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Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany – January 30, 2022
Luke 4:21-38
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
There’s a commercial in heavy rotation on television right now which drives me crazy. In fact, it makes my whole family cringe. A little girl is given a lollipop, and then a moment later her brother is given a larger, fancier lollipop. She immediately cries out: “That’s not fair!” The AT&T lady apparently agrees with her, and gives her the same lollipop as her brother.
Now, I understand the larger point about AT&T’s cell plans that is being made, but the attitudes and assumptions of this ad just reek of entitlement. It isn’t enough that this little girl is given a free lollipop. She can’t just enjoy the gift given to her. She notices that her brother has a bigger, fancier lollipop and thinks she deserves one too.
As a parent watching this, I’m thinking a couple of things. First of all, don’t take candy from strangers. Right? Second, I’m thinking that if one of my sons received a gift from someone and their brother got something slightly better and their response was to tell the gift-giver it wasn’t fair, they are going to apologize, their gift is going to the thrift store, and they are going to their room!
As a theologian watching this, I’m thinking about the premise behind the ad. In order for the ad to be effective, most people need to agree with the girl’s sense of entitlement. This does not bode well for our modern culture!
But it isn’t just modern culture. It is human nature. And we see this same aspect of human nature on display in our gospel reading for today. We pick up where we left off last week with Jesus preaching in his hometown of Nazareth. At first people are impressed with Jesus. They are delighted with him. St. Luke tells us that all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came out of his mouth.
But then Jesus senses a bit of entitlement starting to assert itself in his hometown crowd. He anticipates them saying, “Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” They knew Jesus did more than preach in Capernaum. They knew he did miracles. They knew he had done wonders. They knew he had performed healings. Now he was home, and surely they were entitled to these good things – maybe even a little more. After all, this was their hometown. They knew his dad, Joseph! And not only that, but there was quite a contrast between Capernaum and Nazareth. Capernaum was a much larger city, full of both Gentiles and their vices. Nazareth, on the other hand, was a small village full of devout Jews. Surely this pious little town deserved something extra from their homegrown Messiah, right?
Jesus proceeded to shatter their illusions. He popped their balloons of entitlement. He trolled them hard by pointing to two scandalous stories from the Hebrew Bible. In the days of Elijah, he reminded them, when there was a severe drought and famine, with many widows in the land of Israel, Elijah was sent to none of them except a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. Elijah brought the blessings of the Lord to an unclean gentile in another region! And in the days of Elisha, when there were many lepers in Israel, none of them were cleansed except Naaman the Syrian. Naaman was not only a gentile, he was the commander of the Syrian army! And yet, through the word spoken through Elisha, he was healed in waters of the Jordan.
Well, Jesus’ hometown crowd heard this and they were filled with rage. “That’s not fair!” they might have yelled. They were Jesus’ good hometown pious neighbors. Surely they deserved something good from him! They should have at least received what the people in Capernaum got! It wasn’t fair! And in their entitled fury they formed a lynch mob. They led him to a hill near town in order to push him off the cliff, but Jesus passed through their midst and went on their way.
I’m not sure if the entitlement attitude is worse today than it was back then or not, but I do know that this attitude is not good for us. It robs us of our ability to experience gratitude. I wonder if one of the reasons people don’t worship God as often as they used to is that they don’t see a reason to. They don’t feel an urge or a joyful obligation to worship God because they don’t feel gratitude. Why come and praise God when you think you deserve everything you have?
An entitlement attitude can also get in the way of our faith in Jesus – even, perhaps especially, for those of us who do worship regularly! We might start to think that because we are Jesus’ people, because we know him, because we are his hometown crowd, that we deserve the gifts he gives us. And once those gifts become something we deserve, they are no longer gifts. It is no longer grace. We are no longer living by faith in the gospel, but instead are living by the tit-for-tat accounting of the law.
An entitlement attitude eventually pits us against those we look down our noses at as less deserving. We all have certain people in mind. People who don’t behave like we want them to behave. People who don’t vote like we want them to vote. People who don’t think like we think they should think. We deserve these gifts from Jesus, not them. We are his hometown crowd, not them.
The truth is, grace isn’t fair. The truth is, Christ doesn’t come to those who deserve him, he comes to those who need him – including people we think of as those people. That might make us angry at times. I know it makes it hard at times to live in community as the Body of Christ, especially when those people show up – whoever those people may be. That’s why Paul has to remind the church of what love is supposed to look like in Christian community, that love is patient and kind and keeps no record of wrongs. If we really understand it, grace makes us mad at times – because it isn’t fair! It extends even to those people!
But this is ultimately good news for all of us. Because when the Holy Spirit shows us that we have that same entitlement attitude, that same sinful human nature, that same inclination to selfish anger as Jesus’ hometown crowd, when the Holy Spirit convicts us of this, like perhaps may be happening today, then we understand that we don’t deserve Jesus. We don’t deserve him, but we sure do need him. Like Naaman, we need him. Like the widow at Zarephath, we need him.
Jesus was eventually dragged up another hill. He willingly went this time. On the hill called Calvary, the hill called Golgotha, Jesus bore the sin of all humanity in his body on the cross, including yours and mine. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve it. But he did it so that we would have what we need. He did it in order to give us forgiveness, life, and salvation.
None of us deserve what Jesus has won for us. But we sure do need it – and by his grace he has given it to us. And for this, bring him our thanks and our praise and our worship. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church