Sermon from 11th February 2007
Out of our comfort zone
Today our Vicar, Cameron Barker, gave a sermon based on the passage from Luke 4: 31-44
Most of us carry one of these around with us, I suspect. Of course I mean we carry a metaphorical box round with us rather than an actual one. But this box is a very handy illustration, and not just because it fits in my pocket! It also has wonderfully neat compartments, that keep the various parts inside in a safe, separate order. So this box is a fair representation of how we tend to see life, the universe, and everything! It all has a neat, and safe order to it. And that helps us to live neat, safe lives, in our neat, safe world, that we can understand and make sense of. Until we come across a passage of scripture like our second reading this morning!
What we’ve just heard does nothing short of blow our neat, safe lives out of the water! Here in Luke chapter 4 Jesus not only taught in a completely new and different way. He also broke all the laws of physics. And then he dealt with demons by the dozen – before he calmly walked away from it all! At the very least, Jesus leaps out of whatever neat, safe box we think we’ve managed to fit him into. No matter how we saw or defined him before, this Jesus is someone who demands that we meet him on his terms. And those terms are bound to be outside our comfort zone! So beware! Meeting Jesus on his terms could change our lives – in the same way that Jesus changed lives in Capernaum that Sabbath.
Before we go any further lets put this passage into context in our series. Since Christmas we have been following the unfolding story of Jesus’ adult life as told by Luke. We first saw how God sent John the Baptist to prepare the way for Jesus’ work. Then came Jesus’ baptism, and his temptation in the desert. Last week we heard about Jesus’ visit to his home town of Nazareth. His message didn’t go down too well there, for all those reasons that we heard. But it was always Jesus’ plan to get about as much as he could, so he made his next base in Capernaum. That was a fishing town on the shores of Lake Galilee – and a very important place in First-Century North Palestine, for a number of reasons.
Capernaum was a large fishing town, and so a key place of trade for the region. People came and went often – and they carried news as well as goods around the area. Capernaum was the local HQ for Roman troops too, so news travelled from there around the whole Empire. That suited Jesus well at the start of his public ministry – which he began by making this rather loud noise! Luke wrote about how Jesus broke the mould from the very start. He acted outside the box that people were used to. And, as we’ve heard, he amazed everyone by how he did so. So it’s little wonder that news about Jesus quickly spread far and wide.
The first way in which Jesus amazed people in Capernaum was by his teaching. It was the custom in those days for a visiting rabbi to be invited to teach in the local synagogue. Jesus was known as a rabbi, a teacher, so he was asked to speak on this Sabbath. What so amazed people was how he taught. Luke doesn’t tell us what Jesus preached about. We could make an educated guess that it probably was about God’s kingdom. The main difference was that Jesus taught with authority. People back then were used to hearing what all the ancient authorities had to say on the subject at hand. By contrast, Jesus told them what he thought about it – and in a way that sounded like he knew!
People may perhaps have had some doubts about Jesus’ right to teach that way. But they could hardly argue with the authority with which he acted! There was a dramatic illustration of that on that Sabbath. Jesus was challenged, in the synagogue itself, by a man possessed by a demon. Now there’s an idea that’s well outside the neat, safe box that most of us live in! We can’t argue too much with the fact that evil exists in our world. In some way, shape, or form, that’s a reality that most of us will have encountered at some point in our lives. Evil may not have impacted us in a personal way, perhaps. But at the very least we’ll know that, for example, Hitler’s plan to destroy an entire people can’t be described as anything other than evil.
We may struggle rather more with the idea of evil being personified, though. That’s an issue which we’ve already come across in this series – when Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert. I said at the time that I personally have no problem believing that the devil does exist. I also said that we don’t have to read much further in the Bible to find other examples of evil activity. This just proves that point – because this story is in the very same chapter! On this occasion it’s not the devil himself who opposes Jesus, but one of his minions. Or rather, I should say, lots of his minions, because this incident was far from an isolated one.
What’s so fascinating is that the demons knew better than anyone else who Jesus was! It took Jesus’ own disciples ages to cotton on to who he was. Even at the end of three years with him they still didn’t fully know who he was! The demons knew though; right from the start. The first one, in the synagogue, called Jesus ‘God’s holy messenger’. The others, in Luke’s summary later in the chapter, called Jesus ‘the Son of God’ – which amounts to the same thing. But it was Jesus himself who made the matter clear. The demons knew that he was the Messiah, the Christ – the one who had come to do battle with them, with their master, and all his works.
