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I’m sure most of you folks remember that back in the early days of the Cooperative we were recipients of a grant from the national church that helped us to be a two-minister set-up. Well, one of the ways we said thank you for that grant was that Timothy and I and several of our elders had to go annually to a Continuing Education event with other grant receiving ministries in the denomination to get educated on stuff. A good bit of time at these events was dedicated to letting each ministry share its story. In case you didn’t know, there was a bit of “Wow” once people heard what we were doing. Four churches cooperating by sharing two ministers who rotated around, a joint youth program and a younger-ish adult program. We had Discipleship programs running in two of the churches. We worshipped together at least five times a year and had a common choir even. Things were happening.
We were a “Wow” ministry in the PCC. Jesus put words in the mouths of his hometown synagogue having them figuratively say to him, “Do here the things we heard you did at Capernaum.” We were Capernaum. Other Presbyteries would hear about what we were doing and contact our Clerk of Presbytery, John Gilbert, or Timothy, or myself to hear more. John actually travelled to other Presbyteries to tell our story and again the response would be a general “Wow”. For sustaining congregations in times when major congregational decline is the story of the day what we were doing and are continuing to do is a major “Wow.” Pat yourselves on the back.
Together we are strong. We are entering into a third year of a pandemic and even with just one minister we have proven ourselves to be a viable structure for sustaining congregations in the ministry of our Lord during difficult times. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that without this Coop our four congregations would not still be going. Eight years ago the Holy Spirit showed up in your midst with an invitation to a new form of ministry and you said “yes.” The Spirit of the Lord is still upon us and we continue on in unity and continue to grow in our love for one another even if we haven’t been able to worship together in person. God is good. God is faithful. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us. Jesus is in our midst.
Now let me change gears a bit here and I promise I won’t do to you what Jesus did to his hometown synagogue there in Nazareth. The last thing I want is to get run out of town. Looking at Luke, I can’t help but feel that Jesus provoked his hometown synagogue into running him out of town. He kind of reminds me of that precocious, smart-alecky kid who knows exactly what buttons to push to get everybody riled and he did it.
Nazareth was his hometown, a tiny town; and he knew them well and they knew him well. A little background, scholars think there were only 400 or so people in Nazareth at the time and given that families were way larger back then, that’s only like ten to fifteen households. Familiarity reigned. They all knew Jesus. They all knew his back story. They may have thought he was a little out there. Who knows? Yet, they respectfully still let him read in the synagogue and they welcomed his comments. They were probably even quite proud that he had a ministry that was really picking up. To be honest, they had probably even suspected that God was calling him to something big since as a boy he was able to teach even the Jerusalem rabbis. And moreover, it seems they seemed to have respected that Joseph was for all shapes and purposes his father even when they may have known that maybe he wasn’t.
Looking at the way the story goes here, Jesus really seems to push a button on them around the subject that what God was doing in, and through, and as him was meant for a wider audience than just Israel. Why would this be a button? Well, scholars suspect that the wee tiny town of Nazareth was a staunchly Jewish, strongly conservative town. You know, there’s Mennonite and then there’s Old Order Mennonite. There’s Presbyterian and then there’s Double Predestination Westminster Confession Presbyterians, Calvinists whom John Calvin himself would condemn. (Sorry, that was for my preacher friends who read my sermons to get a chuckle.) The people of Nazareth had a strong Jewish identity.
Having a strong Jewish identity in a Roman world was complicated. Here’s some more history that might help. Nazareth was about an hour’s walk from the large, still-under-construction Roman city of Sepphoris. Sepphoris would have been full of your typical Roman temples to their randy gods, those naughty Roman bathhouses, and those bullying Roman soldiers. It is likely that the men of Nazareth, even Jesus and his brothers, would have daily made that walk to Sepphoris to build houses for all those wealthy Roman citizens moving into the beautiful countryside of Galilean Israel. The men of Nazareth who worked in Sepphoris would have likely been daily ridiculed particularly by the soldiers for being faithful, Law-keeping Jews who dressed oddly and kept to themselves.
Well, precocious Jesus there in the hometown synagogue saying he wasn’t going to do in their midst what he did in Capernaum but rather God was sending him further on to the likes of those Roman invader types was a button. And then, Jesus seems to imply that it was the fault of the people of Nazareth for not being faithful enough. Elijah was sent to the widow of Zarephath because the Israelites at the time had given themselves over to the gods of the Canaanites. Well, you can see where this is heading – the hillside at the edge of town where they could give him a start at a little tumble. We can just see how the people of Nazareth had likely just had enough of their precocious, smart-alecky hometown boy who knew how to push buttons.
All the hometown tension around Jesus made it difficult for them to consider that actually, maybe, they needed to expand their horizons a bit and look at what God was doing not just among and for the Jews, but for the whole world – even those rude Roman bullies. Even though they were the community who had fostered and nurtured their people’s Messiah, they could not seem to see that their Messiah was also the Lord and Saviour of the world. They didn’t seem to see that in raising Jesus they were already a part of what God was doing not only to deliver his people, but to also bring the Kingdom of God to the whole world. Their faithfulness, very commendable as it was (after all they nurtured the Messiah) was not so much about what God was actually doing among them, but more so about their expectations about what God should do. They couldn’t see how they were a part of something bigger that God was already doing in their midst through Joseph’s son Jesus and were instead holding out for God to do something they believed God should or ought to do – deliver them from Roman occupation – so that they could continue on in the way they believed they always had.
I’m not sure that makes any sense or not so let bring it a little closer to our hometowns. In comparison to the people of Nazareth, you folks eight years ago were able to see what God was doing in your midst and sensed that he had more to do through you. And so, you went with the Coop. Oddly, even though people said “Wow” when they heard what we were doing, no cooperative ministries like ours have sprung up. Even in our own Presbytery, where we are first hand knowledge, John Gilbert and I and a few other Presbytery reps spent a lot of time meeting with several groups of churches who were located close together and were situated so that it just made sense for them to form a cooperative ministry. But they said no. The prevailing reason seemed to be they just wanted to continue the way they were familiar with until it was no longer possible.
Being the people of God requires being gratefully aware and amazed at what God has done and is doing through us each and our churches. But, it also requires being ready and willing to transform and adapt to the new that comes about in the world in order to be a hopeful presence. The temptation is always to hunker down in the security of what is familiar to us and to shy away from the discomfort of proclaiming good news to the poor, release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free, and doing something about economic fairness in the world. The tendency is that we hunker down into familiarity and shy away from God’s Mission in the world, in our communities.
The church can be and usually is a bastion of hope in the world. Yet, we tend to focus too much on the bastion and not so much on the hope. We must not forget that the Spirit of the Lord is upon us. We must not be far-sighted, where we can’t see what God is doing in our midst all the while wishing he would do in our midst what we hear he is doing elsewhere. God has been working through us fostering and nurturing the faithfulness out of which comes God’s mission, meaning that which God is doing to heal broken community, indeed, his whole creation.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, but what’s he doing? Well, for two years now we have been in and out of the main headquarters of our bastion, which is our buildings, our sanctuaries, this thing we now call in-person worship. We have learned a few things in all this, I hope. For one, we’ve learned that the church isn’t just the building, as if that hasn’t been said before. We’ve learned that we can still keep in touch and love and support each other even when we are apart from the comfort and familiarity if not laziness that “going to church” and doing what we believe we’ve always done breeds. The things that we have done to build our love and support for one another during these difficult two years is the nurturing ground of the mission that God is leading us into. God brought us together eight years ago and has helped us to endure this pandemic. It is safe to say that God’s not done with us yet. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us. Do I hear an “Amen”?
