The morning broke just like it had done every day for the 12 years that Sam had been alive.  The sun was bursting through his curtains just like every other day.  Downstairs he could hear his mother pottering around the kitchen just like every other day, frying bacon and brewing coffee, which smelled like they did every other day. 

But today was not a day like any other day.  Today was like all twelve of Sam’s Christmases and all his dozen birthdays rolled into one.  This was a day the like of which there had never been and would never be again.  Someone was coming home.   Someone who had been born and raised in that small Midwestern town, but who had left it ten years earlier to follow his dreams of becoming a ballplayer.  He whose career Sam had followed religiously play-by-play.  He who just last week had pitched a no-hitter in game seven of the World Series.  He whose posters adorned Sam’s walls and whose boy-next-door smile beamed down from a framed baseball card he kept on his nightstand.  He whose fake signature printed in black made Sam’s baseball glove his most treasured possession and must-wear accessory at all times.  And he was coming home.  He had been invited to snip the ribbon at the opening of a new doctor’s clinic and it had been the only thing the town had talked about for the last month.

Sam pulled on his baseball uniform that proudly bore his hero’s name on the back, grabbed his glove and ran to the town park, the site of the great man’s appearance.  It was still six hours before the ceremony was due to start, but Sam wanted to be there first.  Maybe if were first he could get his photo taken with the star.

Well, the hours passed.  Sam stood patiently and watched men assemble a stage.  Others put out folding chairs, and still others rigged up a simple microphone and speakers.  As the morning dragged on Sam was joined by a few other eager fans, hoping to secure a good view.  These drops turned into a trickle and then a stream before, at the stroke of 2 o’clock, the entire town stopped work for the day and flooded into the park to create the largest crowd in its history.  There were bunting and streamers.  Refreshment vendors saw an opportunity for some lucrative trading.  The local radio and TV crews jostled with each other trying to be in prime position to capture the great day for the 6pm news. 

And then, He took the stage, flanked by the mayor, the chief of police, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, a brace of politicians, and a clutch of other dignitaries intent on exploiting the appearance of the Great One for whatever they could get out of it.  Who they all were and why they’d come Sam had no idea, and cared even less.  He only had eyes for Him.

And then the moment came.  The crowd fell silent as the hometown hero stepped to the microphone.  He cleared his throat, shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other and began.  He thanked his friends and family for their support.  He thanked the suits who were sitting behind him, whose identities Sam still didn’t know and still didn’t care.  He thanked the town – his town – for coming out to see him.  All the usual formalities.  Surely the prelude to some stories about his memories of growing up in the town, some anecdotes about his life in baseball, some encouragement to the children present to work hard at school and do the right thing.  But, instead of the usual script, the Great One had another speech.  He talked about things Sam and the others in the crowd did not want to hear.  He said he was sick of baseball.  He talked about the cheating, the obscene salaries, the manipulation by the media.  He had had enough of the fame and the wealth, the temptations, the defeats and the victories.  To the gasps of a stunned town, he declared he had thrown his last baseball.  Over the years he had become friends with many players from Latin America and had been moved by their stories of growing up in poverty.  And now he was moving to the slums of Caracas to live with and care for those whose lives had been marred by sin, injustice and suffering.  He was never going to return to his home town.  He bade them goodbye and strode to his car.

Hometown Hero to hometown villain in the space of a few minutes.  That was how it was for Jesus in today’s Gospel reading from Luke 4.  He was in his home town, Nazareth.  He preached in the synagogue and the people loved him.  He read from Isaiah that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, that he had been anointed to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom to the captives, sight to the blind, and release for the oppressed.  Luke says “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips.”  You can imagine them saying, “Lovely.  Well done Jesus.  Nice sermon.  What a nice boy.  That’s our Jesus.  What?  Joseph’s boy?  Ooh, hasn’t he done well for himself.  Always was a good boy.  Very good to his mother.” 

Now what Jesus had just preached should NOT have brought a warm response from his people.  If they’d really been listening to it and had thought about the implications of it they would have realised that the message he’d just given was a radical and challenging one.  It demanded them to change.  But they had misunderstood and seemed to hear the challenge as a comfort.  Rather like a patient in denial who hears the doctor telling her that she is dying but she is unable to take it in at that moment and so she hears something else.  She hears the doctor say that she’s going to recover.  Jesus’ message was, in a nutshell, ‘change was coming’.  His mission was going to turn the world upside down.  Now those hearers of Jesus in the synagogue that day (Jewish and male) thought they were enjoying a nice close relationship with God.  The way things were suited them very nicely.  Jews, obviously, were God’s chosen people.  And, to boot, men were entitled to a different position in the culture of the day.  So that congregation had done pretty nicely out of life.  They were God’s special ones, his personal friends, spiritually superior to Gentiles and to women.  But the message of Jesus was that the self-righteous and the self-satisfied were in for a nasty shock.  This Jesus had come to throw wide open the gates of heaven to men and women, Jews and Gentiles, who came to God with humility and sincerity. 

