Sermon: I Set My Friends on Fire

The following sermon is based on Luke's account of Christ's rejection in his hometown of Nazareth. This passage comes to us from Luke 4:14-30

On July 9 I took a day off and drove up to Cleveland to celebrate my Dad’s birthday while he was on a tour stop. Some of you already know this but my Dad is akin to a Director of Logistics for Ernie Ball’s traveling stage and displays at the Vans Warped Tour, a traveling punk rock music festival. I am not a big punk music fan but the opportunity to go backstage and feel important was too hard to pass up. So Dad and his all-access pass took me around and we saw everything there was to see. Really it was a lot of fun. As we were heading back to the tour buses we passed by the bands promotional tent where they sold their t-shirts and other stuff. As we walked I never suspected that amongst all the acts with their tight black jeans and faded $50 t-shirts I would have harvested out of it a sermon insight. I Set My Friends On Fire was the name of one of the bands that traveled with the Warped Tour and I instantly thought of Jesus & this passage. But being a pastor, to be fair, I am thinking about Jesus a lot so I guess it isn’t too rare.

I Set My Friends On Fire, for me is the perfect description to what is happening here in Luke 4. The scriptures do not say if the place where Christ read the Isaiah passage was the synagogue where he & his family attended but what we do know is that when Christ is done reading people click into that “local boy done good” mindset. They are thinking wasn’t that nice? He is so gracious and kind. His teaching is wonderful. This is the point in the story that Hollywood would pan over to very proud parents and grandparents that are beaming with pride silently confirming what the synagogue is asking: is this really Joseph’s son? Yet all this pride and beaming seems to convey that the folks gathered there didn’t make the connection that when Christ read the passage pronouncing the Spirit of the living God falling upon him he was literally talking about himself. From the outsider observer prospective I am really not all that surprised. Captivated by one of their own and his ability to command the attention of the room pretty soon the what he was saying gets overshadowed by who it is that is saying it – “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”

For those gathered there that day & even for some who gather in churches all over this world this day the nature of Jesus’ ministry is often misunderstood. Jesus begins his ministry, as Luke tells us, with a prophetic pronouncement that blows your socks off. The Spirit of the Living God falls upon this person of Jesus and it isn’t to be an amazing & gracious teacher, being the home-grown talent that knows what is fair game and what sacred cows to avoid. Rather Jesus’ ministry is to proclaim freedom to captive, sight to the blind, in other words Jesus is here to turn the world upside down, tell people something that they need to rather than want to hear, and Jesus is going to start right here by setting these friends on fire & maybe some of us as well.

Of the three statements that Jesus makes fairly rapid-fire after the events associated with the reading the only one that seems to have really any substantive baring on what is about to go down is the remark about being a prophet in your hometown – something Jesus is living out in real time before us. Being a prophet as we said just before is all about being prophetic, speaking the truth when folks don’t want to hear it and it would appear Jesus found that truth for these Nazarenes. The prophetic truth that was so hard to swallow, so revolutionary to the folks that Jesus spoke to that day is in many ways the same reality that we have a hard time swallowing today as well. God, from the very beginning wasn’t a tribal God who cared for the Israelites, who cares for us and us alone. The reality is that the truth that Jesus offered that day – the long history of God caring for the Other – was not aimed with the hope of acceptance. Rather Jesus wanted to get chased out of town, his hometown. I got to be honest with you. I really think that Jesus is in the business of making people mad. I really think that Jesus is in the business of setting folks like you and me on fire. Making us burn hot and long fueled by the vast resources of preconceived notions of what things should be like, what people should act like, what should and shouldn’t be said in public, who shouldn’t be allowed to do this or that, and who God gives two rips about and who God should just so ahead and forget. Jesus wants those stereotypes, those hypocrisies to burn… and burn in such a way that in our anger and notions eventually burn so bright that they shine a light on all the baggage that still needs to be thrown on the pile.

These words of Christ are easily preached to individuals. What baggage do you have that needs to be set on fire? That is an easy question to ask. But when we turn this question to the church – this church and the larger church – the church that is as much of a part of me as I am a part of it, the question becomes harder to ask. What friends of this church need to be set on fire? What “friends” – the things that we have become so comfortable with, so buddy-buddy with that they are treated like friends. Which of them need to be engulfed in flames, and burn so bright that we the church can have our pathway lit as we seek to follow Christ? Maybe it is our friendship with colorless dreams of the future? Perhaps it is our friendship with the tried and true, the already tested? Maybe our friendship with low expectations of God? Which of our friends needs to be set on fire? Which of your friends need to be set on fire? What needs to burn so we can see the path of Christ?