As I said, we in the safe, comfortable 21st-Century West may struggle with this whole idea. But there is no getting away from the biblical reality. Jesus did see a crucial part of his mission and calling as being to tackle evil in all its forms – and to defeat it. His greatest, and the ultimate, triumph would happen at the cross. But before he got there Jesus didn’t miss any opportunity to confront his enemy head-on – as he did here in Capernaum. And Jesus amazed people once again by how he did it. He’d taught with authority; and here he acted with authority. And once again Jesus did it in a completely different way to what people were used to.
Demons and exorcisms weren’t unknown at that time – any more than they are unknown today. And I’m not just talking about other parts of the world. Each Anglican Diocese in this country has an official exorcist to deal with such matters. Back in the First-Century the usual way of dealing with demons was by prayer, or spells, or use of special ritual. Jesus didn’t do anything like that. He ‘simply’ relied on his own God-given authority, ordered the demon to be quiet, and to come out of the man. And it did! Jesus made no fuss or performance: he just awesomely demonstrated his own authority and power. It was the sort of authority and power that people hadn’t ever seen before. And, not surprisingly, they were all amazed by the power of Jesus’ words and deeds – and told other people about it.
But even then Jesus was far from finished for the day! He went from the synagogue to Simon’s house – where he found that Simon’s mother-in-law was very unwell. Luke, (who was a doctor, remember) said she had a high fever. Given what he’d already done that day it’s no surprise that people told Jesus about her illness. And we can’t be too surprised by the outcome of Jesus going to see her. What we could miss, though is how Jesus healed her. The word in Greek is the same one that Jesus used to the demons! He ‘rebuked’ the fever, ‘ordered’ it to leave her. And, once again, it did! She was instantly so well that she got out of bed, and did what women did then – waited on them!
Well, there’s another incident outside our neat, safe box of how life works! Things like this don’t happen, do they?! People don’t get made well on the spot. They can’t! All I can say is that it certainly appears that they happened around Jesus – here and in countless other places in all 4 gospels. And once again we don’t have to wait too long to read about Jesus doing it again. The Sabbath ended at sunset, so people were then free to travel. They came to Jesus in droves, bringing their sick friends and family with them. Luke only gives a brief summary of what happened. Jesus laid his hands on each of them, and healed them – including casting out who knows how many more demons.
Of course there’s a full sermon to be preached about the link between demonic activity and sickness. There’s not time for that now, so do hear this crucial point. In other places in the Bible it makes it clear that there are many reasons why people get sick. Sometimes we know what the reasons are; sometimes we don’t. There is no suggestion that Christians need to hunt for demons, or sin, when people are sick. What we are to do, though, is to bring those sick people to Jesus in prayer, to ask him to heal them. That’s one lesson we can, should and must learn from this passage. Jesus is able to heal, now as then. He knows what the reasons for sickness are – and he can deal with them all, just as he did here.
There’s another very important lesson for us to learn from this passage. Jesus is so much more than ‘just’ a healer. As I said, he operated outside people’s boxes right from the start. Of course the good people of Capernaum wanted Jesus to stay on in their town – no doubt to do more of the same. But when they went to look for him the next morning they found that Jesus had already gone. He’d gone to find some peace and quiet after that rather dramatic day. But his plan was to move on somewhere else. Capernaum wasn’t a big enough place for everyone to come to. Jesus needed to take this good news about the arrival of God’s kingdom to people where they were, so they could experience it too.
That’s where we leave the story today, with Jesus moving on, to find new places to preach and teach about God’s kingdom. As usual, Luke didn’t write any more about what happened to those whose lives Jesus had touched in Capernaum. It’s a fair bet that their lives were never the same again, though. How could they be, after what they had heard and seen, and experienced? Jesus had quite literally turned their world upside down, by his teaching and his actions. He had done something completely new and different, in a new and different way that showed God was at work as never before.
