For years, I wondered what it meant to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

I would hear people talking about such a relationship, but it didn’t ring true to me. I couldn’t imagine how you could have a relationship with someone you couldn’t see or touch, meet at Starbucks, or slap on the back. I certainly understood how the people of Nazareth had a personal relationship with Jesus. They knew him as the son of Joseph and Mary. They had watched him grow up. They had seen him in his father’s carpenter shop, met him in the street, listened to him at the synagogue. Their relationship was personal. No doubt about it. But I didn’t understand how I could experience such a relationship.

And so I continued to pray to God, read the stories of Jesus, and open myself to the power of the Holy Spirit — all the time wondering what it might mean to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

Then, one day, I got it. I realized that this personal relationship wasn’t something that was supposed to start with me. It was supposed to start with God. God desperately wanted me to understand his will and his way. He wanted me to feel his love and forgiveness. He wanted me to see his grace and his truth.

And so he sent Jesus into my life. God came to earth in the form of a person — his only son Jesus — so that I could see exactly what God was like. That’s the personal side of the personal relationship. It has to do with God coming to me as a person.

Jesus is — for me, for you, and for everyone in the world — the intersection of God and humanity.

So now I have a personal relationship with Jesus because it is a relationship with a person. Not a concept, not an idea, not a theory — a person. I can hear the words of Jesus, see his actions, and feel his power — and through him I can get a much better grasp of what God desires for me and for all the people of this world.

Jesus is, for me, the face of God. He helps me to recognize God, and to see exactly what kind of Lord our God is. When I look at Jesus, I like what I see, and I’m certainly not alone in feeling this attraction. In fact, Stephen Prothero, a religion professor at Boston University has recently written a book called American Jesus. In this book, he writes that Jesus is a man that “nobody hates.”

Now maybe that doesn’t surprise you. After all, roughly 85 percent of the U.S. population is Christian. Two-thirds of contemporary Americans say they have made a “personal commitment” to Jesus, and three-quarters say they have sensed Jesus’ presence at some time.

But here’s where things get interesting. Almost half of America’s non-Christians believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and resurrected from the dead. Prothero reports that many atheists and Buddhists enjoy images of Jesus. Some Hindus see Jesus as an avatar of the god Vishnu. Some Jews consider him to be a great rabbi.

Jesus is a man that nobody hates.

I’d like you to think about this as we take a close look at today’s passage from Luke. Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness, and then he returns to Galilee, filled with the power of the Spirit. He begins to teach in synagogues, and everyone seems to love him.

Then he comes to Nazareth, his home town, and goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He is invited to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah is given to him. He opens it and locates Isaiah 61, which was written by the prophet to prepare the Israelites for their deliverance from captivity in Babylon:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 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.”

Then Jesus rolls up the scroll, gives it back to the attendant, and sits down. In the first century, teachers sat and students stood — the exact opposite of what we do today, with teachers standing and students sitting. Luke tells us that the eyes of all in the synagogue are fixed on him. Then he begins to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:14-21).

By saying this, Jesus is making the point that he is the one who is anointed with the Holy Spirit — he is the Messiah, which literally means “anointed one.” The verses from Isaiah give a sense of the direction his ministry will take — proclaiming good news to the poor, release to captives, and healing to the infirm; he is offering freedom to all who are oppressed, and proclaiming “the year of the Lord's favor” to all who will listen.

This is good news to the people of Nazareth, and everyone speaks well of him.. They are amazed by the eloquent and gracious words that come out of the mouth of this well-known local boy. “Is not this Joseph’s son?” they whisper to each other in amazement.

But Jesus is not completely comfortable with this love fest. He hasn’t been sent by God to be a man that nobody hates.

“Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’” he says to them, with an edge in his voice. “And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” Jesus suspects that the people of Nazareth want him to heal the sick and drive out demons, as he did in the town of Capernaum. They want some miracles, something to make them feel good. But Jesus is concerned that his message will be overshadowed by his miracles, and he wonders if the people of his hometown have the faith they need, in order to see what God is doing through him.

So Jesus gives them a dose of the truth of God, straight up. “Truly I tell you,” he announces, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” He doesn’t expect them to hear, receive, or accept what he is about to say to them. “But the truth is,” he continues, “there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when … there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.” He reminds them of a story they don’t want to hear — one in which the people of Israel were unfaithful, and God punished them with a drought. In this case, God sent the prophet Elijah to a town outside of Israel, and there Elijah helped a widow who had faith in God.

Then Jesus says, “There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” Once again, God sent a prophet to a foreigner, and when he obeyed the instructions of the prophet, he was helped and healed. In both of these stories from the Old Testament, God sends miraculous help to people who are not Israelites — not part of the chosen people of God. Jesus is saying that God’s salvation is gong to be extended way beyond the borders of Israel, and is going to include a lot of folks that the residents Nazareth can’t stand to be around..

When they hear this, everyone in the synagogue is filled with rage. Suddenly, Jesus is a man that everybody hates. The get up, drive him out of town, and lead him to a cliff, so that they can throw him off. But Jesus passes through the midst of them and goes on his way (vv. 22-30).

Why do you think the people of Nazareth become so furious when Jesus refuses to do miracles for them? Why do they become violent when he speaks of taking God’s salvation to other people? I think they expect him to meet their needs, and to give them what they want. But Jesus is on a mission from God, and he can only help people who are in line with God’s will and God’s way.

Remember: Jesus is the intersection of God and humanity. When these two roads come together, the will of God is always going to have the right of way.

So what does this mean for us? Clearly, we have to get our church’s mission in line with the mission of Jesus Christ. This means offering good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. Here at FPC, we call ourselves a mission-minded church, and we are making great strides in this area. In the year to come, I want us to continue to focus on delivering God’s salvation to other people, doing whatever we can to save them in body, mind, and spirit.

My colleague Jan Edmiston preached a great sermon at Carrie Yearick’s installation last Sunday afternoon. Speaking on the parable of the lost sheep to Carrie’s new congregation in Rockville, Jan said that they shouldn’t be mad if Carrie spent time outside the church, reaching out to the community. Jan knew that church members might want Carrie to take care of them, like the people of Nazareth wanted Jesus to meet their needs. But the mission of the church requires that Carrie deliver salvation to others.

I’m happy to say that no one tried to throw Carrie off a cliff.

At the same time, we need to look inward and deepen our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We need to grow in faith, if we’re going to understand God’s will and God’s way. This means meeting in small groups for Bible Study, prayer, and spiritual growth, doing whatever we can to learn more about God’s forgiveness, grace and truth. In these small groups, we’ll see the love of God as we discover more about Jesus, and we’ll feel the love of God as we grow closer to each other. By being both small-group-centered and mission-minded, we will find that our personal needs are being met at the same time that we reach out to meet the needs of others.

We won’t always feel good about Jesus as he pushes us to go out in mission, and to grow deeper in our faith. But we’ll always be helped by our closeness to him, because he shows us exactly what God is like. Amen.


Sources:

Prothero, Stephen. American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.