No Place Like Home

Luke 4:21-30 

Prayer - Gracious, Loving, God, hold us this morning as we come to you in this holy scripture. Be our refuge and our strength and our joy and our purpose. May the words be heard as you want us to hear them. And may the Spirit move in us some way, today. Amen.  

Well, it seems even for Jesus - There’s no place like home. When I say the word “home”, what does that mean to you? What images or smells, or voices come to the surface for you when you think about home? 

It’s funny because I haven’t lived there in a long time but, when I think of home, I think of the tiny plot of land I grew up on in the Midwest. I think of the lilac bushes that my grandmother planted in her front yard. I think of cheesy potatoes cooking in the crock pot, that we were only allowed to eat on “Jesus’ holidays” - Christmas and Easter - because otherwise we would get too tired of them. When I think of home, I can see the fizzing whiffs coming off the mixture of a 2 liter of Sprite and a frozen can of cranberry cocktail in the punch bowl. I can hear my cousins arguing over whether the phrase “that rocks” means something is good or dirt terrible. I can see the Detroit Lions playing football on the tv during Thanksgiving while the house is heated with wood burning in the stove. I can feel that fiery heat, warming one side of my body while the other goes cold.  

When my Aunt I was closest to died I took a small bottle of lotion from her dresser in her favorite scent, a lavender berry scent, and I still have it. I never use it but, every now and then, when I miss her, I open the bottle and smell it.  When I do I smell a piece of home.  

It’s amazing how those sensory memories bring us home. Home is glorious when it is glorious. But home is also really complex. Not all of us have fond memories associated with home. Even for those who do, home is a vulnerable and complicated place. In addition to the sounds and smells and images that can offer us some comfort and refuge, there is also the hardship of relationships. And not just any relationship, but ones we can’t easily evade: our family and lifelong friends. They know us in a different kind of way. In a much more intimate way. As much as they know what we love and care about, they know what gets to us, and they know our faults, our vices, our history.  

When we leave home, sometimes the complexities of those relationships make going home challenging. I am often in that position. I have one uncle in particular who, to this day, every time I go home, tries to “take me down a few pegs,” as he says. Ever since I left for college (I was the first in my family to do that), he has told me that what I think and believe is part of “college manipulation.” He will use anything to get into an argument with me and try to make me admit something I believe is wrong. Any time I try to talk to him, I’m met with some kind of rejection.  

I often think afterwards, what is going on beneath the surface of that? Hopefully one day I can ask him. To me, it seems like he’s feeling a power imbalance, inadequacy, patronized, forgotten, belittled, guilty, shame, determined to make himself feel superior in some way, so he doesn’t have to face any fears, so he never has to admit he might be wrong, so he doesn’t have to ask a question he might not know the answer to and feel embarrassed. 

And for the longest time, I just wanted to avoid him whenever I could. Sometimes I still do. Because, I feel those things, too. Outraged at the circumstances of our lives without being able to talk about it because I feel like he will misunderstand me and get angry. I feel a power imbalance, inadequate, patronized, forgotten, belittled, guilty, shameful, determined to make myself feel superior in some way so he’ll take me seriously, so I don’t have to face any fear of rejection, so I don’t have to feel embarrassed. It’s hard.  

At home we are all up in each other's stuff. It’s complex. The smells and tastes and sights and people who make up such a formative part of who we are and bring us some sense of comfort can also be the place where we feel the most vulnerable and the highest risk of having to deal with parts of ourselves we don’t like to deal with. It can be risky and vulnerable to try to be ourselves at home with the people who know who we were and all the mistakes we’ve made, and who are entangled in who we want to be and how we might become who we want to be.  

Last week we talked about how those parts of ourselves: who we were and who we want to be tell us who we are today.  We reflected on the passage takes place right before this moment in Luke 4:14-20. In that passage, Jesus goes home to Nazareth and there and then he declares his and the community’s vocation as described in Scripture.  Jesus goes into the temple and preaches the call of the congregation from the prophet Isaiah, which is good news for the poor, freedom for the prisoner, sight for the blind, and justice for the oppressed - as work to be fulfilled, today. The eyes of the congregation were fixed on him, waiting for his words, waiting to hear the message of one of their own.  

