I was born and raised in Gahanna, Ohio where I attended the Gahanna Community Church—regularly. When I was 18 years old I received my 16-year pin for perfect attendance at Sunday School (perfect attendance being defined as no more than 3 excused absences in a calendar year). But when I graduated from High School, I left home and church for college. Then I worked on a master’s degree. Then I went into the Air Force. Then I went to seminary.

While in seminary an invitation came from my home church to preach while my minister of 27 years was edging into retirement on an extended vacation. I had sermon I had just composed for a homiletics class that I thought was pretty good in an erudite scholarly sort of way. So I accepted the invitation and returned to my home church. There was a decent crowd that showed up to see a son of the church in the pulpit for the first time. I was a little nervous at first, but I followed my manuscript pretty closely and ended up thinking I had done pretty well.

In the receiving line following worship, I saw several familiar faces from my past coming to greet me. One of them belonged to Karen Ingram, who had watched me grow up in that church. After showing off my fancy footwork I figured she would say, "Where did you get all that?" or "I had no idea you were so A) smart, B) talented, C) articulate, D) inspirational, E) all the above." But that is not what she said at all. What she said was, "Bill Schnell, I used to change your diapers."

I knew right then and there that I could never go back to serve my home congregation. They knew too much about me: how I used to rush from worship to coffee hour and decimate the refreshments before anyone else could get at them; how I torn down a bathroom wall at church camp to escape from rest period; how as a tubby kid I split one half of the church’s cherry tree off its trunk trying to pick a snack from the upper branches. Nobody was going to take me seriously in the congregation. It was simply a case of being "Too Close to Home."

That is the title of our message for this morning, and it is inspired by a text of scripture where Jesus returns to his hometown and congregation just after his preaching and teaching ministry began. Our text for this Sunday follows immediately upon last week’s text where Jesus is invited by his home congregation to preach from a prophesy of Isaiah about "The Anointed One" of God. The only quote we have from that sermon is Jesus saying, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (4:21). In other words, Jesus is proclaiming himself to be "The Anointed One," which is the English translation of the Hebrew word "Messiah" and the Greek word "Christ."

Now our text for today begins: All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips (Verse 22). That’s one interpretation of the Greek. The King James Version of the Bible puts it this way: And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. One prominent biblical scholar by the name of Jeremias takes the interpretation a step further in the negative direction, depicting members of the congregation beginning to wonder about what Jesus is claiming here, and questioning his messianic delusion of grandeur in proclaiming himself the long-awaited Messiah.

This understanding is certainly supported by the next sentence in our text. "Isn’t this Joseph’s son?" they asked (Verse 22). Isn’t he the carpenter’s son? Didn’t he grow up with the rest of us? What makes him so special? I can just hear one of the women in the crowd saying, "I used to change his diapers. He was an odd kid, not like the other boys. One time after the Passover feast in Jerusalem his parents returned home and accidentally left him behind and all alone in that big city. I think it affected him."

Jesus, sensing the growing animosity of the crowd, said to them, "Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum’" (Verse 23). "If you are the Messiah--the Christ--show us your magic. Do some miracles for us like you allegedly did in Capernaum. Heal somebody like we have heard you can do. Any fellow can claim to be the Messiah. But we know better. We know where you came from and who you are."

This attitude prompts Jesus to make one of the few statements that is recorded in all four gospels: "I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown" (Verse 24). A prophet ceases being a prophet when he enters his hometown because his neighbors refuse to confer any prophetic status upon him. He is simply "Too Close to Home," for them. As a result of not putting any faith in Jesus, he is not able to do any mighty works among them as he has elsewhere. As Matthew put it in his account of this story, And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith (Matthew 13:58).

Even the Almighty is powerless to lead those who refuse to follow him in faith. Even the Savior is powerless to save those who reject him—who refuse to put their faith in him. You would have expected his own to have some faith in him, but he was just "Too Close to Home"—too close for comfort. As John put it in his Gospel, He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him (Jon 1:11). It is amazing where we do not find faith in this world, but it is even more amazing where we do.

Jesus continues, I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zaraphath in the region of Sidon (Verses 25-26). Jesus is referring to a story from the Old Testament (specifically from I Kings 17:7-16). When there was a famine in Israel, Elijah did not go to God’s Chosen People with his miraculous power to make an endless supply of bread. No, he went to a Sidonian—a Gentile (non-Jew).