Of course we are - or should be - in just the same position today. What we’ve heard are stories that should cause us to question the neat, safe world in which we live. If they’re true stories about things that we too can experience, then this Jesus has just turned our life upside down too. It may be outside our comfort zone, but this is God still at work today: still bringing in his kingdom; still defeating evil; still teaching; still healing the sick. And that’s still good news for everyone who’s prepared to hear it – and to be changed by it. So lets pray that we will be …
Today our Vicar, Cameron Barker, gave a sermon based on the passage from Luke 4: 31-44
Most of us carry one of these around with us, I suspect. Of course I mean we carry a metaphorical box round with us rather than an actual one. But this box is a very handy illustration, and not just because it fits in my pocket! It also has wonderfully neat compartments, that keep the various parts inside in a safe, separate order. So this box is a fair representation of how we tend to see life, the universe, and everything! It all has a neat, and safe order to it. And that helps us to live neat, safe lives, in our neat, safe world, that we can understand and make sense of. Until we come across a passage of scripture like our second reading this morning!
What we’ve just heard does nothing short of blow our neat, safe lives out of the water! Here in Luke chapter 4 Jesus not only taught in a completely new and different way. He also broke all the laws of physics. And then he dealt with demons by the dozen – before he calmly walked away from it all! At the very least, Jesus leaps out of whatever neat, safe box we think we’ve managed to fit him into. No matter how we saw or defined him before, this Jesus is someone who demands that we meet him on his terms. And those terms are bound to be outside our comfort zone! So beware! Meeting Jesus on his terms could change our lives – in the same way that Jesus changed lives in Capernaum that Sabbath.
Before we go any further lets put this passage into context in our series. Since Christmas we have been following the unfolding story of Jesus’ adult life as told by Luke. We first saw how God sent John the Baptist to prepare the way for Jesus’ work. Then came Jesus’ baptism, and his temptation in the desert. Last week we heard about Jesus’ visit to his home town of Nazareth. His message didn’t go down too well there, for all those reasons that we heard. But it was always Jesus’ plan to get about as much as he could, so he made his next base in Capernaum. That was a fishing town on the shores of Lake Galilee – and a very important place in First-Century North Palestine, for a number of reasons.
Capernaum was a large fishing town, and so a key place of trade for the region. People came and went often – and they carried news as well as goods around the area. Capernaum was the local HQ for Roman troops too, so news travelled from there around the whole Empire. That suited Jesus well at the start of his public ministry – which he began by making this rather loud noise! Luke wrote about how Jesus broke the mould from the very start. He acted outside the box that people were used to. And, as we’ve heard, he amazed everyone by how he did so. So it’s little wonder that news about Jesus quickly spread far and wide.
The first way in which Jesus amazed people in Capernaum was by his teaching. It was the custom in those days for a visiting rabbi to be invited to teach in the local synagogue. Jesus was known as a rabbi, a teacher, so he was asked to speak on this Sabbath. What so amazed people was how he taught. Luke doesn’t tell us what Jesus preached about. We could make an educated guess that it probably was about God’s kingdom. The main difference was that Jesus taught with authority. People back then were used to hearing what all the ancient authorities had to say on the subject at hand. By contrast, Jesus told them what he thought about it – and in a way that sounded like he knew!
People may perhaps have had some doubts about Jesus’ right to teach that way. But they could hardly argue with the authority with which he acted! There was a dramatic illustration of that on that Sabbath. Jesus was challenged, in the synagogue itself, by a man possessed by a demon. Now there’s an idea that’s well outside the neat, safe box that most of us live in! We can’t argue too much with the fact that evil exists in our world. In some way, shape, or form, that’s a reality that most of us will have encountered at some point in our lives. Evil may not have impacted us in a personal way, perhaps. But at the very least we’ll know that, for example, Hitler’s plan to destroy an entire people can’t be described as anything other than evil.
We may struggle rather more with the idea of evil being personified, though. That’s an issue which we’ve already come across in this series – when Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert. I said at the time that I personally have no problem believing that the devil does exist. I also said that we don’t have to read much further in the Bible to find other examples of evil activity. This just proves that point – because this story is in the very same chapter! On this occasion it’s not the devil himself who opposes Jesus, but one of his minions. Or rather, I should say, lots of his minions, because this incident was far from an isolated one.
What’s so fascinating is that the demons knew better than anyone else who Jesus was! It took Jesus’ own disciples ages to cotton on to who he was. Even at the end of three years with him they still didn’t fully know who he was! The demons knew though; right from the start. The first one, in the synagogue, called Jesus ‘God’s holy messenger’. The others, in Luke’s summary later in the chapter, called Jesus ‘the Son of God’ – which amounts to the same thing. But it was Jesus himself who made the matter clear. The demons knew that he was the Messiah, the Christ – the one who had come to do battle with them, with their master, and all his works.