As we continue in the reading today, we read that at first, it seemed like the congregation were on board with it. They were amazed and thought his message was gracious. The congregation is impressed, one of their own has grown up, “Hey, that Joseph’s son!” He’s a preacher, he’s a healer! He’s one of us. Then, at the turn of a dime Jesus goes from being celebrated and honored, to driven out of the temple. Worship turns to rage. Why? What went wrong? Why would they be so upset with him? After all these are people who know Jesus in a different kind of way; this is the congregation in Nazareth, this is Jesus’ home. 

Jesus had been reading in synagogues across the country but for his inaugural sermon, Jesus went home. Up to this point, he had been making a name for himself and the congregation knew that. They were a part of raising him, knew his family, he grew up there/ They may have thought: he’s going to become a preacher and come back here to be with us! He’ll heal us, too. Surely, if he’s out there performing miracles in the world, he would come home and do much more here. We’re his kin. 

But the story takes a turn when Jesus can tell what’s on their hearts and tells them he isn’t going to stay the way they want him to. In his sermon to them he said: the fulfillment of the promise of God is at hand. And now he’s telling his home congregation:  the work of God is not just for you.  

“Remember Elijah?” Jesus says. Of course, they do. Elijah was the greatest of Hebrew prophets. And whom did he feed in a time of great famine? Not anyone from Nazareth or Jerusalem or even Capernaum, but instead a widow in Zarephath—a small town in Lebanon. And Jesus doesn’t stop there. “Remember Elisha?” he continues. Of course, they do remember. Elisha’s, everyone’s favorite wonder worker. Did Elisha heal anyone in the Northern Kingdom? In Nazareth or Jerusalem? No. Jesus reminds the congregation that the only leper Elisha heals is Naaman from Syria. The people of Nazareth probably haven’t forgotten that Naaman was also an enemy army commander.

Jesus essentially tells them: the prophets of our tradition were called by God to serve beyond their own boundaries. Suffering comes to everyone, so should our healing. Liberation for us can’t come until liberation is for everyone. And I’m not going to stay. I came home and now, I’m on my way.  

They were not so happy to hear that. They, too, had been through hard times and were waiting for Jesus’ word that the healing they wanted for themselves was at hand. When he said: but my work is the work of God, like the prophets, like yours, they felt the sting of disappointment and anger.  

There is something for us in Jesus’ method here: Starting this hard discourse in his home congregation. Jesus knew what he was doing when he went home to reveal his ministry and call the congregation to action. His home was complex. He left home and he grew and changed. People were wanting his attention and wanting to put him in his place. Take him down a few pegs, if you will. On the road he was challenged, and he was baptized, and he was ready to embark on a journey he felt confident about. Before he left for that journey, he went home. He felt a longing for home, as we do, even though he knew that the people at home were going to have a reaction to what he said.  

And yes, they did. Maybe they were offended by his direct challenge of their whispered attitudes. Maybe they were disappointed to learn they were not first in line for Jesus’ miracles. Maybe they were reluctant to face the truths of their own memories. Maybe they felt a power imbalance, inadequate, patronized, forgotten, belittled, guilty, shameful, determined to make themselves feel superior in some way, afraid of rejection and embarrassment. It’s hard.   

Their reaction was harsh, as it sometimes can be. As aggressive as it sounds, remember that Jesus didn’t flee this scene.  The people at home got in his face, got him out of the temple onto a hill, and they said some hurtful things to him, I’m sure. But in the midst of that, he was able to walk right through the middle. And out. He passed through the midst of them and went on his way and continued his journey. Now, he had done it at home, a vulnerable and risky place, and if his home knew him and knew how he’d grown and what he was doing with his life, he could face it elsewhere.  

Jesus may not have known when he was going to die, but he knew every time he went out and taught people and healed people that he was taking a huge risk. He came in God’s name and through God’s word. He came in the name of justice, he came in the name of peace but, it was such a change to what the temple congregations had been teaching that he knew it was a huge risk that could cost him his life. And I think we can guess that he thought, I better start at home. There is no place like home.  

Home for us is formative and complex and Jesus had a formative and complex home, too. He probably felt that tension of wanting to be home and to feel the comfort and refuge of the senses of memory even when he knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Jesus understands the experience of going home, sharing something really important, naming a purpose in the world, and being rejected. A God who can feel this kind of rejection, that’s a God who understands our complex home. This moment in scripture begins Jesus’ ministry on earth, and as we approach Lent, it only gets worse for him from here. And we will be leaning a lot into the divine calling of Christ’s life.  

My encouragement for us today is to connect with the humanness of Jesus. Jesus who knows there is no place like home. And remember as we make our own journey in this life, God is with us in our complex realities. Amen.