As United Methodists we have a wonderful slogan.  You’ve all heard it:  “Open Hearts, Open Doors, Open Minds.”  I love the slogan and, quite frankly, I’m amazed at how well we do in honoring it.  Sometimes I look around and I think to myself, “Man, this church let’s anybody in!” 

    But, seriously I think the point of the slogan is that God is bigger than our idea of God.  And, even here in Ashland, I think it’s just plain human nature that we want God to agree with us, to think like we think.  So the challenge is to continually remind ourselves that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s love is not limited by our love.  Even here in Ashland, God’s universal love challenges our human love to grow, often beyond our natural comfort zone.

    I often feel convicted when I pray the Prayer for Illumination that we offer up each Sunday:  “Lord, open our hearts by the power of your Holy Spirit, that, as the scriptures are read, we may hear with joy what you say to us today.”  I have to confess that it may not always be joy I feel, but it’s definitely an invitation, often a provocation, to think about things from a different perspective than I might have been using before being confronted by the scripture.

    Someone once asked Mark Twain, “Does it bother you that there are so many passages in the Bible that you don’t understand?”  And he said, “No, what bothers me are those passages in the Bible I do understand.”  That’s what happens when the Bible is applied to real life.  We get bothered. 

    Last week’s Gospel lesson told the story of Jesus returning to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth where he read from the prophet Isaiah.  “God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to the captive, the oppressed and the outcast.” Then he said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled,” rolled up the scroll, and sat down.

    This morning we get the reaction of the people.  They loved it – at first!  Short sermon.  They spoke well of him. They didn’t understand - but they approved.  Jesus could have quit while he was ahead, but then he wouldn’t have been a prophet.  A prophet is one who challenges us by applying God’s Word to our situation.  Our temptation is to spiritualize scripture, thus keeping it within our heavenly comfort zone.  But a prophet challenges us by stepping on our earthly toes, by bringing scripture too close to home. 

    His neighbors had heard rumors of the miracles he'd done elsewhere, in places like Capernaum. So, doesn't charity begin at home? Doesn't Jesus have an obligation to take care of his own first, the friends and neighbors he's grown up with and worshipped with in this very synagogue, before going off to help others.  Or, is God bigger than our idea of God? Is God’s universal love challenging our human love to grow?

    My experience is that God’s love convicts us. Although the story is about Jesus and his Jewish brethren in the synagogue, it’s really the same issue for us today.  We are the Christian Church. We've taken his name. Often there’s the unspoken assumption that he'll give us priority, that being “The Body of Christ” gives us prior claim to his blessings.  Then the story takes an unexpected turn.

    Jesus tells a couple of very brief stories, and the people completely freak out.  “No prophet is acceptable in his hometown,” Jesus says, and then demonstrates the fact by citing two examples of prophets offering the universal gift of God’s love to those who were not members of the chosen people.  They were both familiar stories from the Jewish scriptures. In one he tells about how Elijah had healed a foreign widow, and in the other he recalls how Elisha had healed a foreign leper named Naaman. The point, obviously, is the universality of the Gospel, that God helps whomever God chooses to help, and it isn't based on bloodline, merit or belonging to the in-group. It's called grace, and grace isn't fair. Grace is always a surprise. Grace never works according to our expectations.  The words of Jesus “filled them with rage.”  His neighbors drive him out of town and try to throw him over a cliff.  But Jesus “passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” 

    Fred Craddock makes an interesting observation about this painful episode. He says, “It is important to notice that Jesus does not go elsewhere because he is rejected.  He is rejected because he goes elsewhere.”  [Preaching The Common Lectionary, Yr. C, p. 145]  Isn’t that interesting?  When they missed the point they praised him.  When they got it, they tried to kill him. 

    Now, here’s the question.  Is there any part of us (be honest now) that tends to, maybe just a little bit, begrudge God's grace when it's offered freely to others, to those whom we don’t consider worthy, or as having earned it?  I can think of many specific examples, and I’m sure you can as well.

    That's a question we as a church have to wrestle with. It's a question of mission, ministry and outreach. It's a question of purpose. It raises fundamental questions, like: Do we exist to take care of our own, or to reach out to those beyond our walls and our comfort zones? What is our place and our purpose in the local, and the world community? The religious people of Nazareth were outraged at the prophetic claim of Jesus, that his ministry would reach out to embrace the Gentiles, the unreligious, the so-called “unclean and untouchable.” It wasn't what they expected, and it made them mad.

    God is bigger than our idea of God.  God’s thoughts are not our thoughts.  God’s love is not limited by our love.  God’s universal love challenges our human love to grow.

    The prophetic teaching of Jesus Christ that so angered his own people, and is still a challenge to us today, is that God’s love is an open and welcoming love.  As United Methodists we believe that the church must also be a welcoming church, open to all. If it is closed, it is we who have closed it, not God.   

    I’ll close with this.  I can remember one of my seminary professors, Dr. James Saunders, whose job was to train pastors for service in the church, warning us by saying, “The one institution in the world most in danger of domesticating God and reducing him to a partisan God of the in-group is the church (or temple, or synagogue, or mosque).”

    Today, after thirty years of ministry, I recognize just how prophetic his words were.  Those words haunt me, and they should challenge us all to grow and to change, to apply the teachings of scripture to the condition of the world today, to commit ourselves anew to the pledge that our hearts, and minds, and our doors will always be open.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.