Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's home town.
I’ve seen this in action. I’ve seen people not accept the guy they know. There’s a sense of familiarity that cannot be overcome. I’ve experienced this personally in paying jobs and at church. In paying jobs, when I’ve been promoted from peers, they are the toughest people to manage. They cannot see you as supervisor, and are exceedingly hard to manage. I’ve seen it at church with individuals who are in the process to get ordained which will drastically change their role. It’s hard to be seen and act and be vested with a different authority or role, when you’ve been known as something else. This is one reasons in many circumstances it makes sense to move newly ordained from their home church, at least for a while.
This morning, I’m struck by another reason that no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. This has more to do with the expectations of the prophet, where the more familiar understanding relates more to the expectations of the home town.
At the time of Jesus, not unlike now, there are insiders, and outsiders, good and bad, us and them. While some of that distinction may have come from a place of understanding and being wary of warring tribes, much of the lingering distinctions we place on us versus them is not useful, and perpetuates hierarchy, judgement and injustice. Prophets are the ones who call us to the way things should be, pointing out the uncomfortable truths that frequently differ from the comfortable ways we live. A prophet says something that challenges his home town’s thinking and way of life, especially if that way is not the way of loving God and loving neighbor. Given tribalism then and now, most home towns, most communities, most churches, most gatherings of people include some sense of us vs. them.
Prophets of God, aiming to love and serve God and neighbor, see a world where divisions cease, where there is no more us and them. Their home town most certainly has some group defined as ‘them’. In quick order, the prophet will challenge the group norms of their home town team, challenging them to abandon divisions and distinctions that don’t matter in God’s world.
In this narrative from Luke, Jesus provides examples from the Hebrew Scripture, that those gathered have believed in, and consider the word of God – bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind, release of captives. And while they’ve believed these things - that good news and good works have their place, they also have their limit. All of that goodness is reserved for our home town, not the other. Jesus, in this reading, challenges that very notion.
He points out that during the time of Elijah, there was a 3 year famine, creating impoverished widows throughout Israel. And yet, Elijah was sent to a widow in Sidon. What’s missed on us with this simple sentence, is that Sidon was an area that had oppressed and been horrible to Israel for years. If Israel was the Mets, Sidon was the Yankees. And Elijah, with his Mets uniform still on, was sent by God to walk by the needs of the Mets, and instead help the Yankees.
What Jesus is saying, in one simple statement is that home towns can be places where we’re from, but should never be about excluding or not loving those not from here. God specifically sent Elijah to the sworn enemy of Israel, and in the midst of God loving and God fearing Israelites, Jesus reminds them that God’s call to Elijah was to not-them.
Serving as prophet, as someone who speaks uncomfortable truths is something I’m frequently called to do. This morning, I’m thinking about the challenges of speaking that truth to my home town team, however that’s defined. To my family, friends, church. I’m thinking about how it’s easy to quickly feel no longer like a home town kid, when what you say is something that they don’t want to hear. Luckily, I’ve never been in Jesus’ shoes, where the home town folk are filled with rage, when something is said that challenges their sense of us vs. them, and no one’s ever attempted to throw me off a cliff because of it.
I’m thinking that speaking plainly about God’s radical love of all, of my team and the rival team, and of God’s expectation that we radically love each other, both my team and the rival team, makes it very difficult for a prophet to be accepted in the constraints of their home town, because it’s those constraints that are inherently challenged.
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