As I said, we in the safe, comfortable 21st-Century West may struggle with this whole idea. But there is no getting away from the biblical reality. Jesus did see a crucial part of his mission and calling as being to tackle evil in all its forms – and to defeat it. His greatest, and the ultimate, triumph would happen at the cross. But before he got there Jesus didn’t miss any opportunity to confront his enemy head-on – as he did here in Capernaum. And Jesus amazed people once again by how he did it. He’d taught with authority; and here he acted with authority. And once again Jesus did it in a completely different way to what people were used to.
Demons and exorcisms weren’t unknown at that time – any more than they are unknown today. And I’m not just talking about other parts of the world. Each Anglican Diocese in this country has an official exorcist to deal with such matters. Back in the First-Century the usual way of dealing with demons was by prayer, or spells, or use of special ritual. Jesus didn’t do anything like that. He ‘simply’ relied on his own God-given authority, ordered the demon to be quiet, and to come out of the man. And it did! Jesus made no fuss or performance: he just awesomely demonstrated his own authority and power. It was the sort of authority and power that people hadn’t ever seen before. And, not surprisingly, they were all amazed by the power of Jesus’ words and deeds – and told other people about it.
But even then Jesus was far from finished for the day! He went from the synagogue to Simon’s house – where he found that Simon’s mother-in-law was very unwell. Luke, (who was a doctor, remember) said she had a high fever. Given what he’d already done that day it’s no surprise that people told Jesus about her illness. And we can’t be too surprised by the outcome of Jesus going to see her. What we could miss, though is how Jesus healed her. The word in Greek is the same one that Jesus used to the demons! He ‘rebuked’ the fever, ‘ordered’ it to leave her. And, once again, it did! She was instantly so well that she got out of bed, and did what women did then – waited on them!
Well, there’s another incident outside our neat, safe box of how life works! Things like this don’t happen, do they?! People don’t get made well on the spot. They can’t! All I can say is that it certainly appears that they happened around Jesus – here and in countless other places in all 4 gospels. And once again we don’t have to wait too long to read about Jesus doing it again. The Sabbath ended at sunset, so people were then free to travel. They came to Jesus in droves, bringing their sick friends and family with them. Luke only gives a brief summary of what happened. Jesus laid his hands on each of them, and healed them – including casting out who knows how many more demons.
Of course there’s a full sermon to be preached about the link between demonic activity and sickness. There’s not time for that now, so do hear this crucial point. In other places in the Bible it makes it clear that there are many reasons why people get sick. Sometimes we know what the reasons are; sometimes we don’t. There is no suggestion that Christians need to hunt for demons, or sin, when people are sick. What we are to do, though, is to bring those sick people to Jesus in prayer, to ask him to heal them. That’s one lesson we can, should and must learn from this passage. Jesus is able to heal, now as then. He knows what the reasons for sickness are – and he can deal with them all, just as he did here.
There’s another very important lesson for us to learn from this passage. Jesus is so much more than ‘just’ a healer. As I said, he operated outside people’s boxes right from the start. Of course the good people of Capernaum wanted Jesus to stay on in their town – no doubt to do more of the same. But when they went to look for him the next morning they found that Jesus had already gone. He’d gone to find some peace and quiet after that rather dramatic day. But his plan was to move on somewhere else. Capernaum wasn’t a big enough place for everyone to come to. Jesus needed to take this good news about the arrival of God’s kingdom to people where they were, so they could experience it too.
That’s where we leave the story today, with Jesus moving on, to find new places to preach and teach about God’s kingdom. As usual, Luke didn’t write any more about what happened to those whose lives Jesus had touched in Capernaum. It’s a fair bet that their lives were never the same again, though. How could they be, after what they had heard and seen, and experienced? Jesus had quite literally turned their world upside down, by his teaching and his actions. He had done something completely new and different, in a new and different way that showed God was at work as never before.
Of course we are - or should be - in just the same position today. What we’ve heard are stories that should cause us to question the neat, safe world in which we live. If they’re true stories about things that we too can experience, then this Jesus has just turned our life upside down too. It may be outside our comfort zone, but this is God still at work today: still bringing in his kingdom; still defeating evil; still teaching; still healing the sick. And that’s still good news for everyone who’s prepared to hear it – and to be changed by it. So lets pray that we will be …
posted by Parish Administrator at 7:44 pm
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