Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2007 : January 28, 2007

Theme: The Truth Hurts -- and Heals

Church year occasion: Epiphany 4

The American Film Institute recently released its list of the 100 greatest heroes and villains in film history. I wonder if we can guess some this morning. Let's start with the villains. I'll name the movie, and you tell me the villain. The Silence of the Lambs -- Hannibal Lechter. Psycho -- Norman Bates. Star Wars -- Darth Vader. The Wizard of Oz -- The Wicked Witch of the West. Now let's see how you do with the heroes. Raiders of the Lost Ark -- Indiana Jones. Dr. No -- James Bond. The last two are easy. Robin Hood -- Robin Hood (obviously). And Erin Brockovich -- Erin Brockovich (again, obviously).

The greatest hero of cinema history, though, might come as a surprise. I might even have to give you some hints. The movie is To Kill a Mockingbird. And some might think it's ironic that the hero is a lawyer! The hero is played by Gregory Peck. His name? Atticus Finch. In the movie, Atticus is a lawyer in the South during the Great Depression. He defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, and as a result he risks his own reputation and his life, and even the lives of his children. But he realizes that the truth must be found, no matter what the cost to himself.

Would you think of Jesus as a hero? Probably not. Savior or God or Redeemer would come to mind first. He's in a class by himself. But in today's account we see that Jesus had the same mentality as Atticus Finch -- the truth must be told, no matter the cost. And, of course, it would cost Jesus his life. So this morning we see that The Truth Hurts -- and Heals.

Today's text is a continuation of last week's gospel lesson in which Jesus reads a well-known Messianic prophecy from Isaiah in his hometown synogogue in Nazareth.

At first, the people in Jesus' home town of Nazareth liked to hear the truth of what Jesus was saying. They knew Jesus as the hard-working carpenter in town. And now, after he left for almost a year of teaching and preaching around Jerusalem, he is coming home. There were even rumors that Jesus had power to heal people, like some of the Old Testament prophets did through God's power. So Jesus had been teaching and preaching in synogogues in the area, and now he was coming to his home-town synogogue. But things would be different in Nazareth.

At first, just as in the other places where Jesus was teaching, the people accepted his words and praised him for his wisdom and wanted to hear more. But then, after he read that well-known portion of Isaiah that everyone recognized as talking about the coming Messiah, Jesus said something very strange: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." But our text says he began by saying that. He wasn't finished. Usually, after the Scripture was read, the rabbi or priest or Levite would expound on what he had just read, much like a sermon. But what Jesus said was different. The people were used to hearing about how the Jews were God's chosen people. They heard how their ancestors had disobeyed God time after time, but that after the captivity in Babylon they had gotten their act together. They had rebuilt the temple; they had continued with the required sacrifices. They were basically doing what God had told them to do, even though the Romans were there ruling over them. They were told to do all they could to live up to the Law's demands as their fathers had often failed to do. And they thought they were doing a pretty good job. Certainly their righteousness wasn't as good as the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law, but it was good enough to earn God's favor and the favored status the Jews held in God's eyes.

But when Jesus sat down to speak, he didn't focus on how the Jews were the chosen nation. He didn't focus on how well they were doing. Jesus focused on something completely different. He focused on himself as the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy. For the people's reaction, look at verse 22: "All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips." At first, the people probably were amazed at how powerfully and authoritatively Jesus spoke. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked. They knew Jesus. He had lived in Nazareth since he was a little boy. He had never sounded like this before. But now Jesus was fulfilling his purpose. He had been filled with the Spirit at his baptism a year earlier, and he was still filled by the Holy Spirit. And the people recognized it. They were amazed that this was coming from the carpenter they all knew, but apparently not all that well.

But then their amazement at his speaking ability and the authority he possessed by himself gave way to agitation at what he was actually saying. Instead of the kind of amazement that says, "Wow! That was great! That was awesome! That was amazing!" now the amazement turned into something more like, "Huh? Did I just hear him correctly? Did he just say that the Messiah is here? Did he just say that he is the Messiah? Jesus? Joseph's son? The carpenter? No Way!" Even if the people weren't saying out loud that they didn't believe his words, Jesus could tell that's what they were thinking. So he said in verse 23: "Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.' "

That proverb needs a little explanation. Remember, the people had been hearing reports about Jesus healing and doing miraculous signs. If he was claiming to be the Messiah, he better be able to back it up by doing the same things in Nazareth as he was supposedly doing elsewhere. They wanted a miracle -- or two or three. That's the only way he could help prove himself, just like the best way a doctor can prove that he can heal others is by healing himself if he's sick.

