Rev. Betsy Aldrich Garland
January 31, 2010
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 4:21-30

Search Committee on the Edge!

Well, it’s happened, finally: We have a search committee! Imagine what the committee members are thinking right now: How did I let myself get into this? Feeling, if not the weight of the world on their shoulders, at least the weight of this congregation!

Many years ago, when I knew I was pregnant, my first thought was, how could I have let this happen? I’m going to have to go through with this! I’m going to have to deliver this baby! Well, I’m glad I did: I have a wonderful son. And they and you will be glad they did; you will have, eventually, a wonderful new settled minister.

The denominational theme for this Sunday is “Prophets on the Edge,” Jeremiah and Jesus. It’s on your bulletin cover.

Jeremiah, we can understand – what he was feeling. God has chosen him, and before he was even born, appointed him “to be a prophet to the nations,” and Jeremiah wants no part of this: “I don’t know what to say; I’m only a boy.” But there is no saying no to God who answers every objection Jeremiah offers.

Picture the owls who fly in with invitations to Harry Potter to attend Hogwarts, invitation after invitation, after invitation. His aunt and uncle ignore them; but the owls are relentless. Eventually, big, hairy, gentle Hagrid goes in and gets him.

Just so, there is no saying no to God. What we are asked to do may never be easy. And every prophet feels unworthy and inadequate. And every pastor, if she is honest, will say, “I don’t know how to speak.” It is a holy task, this plucking up and planting, this preaching, this teaching Sunday School, this serving on the Search Committee, this being a deacon, this volunteering to help where we are needed and have particular gifts and interests.

It’s tempting to say, “I’m too new to the church to help much.” “I’m just a lay person; I never went to seminary.” “I don’t have very much to give – I’m not good in the kitchen or the classroom or the garden.” Or even, “I’m not good enough to do the work of God’s church.” We’re all Jeremiahs, if we’re honest, but God will be there to touch us, to tell us what to say, to deliver us. You see, we have not chosen God; God has chosen us. God has a hold on us and will never let us go. This is the lesson from the prophet Jeremiah.

What of the lesson in the gospel of Luke?

Last Sunday we heard the story of Jesus reading from the prophet Isaiah in his hometown synagogue. You will remember those wonderful words, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me ... to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed. Jesus hands back the scroll, sits down and says to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The people are amazed. Surely they all know him, the son of Mary and Joseph. They are his family and friends and neighbors. Their feelings must be mixed between pride at this hometown boy who has been working wonders, and envy, “Who does he think he is!”

Jesus could have left it at that; made his way home to have dinner with the family. But no, he had to challenge their assumptions about how this scripture is being fulfilled, and so he prods them with the question they have been wanting to ask: “Do here for us ... what we have heard you did in Capernaum.” Capernaum is gentile country, non Jews; do it for your own people, Jesus. In response, Jesus harkens back to two earlier prophets, Elijah and Elisha, placing himself in a long line of Hebrew prophets who healed faithful outsiders who were models of faith.

When they realize that their Jesus, the insider, has not come for them, he becomes for them an outsider who serves a world wider than his family and his fellow Jews, and they are angry enough to toss him off a cliff. They had been waiting for the messiah, the one who would end oppression, injustice, and exploitation, and usher in a new age. Now they have him, and he’s not what they expected! As they say, be careful what you pray for, you may get it!

A commentator writes,

“This is a dynamic, raucous God who jars us to wrath or to faithfulness,
and who simultaneously provides us the opportunity to partner
in the creation of a new [story], woven with edge-people in edge-places,
and in the particularities of daily living and daily people. Indeed, new [stories] are unfolding in our midst, in some of the most peculiar places, where God continues to act, far outside our holy walls.”

Like the people in the synagogue, we discover that the God we proclaim and worship will not be domesticated, shut in, confined by our sanctuaries, or our prejudices, or our political agendas. In Jesus, and in us, God is weaving a new story of hope and justice and love that knows no boundaries of race or class or gender or sexual orientation or religion.

Today, and every day, everywhere, this scripture is being fulfilled through common ordinary people like us – rescue workers in Haiti and in our inner cities, peace-keepers in Afghanistan and Providence, local church search committees and congregations stepping up to fulfill the scripture, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me....”

May it be so! Amen.