A Study in Contrast

[00:00:01] Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:11] There's a theme that just saturates all the parts of the liturgy that we're given this morning and the readings. [00:00:20] It's a theme of, well, let's call it pride and humility, but we'll kind of flesh it out and give the big picture. So first of all, our collect of the day. We're praying from a humble position, recognizing God's greatness. [00:00:36] So, I mean, he is great whether we recognize it or not. But by saying almighty God, what we're doing is saying we're lifting him up in our minds. [00:00:46] So almighty and everlasting God, since we are not, he says, we are weak and temporal, almighty and everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities. [00:00:56] We're sick. We need your healing and stretch forth the hand of your majesty to heal and defend us because we are weak and sick. [00:01:08] Right. [00:01:13] All right. And finally. I'll just pick another one. I'm going to use the introit here. [00:01:20] The intro it. So we're calling on God and saying, you know, using the words of Psalm 102, saying, it's time to arise and have pity on your people. [00:01:32] But if you look down to that third. Well, the second, my second line, that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven, the Lord looked at the earth. [00:01:46] So we've got high and low language again, which represents humility and greatness. [00:01:55] God looked down from his holy height, from heaven, the Lord looked at the earth to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die. [00:02:06] We who are lowly and need help, prisoners, prisoners even could be in dungeons down low in the earth. [00:02:16] There's also the reality that in Old Testament times and just in the ancient world, Egypt was seen as low. Maybe you can remember this language from Scripture about going down to Egypt. [00:02:32] It was in the south and hotter there, and for various reasons, it was, like, low compared to the sort of mountainous, cold, northern regions, that kind of thing. [00:02:43] All right, so we got high and low. [00:02:47] And the important thing for us this morning, okay, is to recognize that we are lowly and to look to God to be our strength, to give us understanding, not to think of ourselves as high and lifted up, like we've got the right perspective, like we have what we need, like we're strong, you know, like we're in a fortress on a mountaintop. But to see ourselves as slaves to sin, since we. [00:03:16] We sin. And Jesus says, you know, anyone who sins is a slave to sin. So to recognize ourselves as prisoners in need of freedom, as the weak in need of strength and defense, protection, to recognize ourselves as not knowing it all, but needing divine perspective, needing his Spirit. [00:03:44] Now, just a couple weeks ago, we had the baptism of our Lord. And so we were looking at this image of Jesus there in the Jordan River. [00:03:53] There he was. [00:03:55] He had humbled himself. John the Baptist says, I shouldn't be baptizing you. [00:04:00] What do you need to repent of? And Jesus says, let it be so for now in order to fulfill all righteousness. [00:04:08] So this. It's like, yeah, you're right, John. I don't need to be baptized. But my humility has a purpose. [00:04:16] And Jesus purpose, of course, is our salvation. So there he is. He humbles himself and receives the Holy Spirit as a man receives what he already has as God. [00:04:28] St. Paul talks of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ. [00:04:32] He's already got it. But as a man, he humbles himself and receives the Holy Spirit from above. The heavens open. The Spirit comes down on him for us, for us and for our salvation. [00:04:49] This is God looking down from heaven on us and having mercy and sending his Son in order to lift us up. The Son of God humbling himself and coming down in order to lift us up by the Spirit. [00:05:06] Okay, so Jesus, he's come down from heaven and received heaven as a human being. He is a heavenly man. So Paul says, just as we've imitated the earthly man, so let us imitate the heavenly man. That wasn't quite right. Something like that, though. [00:05:30] Jesus is the heavenly man. This is key. All right, so in our gospel reading this morning, Jesus, who has received the Holy Spirit as a human being, who is the man from heaven and the heavenly man, he comes to Nazareth. [00:05:46] Nazareth is the place where he grew up. The people there know him. They know his family. [00:05:52] It's like, you know, I was friends with Jesus growing up, that kind of thing. And so they're familiar with him, and so they think they already know. They think they know him. [00:06:05] The reality is Jesus is no ordinary guy. [00:06:09] He's actually literally not the son of Joseph except by adoption. [00:06:15] But they think of him as Joseph's son, Daniel. Let's not do that. [00:06:23] Mom is at a. [00:06:26] She's at a Pastor's Wives retreat in