And if we failed to get that point, Jesus emphasizes it with a second illustration from the Old Testament (specifically from II Kings 5:1-19). He says, And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian (Verse27). Indeed, Elisha the prophet not only used his wonderworking miraculous power to heal a faithful Syrian—a Gentile—of his leprosy, Elisha also used that same power to afflict a faithless, lying and disobedient Israelite with leprosy.

Again, it is strange where we do not find faith and it is stranger still where we do. The issue is not whether a person is a Jew or Gentile. The issue is not whether or not a person belongs to the Chosen People. Everyone is chosen by the Creator God and Father of us all. But not everyone chooses the Lord. Some of us, in fact, reject the Lord when he comes to us. That is the issue according to Jesus. The Lord cannot help those who reject him. The Lord can only help those who accept him and his help in faith.

But this understanding was an insult to the Jews in Jesus hometown. They were brought up to believe that they alone were the Chosen People of God. They were God’s favored people among all the people of the earth. Everybody else was substandard. Everybody else was out of luck when it came to God’s saving power. It was blasphemy for Jesus to suggest that God would favor any Gentile over a Jew, it was certainly not a customary interpretation of Holy Scriptures, and if Jesus’ hometown congregation had been pleased with him when he arrived they were plenty mad at him now.

As Dr. James Sutherland Bonnell puts it in the second quote at the top of our bulletin, "Jesus was favorably received by his townsfolk until he challenged the provincial, racial prejudice. He dared to declare that the children of Israel were not special favorites of God. And that really set the heather on fire." All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of 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. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way (Verses 28-30). The people wanted to see a miracle and Jesus gave them one. He disappeared. His message had hit a little "Too Close to Home," and so he took it elsewhere.

Sometimes Jesus’ message hits a little "Too Close to Home" for us as well. As Charles H. Bayer observes in the first quote at the top of our bulletin, "We all want our preachers to tell us how much God loves us and our kind. Have you sung ‘God Bless America’ recently? …People don’t want to hear how God is blessing their enemies. They didn’t want to hear it in first century Nazareth; we don’t want to hear it today." The Nazarenes were no more thrilled to hear that God might bless the Sidonians and Syrians over them than we would be to hear that God might likewise bless their Arab descendants over us.

At the risk of hitting a little too close to home, imagine Jesus telling us a parable of the good Sunni insurgent whose virtue shames the wayward behavior of a couple of American soldiers, no, chaplains. Listen to the parable of the Good Samaritan with that attitude and it is easy to see how Jesus got himself into so much trouble with his preaching and teaching. His point would not have been that all Suni insurgents were virtuous, or that all American chaplains were wayward. Jesus’ point would have been to counter the prevailing attitude that virtue and faith are confined to one side of the equation to the exclusion of the other (translation: virtue and faith are confined to our side exclusively).

Whenever two or more sides are contending with one another, each has its own valid perspectives and each has its own blind spots. Each can see the blind spots of the others quite clearly, but never its own. Each can benefit from listening to the other as a much-preferred alternative to slugging it out over differences until both are weakened or destroyed by the other. The act of diplomacy presupposes that each side has a valid perspective to share that the other needs to hear. Diplomacy has been in short supply these days, but not so demonization.

As adults, we should always be mindful that impressionable young eyes are always observing our behavior toward one another, even on a global scale. More important, impressionable young lives are modeling themselves after our own. This evening I will be speaking to a combined group of youth and their parents about, among other things, creating a safe emotional space for youth at The Church in Aurora as an alternative to the occasionally brutal and traumatic social climate they encounter at school.

Cliques and social posturing are not unique to our local districts, but they are definitely a feature there to hear it from parents and students alike. How refreshing to find a place where you don’t have to be thin to be in, or academically gifted, or athletically superior, or economically privileged. You get in because you are a child of God and a unique masterpiece of his handiwork. Imagine forging such a cohesive group identity in your youth group that it carries over to school. You don’t pick on a kid in your youth group, nor tolerate anyone else who does.

Maybe you grow to the place that you don’t pick on anybody, mistreat anybody, socially marginalize anybody, nor tolerate anyone who does because you have found a better alternative at youth group and church camp and workcamp. Maybe kingdom values displace worldly values for a change. I don’t want to get into my whole speech for tonight but if you hear talk about creating safe emotional climates and cohesive group identities, this is what those statements mean.

By rejecting Jesus’ inclusiveness, the hometown crowd rejected Jesus. He was "Too Close to Home" for them. They wanted to run him out of town. They wanted to throw him over the edge. Let us not reject Jesus by rejecting those whom he has accepted. Let us rather show our love for our maker by loving those whom he has made in his own image and for his own purposes. May this season of Epiphany open our eyes that we may see the Creator in those he has created.