Yet, the men in the synagogue that day chose to hear something else.  And so they say ‘nice sermon, Jesus’, or something equivalent.  But Jesus isn’t going to let them live in their denial.  So he gets explicit with them.  He makes his point in a way they couldn’t possibly misunderstand.  He mentions two Old Testament characters, and commends them for their faith and their obedience to God.  Great role-models in the life of faith.  A soldier called Naaman and widow from a town called Zarephath.  Now the thing about these two was that they were both Gentiles, and one, obviously, was a woman.  So these God-fearing, devout, self-righteous Jewish men are told by Jesus to look to a couple of Gentiles as true examples of faith.  Now they got the point.  So much so that Luke says, “They got up and drove him from the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.”  A preacher knows when he’s gotten through to a congregation when they try to throw him off a cliff.

Hometown Hero to hometown villain in the space of a few minutes.   Why?  Because he dared to speak the truth.  He had the courage to tell it like it was.  Sometimes we’d rather people didn’t tell us the truth.  The truth can be painful to hear.  That congregation that day didn’t want the true Jesus, the one who was going to shake things up.  They preferred a tame Jesus, a predictable Jesus; a Jesus who was going to bless the status quo.  And why shouldn’t they?  They had done very nicely out the status quo.  They had prestige and power.  Why would they want someone messing that up, especially someone they knew - Joseph and Mary’s boy, whom they’d watched growing up?   And I suspect that can be like you and me.  I want Jesus to shake things up, just as long as it doesn’t affect me.  If he wants I can provide him with a long list of people who really need to be sorted out much more than I do.  There’s Herbert and there’s Janice, and there’s that guy on TV, and that woman who cut in line ahead of me at the supermarket.  And then there are all those situations around the world that are so messed up that surely Jesus should be doing something about those, rather than paying attention to me and my harmless little ways.  Jesus should be getting the bad people to shape up, not me. That’s the self-righteousness that Jesus spent so much of his ministry condemning.  Even the most devout of Christians can be tripped up by little self-righteous thoughts.  In my very best moments I’m just millimeters away from looking down on someone else, or thinking of myself as better morally than so-and-so, or thinking myself invulnerable to temptation.  Understand that the passion of Jesus is for humble hearts.

Now what those men back in the synagogue in Nazareth had not realised when they got so angry with Jesus that they tried to throw him off a cliff was the motive he had when he called them to change.  His motive was love.  That is always his motive.  The love that we see in the epistle reading from 1 Corinthians, that greatest of all love poems.  That love was the reason for all Jesus did, even the reason for his challenging people to faith and obedience to God.  He calls us to change because he loves us.  His love for you and me is so vast that he meets us where we are – sins and weaknesses and failures and all.  But, his love is so vast that he doesn’t leave us there, he calls us to move on from there to lives that are free from those things that destroy our peace and joy and that our spoil our relationship with God and other people.

It’s the tough love of Jesus.  The love that confronts because he knows that we were made for something better than small, self-interested lives.  He made us for much more.  He made us to give our lives away, because it is only then that we can receive life in all its fullness.

Small, self-interested lives are not happy ones.  People whose goal in life is their own comfort, or their own wealth or success are usually people who have no peace or contentment.  Jesus has shown us a different and better way, and we know it to be true because we are trying to live it out: when you’re not aiming for personal happiness, that’s when you find it.  When we’re living to please Christ and to serve others, that’s when we find happiness.  Happiness is an elusive creature.  You stare at it too long and it vanishes.  You try to grasp it and it slips through your fingers.  You pursue it and it’ll outrun you.  But focus on God and his will and we find that happiness comes with it.  Jesus said that if you love your life you’ll lose it, but if you lose your life for his sake you’ll find it.

Hometown Hero to hometown villain in the space of a few minutes.   Where does that leave us?  Well, Jesus was not from round here.  He’s not from our home town.  But in case you think that gives us an out by saying ‘we can’t reject him the way those people from Nazareth did’, let’s remind ourselves that he does live here, actually.  And with this I conclude.  Jesus is living here and there and there and there.  We know him.  We love him.  We have given our lives over to him.  So let’s receive him afresh as he speaks to us and calls us to change as he did in that Synagogue 2000 years ago.  Let’s respond with ‘Yes Lord, I am listening.  Have your way in my life.  Amen.’