Indiana this weekend. So. [00:06:35] So Jesus. Jesus, the man from heaven, is not recognized as being from heaven. [00:06:42] And so they have a blind spot. They're unable to see. This is why this is an epiphany. [00:06:48] They're Unable to see Jesus for who he is, because they need to look beyond the earthly and recognize the heavenly in Jesus, to look beyond the man and recognize the man from heaven. [00:07:11] All right, so Jesus. [00:07:16] Jesus is the one to read that morning, that Saturday, I suppose it's probably an evening. I don't know. [00:07:23] Jesus is given the scroll. It's his turn to read. And what they would do is read the scroll, put it away, and then the discussion would start. [00:07:32] Well, he reads, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Well, that'll make you think of his baptism and of him being the man from heaven who has the Holy Spirit. Who's come to do what? To rescue those who are lowly, to give sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. [00:07:52] That's what he's come to do. But he's come to do it for those who think that they're blind, recognize their blindness, or looking for the light. He's come to do it for those who recognize that they are lowly, that they are prisoners, that they need to be rescued. [00:08:09] They're not seeing it. [00:08:11] That's why it goes the opposite way. [00:08:16] It's a crazy story. So here they are. They should recognize themselves as lowly, as in need of rescue, but they actually end up trying to kill him. [00:08:29] How do they do it? Well, their town just happens to be high and lifted up, actually, which is meaningful in this context. Their town is built on the brow of a hill, and they're going to put Jesus in his place. [00:08:43] They're going to throw him down. [00:08:46] They're going to put him in his place and make him go lower. [00:08:52] But the reverse is actually true. That's the way it appears to them. They're thinking, this is Joseph's son and he's exalting himself to a place that he doesn't deserve. We're going to put him in his place. [00:09:04] They can't do it. They can't stop Jesus. [00:09:07] And it's because no matter how lifted up they might feel, no matter how much they might be sure in their convictions and not looking for any help to understand from Jesus, the reality is that they are lowly, that they don't have power over Jesus. [00:09:26] Now, this is the fun part. If we're looking at the imagery in the story. Okay, here's the fun part. [00:09:33] They're going to put Jesus in his place. They're going to throw him down. [00:09:37] But how does Luke say this? That he got away? He says, but passing through their midst, he went away. [00:09:48] All right, now I want you to think about those words passing through their midst. [00:09:52] Why does Luke say it like that? Passing through their midst? [00:09:57] Think about something in Scripture, like, what does that structurally make you think of, that image passing through their midst? [00:10:08] The Red Sea. Yeah, it's just there. Exactly. I've asked a bunch of people this week, you know, so what does that sound like? Everybody has said the Red Sea. That's it. He passed through their midst. So the reality is they're not the mountain, they're not the mountaintop. [00:10:24] They're actually the sea. You know, like, rather than be rescued through the Red Sea, like Jesus has come to do, to set the captives free. [00:10:35] They're actually just the waters trying to close over him. But it's not going to work. [00:10:40] They think they're the highest place. We're on the brow of a hill, we're going to put you in your place. But they're actually the lowest place. That's the sea. In the ancient view of the world, which, I mean, and just in general, well, scientifically, I guess we could say there's a lower place, right? [00:10:58] They are. They are the sea. They're the lowest place. [00:11:01] All right, so. But that's not the only reversal. And we probably can't talk about all the reversals in this text, but I'll just. I'll just mention a couple of them. Jesus says to him, look, I know you want to see signs like I did in Capernaum, which, by the way, is down by the Sea of Galilee and lower than Nazareth, right? So he went low down to Capernaum and he did miracles and such, and you're going to want to see those. But too bad, he tells them, back when Elijah was doing his ministry as a prophet, the heavens were shut off and no rain came down on Israel. But God provided for a widow. Now, there were lots of widows in Israel. The insiders had plenty of need for help. But an outsider, the widow in Zarephath was the one who got the help. Because in Israel, they were lifted up in pride and didn't think they needed help. They were turned against God in idolatry. So God gave help to the one who recognized she needed help, the one who had faith in God's word. [00:12:12] Remember that the oil wouldn't run out and the flour wouldn't run out. So there are these reversals