But Jesus hadn't come to be a miracle worker for people to gawk at. He had come to preach the Word of God. He had come to call people to repentance because they were so crooked and wicked in their thinking as to believe that they had somehow earned their place as God's chosen people. They weren't looking for a Savior from their sins. So they needed their sins to be pointed out to them. They needed the truth, and it hurt. Jesus gave them what they needed. Verse 24: " 'I tell you the truth,' he continued, 'no prophet is accepted in his hometown.' " These people that knew him his whole life should have been the first to realize he was the Messiah. But their unbelieving hearts chose instead to let their familiarity with him get in the way, so they rejected him. Then he talked about how God didn't help an Israelite widow in Elijah's time during a famine, but a pagan widow who didn't even live in Israel, but in moder day Lebanon. And even though there were plenty of lepers in the prophet Elisha's time, God sent him to heal a Syrian general named Naaman -- another pagan! So Jesus was saying, "You're no better than a bunch of pagans, and just as worthy of God's judgment and damnation!"

The truth hurt. And it was too much for the people Jesus had grown up with. They were furious! They drove him out of town like a lynch mob and were ready to murder him because not only had he (in their opinion) falsely claimed to be the Messiah, which was punishable by death, but he had also dared to say that they were worse than pagans; that they needed as much grace as an outright unbeliever, that God cared nothing for their status as God's chosen people. But it was not time for Jesus to die, and it was also prophesied that he would die on a cross, not by being thrown off a cliff. So he did perform a miracle by walking right through the crowd. And he went on his way to where people would be more receptive not only to him but also to his message.

The sad thing about this whole incident is that the more Jesus talked, the more the people hated him and what he had to say. And the really sad thing is that it was exactly what the people needed to hear. They weren't good enough in God's eyes. Earning God's favor, earning God's grace, wasn't possible. Then it would no longer be favor or grace. But they closed their ears to such talk. They rejected Jesus as their Savior. As the Apostle John said, "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him." (John 1:11) And as a result, many of them went to hell because they failed to look in faith to the only One who could save them.

What can we get out of this story? Do we sometimes think we have some higher status before God because our family has been Christian for generations or has been in a particular church for generations? Can we have a pride that we belong to a church body that teaches the truth of God's Word while many others mix the truth with false doctrine? Can we maybe unconsciously look down on those who are different than we are, like the poor, like foreigners or those of different skin color, like the drug addicts, those coming from broken or divorced homes? Do we use every chance we get to whisper about those kind of people who obviously aren't living as good a life as we are? Do we show the height of arrogance and complacency even when we know the gospel of salvation but think that there must be some more important thing to do today than telling our unbelieving friends the truth about Jesus? Do we do those things? Yes, yes we do. All too often we do. Are we God's chosen people? Yes. But that means nothing if we don't listen to the truth. The truth can hurt. The truth tells us that we often grow as complacent in our spiritual lives as the people of Jesus' hometown did. The truth is that we have offended the holy God with our shameful lives that don't live up to his expectations of us. The truth is, we don't deserve anything from God -- certainly not to be called his children. We deserve the opposite -- to be disowned by him for our sins. That's the truth. And we need to hear it. And the truth hurts.

But remember what Jesus was preaching? He was telling the people of his town and he's telling you today that he came here for a reason. He came to reach out to every person, Jew or Gentile, drug addict or someone who's never touched drugs, poor, rich, young, old, American or Iranian. Jesus came to take everyone's sins away forever. It wasn't his time to die outside Nazareth. He had come to die outside Jerusalem, with the weight of your horrible and damning sins and mine on his shoulders. He came to be disowned and damned for our sins in our place. And he came to rise again, showing us that we are forgiven simply by his grace. Those are the gracious words that we need to be amazed at today and every day of our lives. The truth certainly hurts when we see our utter sinfulness and pride before God. But the truth also heals because the truth is that Jesus is our Savior, the only name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.

The truth Jesus proclaimed got him into all kinds of trouble. Instead of being the greatest hero this world has ever seen, he was seen by most as the villain. And after 2000 years, that still holds true today. Unbelievers wouldn't say Jesus is a villain -- after all, he stood for truth and freedom and high morals and living a good life. But the moment you bring up the passage that there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved, you become a target. That truth eventually got him killed. That truth of who Jesus is will get you into trouble as well. Many today are still losing their lives for the name of Jesus today. You might think of those hero missionaries who were killed in Central America as they told people about Jesus. Their story was told in a recent movie release The End of the Spear. But many of those natives are Christians today because the families of the murdered missionaries went back, not for vengeance, but to proclaim the truth of who Jesus is. And the Holy Spirit used their witness to bring many to faith and to a knowledge of the truth.

You have the same truth to proclaim -- that he is the Savior, the only Savior, and everyone's only hope of forgiveness and heaven. Is there a person you can think of who needs to hear the truth? Jesus was just the person to bring that truth to this sinful world and wash the world's sins away. Now you are just the person God wants to see put that truth into action as you share it with one person at a time. Amen.