SERMON Calls and Kicks

The Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany C (10):

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians; Luke 4:21-30

So when is a call a kick?

There is a football answer to that question -- something that springs to mind because today we are having our annual meeting, and every year I suddenly become aware of football. Something I start to do late in December when I always find out when the play-offs will be and who might be playing. And, of course, the date for the Super Bowl. This year they threw in the Pro Bowl between the two which made scheduling the annual meeting on a non-foot ball day impossible. It was a good pick (except also a great weekend for travel). I am not a football fan, and I only follow the game one month a year. It was not always so.

One year in the early '80s -- a year during which the Colts were still the Baltimore Colts -- I doggedly played in my law firm's football pool and ended up winning -- and, please, don't ask me how I did this! -- the big (and it was big!) pot at the end of the season for the greatest number of correct picks during the season. (I would never suggest that my being named an equity partner a few years later had anything to do with this astonishing win, but I suspect it did not hurt.)

So. Understand. I am not a football fan, but I do know something about the game. And I do know that if this afternoon’s game is like most professional football games, there will be a number of third down and penalty calls that will lead to kicks. I also know that the New Orleans Saints will be playing in the Super Bowl for the first time ever because of such a call and kick. Calls and kicks seem to go together.

Which brings to mind what we hear about Jeremiah and Jesus this mornng. With both, we hear about calls. Not exactly the same kind of calls that referees make after third downs or penalties, but calls nonetheless. With Jeremiah, we hear the call itself. God calls the boy Jeremiah to be a prophet -- a call that the boy Jeremiah does not want to hear. With Jesus, we hear the aftermath of God's call to him.

A week ago, we heard about the call itself. Remember? Jesus goes into his hometown synagogue in Nazareth and is invited to read from the prophets. And he reads from Isaiah and announces his call:

                        "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me [he tells them],

                                          because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

                              He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

                                          and recovery of sight to the blind,

                                    to let the oppressed go free,

                                          to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

And then, we hear, "he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him." And that's where this morning's gospel picks up: "Then he began to say to them [we learn], 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'"

And that's when the call becomes a kick. A kick from behind. But not at first. At least not in Luke's gospel. At first the people speak well of him and are "amazed at the gracious words that [come] out of his mouth." At first there is just slap in the face. "Is this not Joseph's son?" they ask. But then, hearing Jesus' answer, there is rage. Real rage. Rage that drives those who have heard Jesus to lead him out of the temple and out of the town to the brow of the hill. Not just a slap but a kick. Real rejection.

So what's going on. Why does Jesus' call produce such enmity? Such rage? Such rejection? Such a kick?

The obvious answer would seem to be in Jesus' answer. In Luke's gospel, Jesus responds to the question, "Is this not Joseph's son?" by telling the crowd that "[d]oubtless" they will quote to him the proverb, "Doctor cure yourself."

Now when we hear this without Jesus' further explanation, we are inclined to think of something like a Jesse Jackson (or maybe a John Edwards ) counseling President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. (Several years ago when Jesse Jackson's love child came to light, there was a cartoon of him and Bill Clinton praying, "Please don't let our wives find out.") That's an obvious kind of "physician cure yourself" admonition as we understand it. We think Jesus is harboring some sort of secret flaw.

But what Jesus perceives the people from his hometown as saying is, "Physician, cure your own people, do healing here, cast out demons here, as you have done elsewhere." And to that Jesus fans the flames by pointing our that, when the prophet Elijah broke a three and one-half year famine, it was when he was called to the house of a gentile widow in Sidon. And when the prophet Elisha finally cleansed a leper -- and there were many lepers in Israel -- he cleansed a gentile Syrian leper. In other words, Jesus tells his fellow townsmen (the women were not, by the way, part of this scene), that he is being called to spread the good news to others as well as to them -- as he had just done in the synagogue. Healing (at least in Luke) was not part of the picture for them at the moment.

So that was it? Jesus' fellow townsmen are enraged and kick Jesus out of town because he is not healing and casting out demons in Nazareth?

That's it, but only partially it. What really enrages Jesus' fellow townsmen is reflected in their first charge: "Is this not Joseph's son?" they ask. That question speaks volumes. Every first century Palestinian male like Jesus was defined by who his father was. No one ever, ever presumed that he (or she) could be anything more or different than one's parents. The very word for "self" did not mean personal characteristics or feelings. Rather "self" was what society expected of you. It was defined by who your family was and your place in the family. Jesus is a carpenter's son. However inspiring his quotation from Isaiah -- or how perfectly read -- he is a carpenter and nothing more.

When Jesus says (and there can be no doubt that Jesus did say this!), "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown," we might think of Al Gore's winning the popular vote nationally but losing in Tennessee. Or George Mc Govern's losing South Dakota in 1972. There is always something about a hometown or a home state that is resentful of a successful son or daughter.

But what Jesus is saying is much more profound and radical than that. It is not that what he is saying (or how he is saying it) that is not appreciated. It is appreciated. Or that it is resented. It isn't. It is that he has no business saying it or doing what he is doing in the first place. As was true of Jeremiah and Elijah and Elisha -- as was true of all prophets -- Jesus stands up against everything that is expected of him, defies all of society's norms and expectations, "to bring good news to the poor . . . to proclaim release to the captives . . . and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

But why does he do it? Why did Jeremiah do it? Certainly, in Luke's gospel, Jesus has a choice. What he does is completely irrational. Why does he choose to do it?

Well, it's here where a call becomes a kick. I have more than a passing acquaintance with this phenomenon.

Twenty years ago, I knew that I had to go back to seminary to take a course or two. It was a growing, unavoidable awareness. Three years later, I finally took a course. And could not stop. One course led to another. My family was divided and, at very best, dubious. My colleagues who knew what I was doing were, with few exceptions, incredulous and disbelieving. No one (and I do mean no one, my pastor included) could understand why I would even partially give up something that I did well and so neatly defined who I was.

And I had no answers. I didn't know.

Finally, it began to dawn on me that this is what call is about. And as it began to dawn on me it began to dawn on some of the members of my family. And I will never forget the day, in the middle of a lively (some might say "heated") discussion about the insanity of my actually enrolling in seminary, a family member said something to the effect that, in his opinion, this was in no sense a call but a kick.

And that's what it became known as: The Kick. Because that's what it was and is. Something pushing and propelling as much as leading. A call is a kick when it is God doing the pushing, the propelling, and the leading.

We are all here this morning, whether we are aware of it or not, because of God's gift of faith through grace. We are here because of God's call and kick. And, we are here to live out our individual calls and kicks in the love -- the agape -- described by Paul this morning in his letter to the Corinthians. This is a love, in the words of a professor of mine, that is "measured by its elasticity." It is a love that is

not just tolerance, but a positive embracing of the other in an awareness that it is those that have different gifts and visions who can enrich me and our common community. (Stendahl 1999, 66)

In football, calls evoke penalties if they are against you. Field goals are all or nothing and only successful about 57.7% of the time. Calls and kicks are to be avoid -- unless, of course, like the Saints last week, you manage to win a game with a successful field goal. No one next week will be praying for either. But that is not true here. For us as a diverse community of faith living out God's grace in love and service in Wicker Park, let us pray for a super abundance of both.

Amen.

January 31, 2010

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church