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January 28, 2007
The Very Rev. Dr. Brian Baker
I do not care about Trinity Cathedral.
I do not care about the Episcopal Church.
I do not care about Christianity.
I haven’t lived in California long enough to know of a suitable town to use as an analogy for Nazareth, so I’m hoping that after this sermon is over someone can let me know of one, so I can use it in future sermons. Nazareth was nowhere. Nazareth was a small town, with only one well. It was not on a major thoroughfare or highway. Nazareth was not a place that you would go to; it wasn’t even a place that you would go through.
If the Nazarean Chamber of Commerce wanted to put up a sign, something like “Welcome to Nazareth, Home of—” well, there would be nothing that they’re home of. They were not home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, they weren’t Home of the World’s Largest Ball of String, they were home of nothing. Nobody.
Until Jesus happened. By the time Jesus came into town, the first appearance in Nazareth after his ministry had begun, he was famous. He had traveled throughout Galilee, teaching and preaching. Everyone knew Jesus. Jesus of *Nazareth!* Jesus was putting Nazareth on the map! The way that kinship and honor worked in the time, it meant a lot. It made everyone in Nazareth important. It made every single person in Nazareth special. So when Jesus walked into town, it was a big deal.
I can imagine them just flocking around him. That next Friday night, the synagogue had probably never been so crowded. Jesus took the scroll, and it wasn’t just that this was *the* Jesus, and it wasn’t just that he was reading from the scroll in the synagogue, but it was what he chose to read that got their attention.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind.” For hundreds of years, Jews had been hearing that passage and yearning for that passage to be fulfilled. And then, after Jesus put the scroll away, he began his first sermon in Nazareth. The first word of the first sermon, the first word of the ministry of Jesus as recorded in Luke’s Gospel, is the word “Today.”
Jesus said, “Today, this reading is fulfilled in your hearing.” Can you imagine your excitement on hearing these words? Not only is Jesus famous, not only is Jesus from your hometown and making you special and important, not only is Jesus in your synagogue, but also Jesus is saying that today, all of your hopes are being fulfilled. It’s amazing.
Just a few short verses later, though, every single person in Nazareth is going to be mobbing around Jesus, not to celebrate him, but to kill him. In a few short verses they are going to be grabbing him and trying to throw him off a cliff to kill him. What happened in Nazareth to change the hearts of everyone there? What made them so angry?
It was the rest of his sermon.
What he said next was, “I don’t care about Nazareth.” Imagine if you heard those words. Imagine if you were there in Nazareth— finally Nazareth was getting on the map, and this was the guy who was going to make everything good for you. And he gets all uppity, says, “I don’t care about Nazareth?” Why would he say something like that? “I don’t care about Nazareth.”
Jesus says, “Surely you will say to me, ‘Doctor, cure yourself;’ ” which means, take care of your own. Jesus says, “I’m not interested in taking care of ‘my own’.” Then he reminds them of stories of their past, stories that weren’t all that interesting or popular.
Jesus tells them, “Remember Elijah? Back when there was this great famine in Israel? People were dying? There was only one person Elijah saved, a widow in Sidon.”
We don’t like people in Sidon.
“And Elisha? Do you know how many lepers there were in Israel in Elisha’s time? But only one leper was cured; a general from Syria.”
We don’t like people in Syria.
Jesus says, “I’m not interested in Nazareth. I’m interested in people in Syria. I’m interested in people in Sidon. I’m interested in people you don’t like.”
The people of Nazareth were finally going to get to feel special, feel right and good. Jesus wasn’t interested in that. Let’s go back to the passage that Jesus read. What was Jesus interested in? Bringing sight to the blind; not just the blind in Nazareth, but the blind everywhere in the world. He was interested in people who were blind to God’s love for them, people who were unable to see God’s Spirit in everyone around them. He wanted to give sight to them, not just to the blind in Nazareth.
Jesus wanted to free every person who was captive to their past misdeeds, their sense of sin, their loneliness, their lack of community. He wanted to free all the oppressed, give sight to all the blind, feed all those who were hungry for meaning and purpose.
