Heroes and Villains!

Here is the message I brought to the people of St. Michael, Omaha today.  It was a blessing to be with them.

“HEROES AND VILLAINS!!”

When you head out to the movies, the heroes and the villains are usually pretty predictable.  It’s easy to pick out who is a “white hat” kind of character and who is more of a “black hat” kind of person.  Over the years there have been strong heroes like Erin Brockovich, Indiana Jones and, of course, James Bond.  And there have been great villains like Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the West.

The American Film Institute has a list of the top heroes and villains.  Interestingly at the top of the list of heroes is one who is not your “superhero” type.  Ironically, he’s an attorney.  Atticus Finch is the southern attorney played by Academy Award winner Gregory Peck in 1962’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”, a movie based on Harper Lee’s novel about racial tensions in the south during the Great Depression.  In the movie Finch defends Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.  Finch is a different kind.  For much of the film he is an outsider, a “bad guy” nearly a “villain” to many in his community.  But he is willing to assume that role in spite of the danger.  Atticus Finch is a hero.

Jesus is a hero, too.  Hero isn’t probably the first word that would come to mind when you think of Jesus.  But here’s the deal.   A hero is so called because of some, specific defining moment when he or she rises above and goes beyond the “call of duty.” 

For Jesus, the heroic moment was at the culmination of three years of ministry when died on a cross, rose from the dead and ascended.

But Jesus’ heroism, if you will, begins right here in Luke Chapter 4.  This is where Jesus flouts conventional wisdom resulting in his being cast as a villain, not a hero, by the general populace.  Here they are ready to toss Jesus off the cliff for his quirky in your face actions.

Let’s go back a step.  Today’s reading picks up where the reading left off last week.  But this isn’t two stories.  It is one story.  It should not be divided.  The back-story is that Jesus has gone back to the community of Nazareth where he was raised.  As the word was spreading about the wonders of his ministry he took a little side trip back home.  He’s been on the road a few days, hung out in the wilderness for 40 days before that.  No doubt, grounded as he was in his faith and sure as he was about God’s call on his life, it made some sense to stop back at home before he moved his ministry forward. 

So it happened that he was in Nazareth on the Sabbath!  He went to synagogue, just like he was used to doing.  He read the scripture from Isaiah and then proclaimed that he was the one to fulfill the role of Messiah, to take up the agenda long foretold of the prophets. 

So, the buzz was good. 

But as much as people liked Jesus they weren’t willing to put him into the role of the Messiah.  That would be going too far.

Now granted, people were longing for a hero.  They were looking for a savior.  After years and generations of occupation and oppression from foreign powers, currently the Romans, the people of Israel, God’s chosen people, were looking for someone with the powers of a Superman, an Indiana Jones, a Terminator, to lead them into a new era.  They longed for the in breaking of freedom, prosperity and rule by God alone.  They were looking for King David (at his best) come back to life. 

So, the words that Jesus read caught their ears.  This passage was familiar, a rallying cry for a Messiah, an announcement as full of emotion as Dirty Harry’s, “Go ahead, make my day”.  Heads were nodding, eyes closed as people dreamed of a new future where the oppressed would indeed be free of the Roman legions patrolling their streets, soaking up their finances and monitoring their every move.

Then Jesus stopped reading.  Then Jesus announced, “Today this reading is fulfilled.”  You won’t catch the radical nature of this all unless you read Isaiah 61.  The Isaiah passage has another line “and the day of vengeance of our God.’

What happed to that?  Isn’t that what the Messiah is to be about — justice, power, overcoming enemies, a white hatted rider, a decorated soldier, a David going after the goliaths of the world?  That’s what everyone thought.  And wanted!

Jesus, though, turns the tables.  He announces, in a way that was bold and shocking, that he, a man standing for mercy, peace and grace, is to be the Messiah.  You see, this did not fit the dreams of the people.  Their amazement is more like surprise and disgust than it was about the wonder of the grace he was promising to bring.

Jesus twists the plot by reminding people of two times in their own history when God had extended mercy to an outsider.  So this Messiah, God’s Messiah, was about to embark on a mission of doing the same thing — bringing grace to those who desperately needed it regardless of their heritage or status, no matter their sinfulness or place in life. 

This is a sure way to go from hero to villain – to remind people of the painful realities of their own history. 

So then, it only takes a few minutes for the people of Nazareth to change their minds to stop making nice with the hometown kid and to begin to try to end this craziness by running him over a cliff.

What does all of that have to do with us?  Actually we face the same choice in our spirit walk.  I don’t know about you, but I know that I don’t really like to deal with some of the more pointed truths of Jesus’ teaching.  It is easy to hold Jesus up as a “hero” when his thinking is the same as mine.  But when the tables get turned on me, Jesus can quickly become my “villain”, the one I don’t really want to hear.

For example:

Our Lord calls us to include him in all aspects of our lives but we’d rather be in the driver’s seat.

Our Lord calls us to the hard work of applying faith to every moment and aspect of living, but we’d rather hear him say we can compartmentalize our lives.

Our Lord calls us to look at others through Jesus’ eyes of love, but we’d rather be judgmental.

Our Lord calls us to trust his abundance but we’d rather see scarcity.

Our Lord calls us to worship, prayer and the full truth of God’s Word, but we’d rather be sloppy in our faith life.

Our Lord calls us to faithfulness, but we’d rather have the glory.

The movie heroes always seem to win the day, no matter how bad the situation seems. 

Jesus, too, wins the day in Nazareth – he just walks through the crowd to continue his ministry.  And, of course, there is a scene later when he just walks out of the grave to continue his work from eternity.

My prayer is that he would “win the day” in our faith journey as well.  Winning the day with grace, filling us with forgiveness, challenging us to be more and more the people we are called to be.