boxes. There will always be plenty of people to tell us that we are not good enough or pious enough or generous enough for God. Perhaps we will even hear that message from ourselves. But, when we find ourselves standing lonely outside the box, Jesus will be standing there with us.

After all the terrible things we do to one another and the way we exclude and condemn each other, why does God bother with us? Because that’s what love does. Love is not envious of other’s gifts or position, it does not boast in its own piety or strength. It is not arrogant and exclusive of others who live other faiths or follow different lifestyles. Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing and acts of violence or hatred disguised as orthodoxy or morality, but instead rejoices in the unpopular and uneasy truth. It bears all our ignorance and shortcomings, it believes the best about us and about our friends and enemies, it hopes in a better, brighter future and for a real change in our hearts, and it endures all the disappointments, insults, injuries and rejections with which we respond to it, and all the horrendous things we do to one another.

Love never ends; not because of what someone believes or does; not because of evils people commit or good they fail to; not because of where someone is from or where they go; not because of a failure to regularly attend worship or put offering in the plate or show up at confirmation or vote at the annual meeting; not because of anything. Love. Never. Ends.

The love we know, the love we share, the love that we commend among one another, as full and vibrant as it is, it’s a pale and sickly reflection of the fullness of God’s love, love that we will one day know, love that is such a force of nature that it is unstoppable, love that can reach out to include the worst of us. That kind of love don’t fit in a box.