There’s one thing that gets in the way of Jesus being able to do that. It is our need to feel special, to feel “better than,” to treat this love and sight and freedom as a scarce resource that I need to hoard and hold onto. The people of Nazareth wanted, needed, to feel “better than,” and Jesus was their ticket. Because Jesus knew that was what they wanted to do, to claim Jesus, and say, “We are the people who have Jesus, which makes us ‘better than.’ ”
Jesus says, “I don’t care about you.” He has to get away from them; he has to get away from that mindset. It’s not that Jesus doesn’t care about the people in Nazareth, but in their hearts, they want to turn him into an idol. They want to make him into the path to be better than others. And in that case, Jesus doesn’t care about them.
If being a Christian makes me “better than” people who are not Christians, I don’t care about Christianity. If being an Episcopalian makes me “better than” other Christians, I don’t care about the Episcopal Church. If being a member of Trinity Cathedral makes me “better than” members of other congregations, then I don’t care about Trinity.
The thing I love about Christianity is that Christians, no matter how off the track we get, no matter how focused we can be on our own superiority, no matter how insular we become, we can’t get away from Jesus. Jesus is always there to say to us, “I don’t care about Christianity. I care about loving the world. I care about loving Muslims, I care about loving Buddhists, I care about loving Jews, I care about loving atheists, I care about bringing *everyone* alive. Giving sight to everyone. Freeing everyone who is oppressed.”
That’s what I love about Christianity- that we can’t get away from this Jesus. What I love about the Episcopal Church is that we strive mightily to respect the dignity of every human being. We strive mightily to welcome everyone, with their opinions and their beliefs, no matter how weird their beliefs may seem. No matter how much someone may rub me the wrong way, in the Episcopal Church, they are welcome. Everybody is welcome. That’s what I love about the Episcopal Church.
What I love about Trinity Cathedral is you. I am in awe of this community of faith because of your passion to bring Christ’s love to a broken world. Not just to members of Trinity, not just to Episcopalians, not just to Christians, but to the world. That is what I love about Trinity Cathedral.
What excites me about Trinity Cathedral is that we have just begun. There is so much energy here to bring Christ’s love to our broken and hurting world—I’m amazed at the energy and power that’s right here at Trinity. Now, I’m not smart enough to know what to do with all of that energy, which is the other thing that I love about this community. Trinity is full of people who are smart, who have good ideas, and who have the energy to follow through.
Just a few weeks ago, people started talking about the need for a community of faith in Natomas. Natomas is growing like crazy, there is no Episcopal church, and there are all these families in Natomas. People started saying, why don’t we start some kind of church in Natomas, a worship service? A couple weeks later, someone came up to me to ask permission—“Would it be OK with you if I researched different schools and auditoriums and places to find a site for a service in Natomas?” This was two weeks ago.
Then I was told this past week that they’ve found a site. There’s a group of people who are starting to look at a Sunday afternoon or evening family-oriented service in Natomas at a school. Isn’t that something?
Now, this was not my idea. But when you’re part of a community where Christ’s love is overflowing, there is this driving need to share it outside the walls.
On Friday, a woman came by the office and asked if she could talk with me for a few moments. She was on fire about the number of young people who swarm into downtown Sacramento on Friday and Saturday nights. She was wondering, is there some way that we can find a place to hold a service, to bring people together, to create community, on a Friday or a Saturday night. Can we do it in a way, a style, that will bring them alive, make them want to be a part of it; to share Christ’s love with the Friday and Saturday night clubbing crowd. Isn’t that something?
And that’s just in a couple of weeks in the life of Trinity. I can’t keep up! It’s very exciting. Luckily, I don’t have to keep up with all of this, because we have hundreds of ministers here who just want to get out of these walls and share Christ’s love with the world.
I don’t care about Trinity Cathedral—as an institution. I don’t care about the Episcopal Church—as an institution. I don’t care about Christianity—as an institution. I care about us, as a way of sharing Christ’s love, of healing the world with Christ’s love. I’m overwhelmed and in awe of what we’re doing, and what we can do.
I love Trinity Cathedral. I hope you do too. Amen.
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