in the text, all over the place. And here's the lesson for us, that we not think of ourselves as already knowing what we need to know, as not getting lifted up in pride and missing Jesus for it. They don't see Jesus because they think they already see. [00:12:40] They need to recognize that they're blind in order to learn from Jesus. Again, it's just like. Just like if you're in a class and your teacher is trying to teach you something, but you think you already know it, you're not going to learn a thing. [00:12:54] You have to humble yourself, recognize what you don't know, open yourself up to learning from the teacher. You are the teacher. Teach me. And then you're going to learn something that needs to be. Our attitude toward Jesus, how does this apply to us? [00:13:13] Well, what kind of pride keeps us from seeing Jesus? We all see Jesus, right? [00:13:19] But then if we enter the daily struggle for faith in Jesus, it gets a lot more complicated. [00:13:27] Like when I'm in an argument with somebody or when I'm thinking that I'm right and that they're wrong. [00:13:34] What does Jesus have to do with that in that situation? [00:13:40] Well, humility, prayer, looking to Jesus, you just might recognize that you're insisting on your own way or thinking that you're right in the situation. But really what you need is to be humbled. What I need is to be humbled and to take my eyes off myself and to look to the other through Jesus. [00:14:08] Or maybe we're involved in gossip or let's just keep it to gossip in our congregation here. Do we ever talk about issues that are. That are going on in less than charitable ways? Do we ever get frustrated about what's going on and go around and talk about those things? [00:14:35] Not through the proper channels, so to speak, not coming to one another in Christian humility and love? [00:14:44] Probably. [00:14:47] Is that pride? [00:14:49] Does that relate. Can that make us miss Jesus? [00:14:52] Yeah. [00:14:54] This pride and humility thing goes throughout the readings in the epistle reading kind of in a fun way, because you wouldn't necessarily think of this as pride. But we've got all the parts of the body and. [00:15:14] Well, okay, so let me just. If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. [00:15:25] All the parts of the body are needed. Right, but then you get verse 21. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. [00:15:39] Well, that would be to be lifted up falsely in pride. [00:15:45] If we are all Christ's body and a body together as a congregation, if one of us thinks, well, they're worthless, or rises up and decides to take care of things improperly through gossip or undermining somebody else or that kind of thing. It's a stepping out of place. What should the body parts do? They should all be working in harmony, listening to the head. [00:16:17] But if one of the parts of the body decides to exert him or herself and do this improperly, then it's stepping out of line. Do you see? [00:16:28] It's missing the direction of the head, which is Christ. [00:16:32] Christ is our head. You see the connection there? [00:16:36] And so our life together as the body of Christ, it works beautifully as we constantly humble ourselves under the direction of Jesus Christ. [00:16:49] He is our shepherd. He is our spiritual director, the shepherd of our hearts and the shepherd of our church, of our community. [00:17:00] And we work together for the blessing of one another and. And those outside our doors as we submit to Christ and are ruled by Him. [00:17:15] The people in Nazareth, they could have received everything that Jesus has to offer if they had humbled themselves instead of saying, we know you, Jesus, you're Joseph's son. In other words, don't give us that, stop telling us that. If instead they had said, I don't understand this, but tell me, teach me. [00:17:44] We've heard what you did in Capernaum and we want to submit ourselves to you and your teaching. You tell us what to know. Well, then they would have received it. [00:17:55] And that's our well, that's our place as God's people. [00:18:01] Constantly to be humbled, to repent. Not just on Sunday mornings when we start our service with confession and absolution, right? But daily to live in repentance toward God. To humble ourselves, not to get defensive at criticism, not to exert ourselves to control things, or not to go circle around with gossip or things like that, but to humble ourselves and bear one another's burdens. [00:18:35] To submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. [00:18:40] And so to see him, to come to Jesus blind and to receive from him everything he has to offer. [00:18:49] And you know what he has to offer. [00:18:53] He comes to set you free, to give you light and me light, to set me free. He comes to lift us up by his grace into his own life, to unite us all together in him and to make us children of God. And that is what we are, each in him, in Jesus name, Amen.