Get Set

I could pretend that I added this photo as an illustration of how mind
training is stressed in the training of Jedi in the Star Wars movies.
Honestly.  I just wanted to take a picture of my Luke Skywalker
action figure.  

Luke 4:21-30

Did you know that there is going to be a football game on TV this evening? Be honest.  How many of you have no idea who is playing?

Yeah, I don’t really care either.  I’m gonna watch the game though.  I’ll probably root for Baltimore just because I’m partial to the East Coast. Other than that my head is not really in the game.  I have never been a fan of either team.  I am sure the people of Baltimore and San Francisco are thinking a lot more about football than I am.

It’s interesting how your world is shaped by what you give your attention to.  We give our attention to things that demand it.  When we have pain in our bodies we want it gone so we do something about it.  When someone we love is suffering we try to give them relief.  An ambulance approaches with its lights on from behind us so we pull over. Your husband or wife yells so you yell back. The baby cries so you feed her. The phone rings so you answer it. The television is on so we watch it.

It seems there is hardly a moment when our attention is not being grabbed or demanded by someone or something.  So if we are shaped by what we give our attention to, we are letting others shape who we are if we are not selective about it.

Television news just loves a big tragedy.  You can know just about everything there is to know about a big tragedy if you watch CNN long enough.  If they have run out of details to share they will just repeat the ones they already know so that you can memorize what has happened. You can live the tragedy over and over again.  You can begin to believe that what has happened is the only thing happening in the world.  I remember 11 years ago having to make myself turn of the television because I didn't want to hear any more about the attacks of September 11^th.  I purposely avoided the evening news the day of the tragedy in Newtown Connecticut.  I grieved those things.  I was angered by those things.  But I don’t want to give the evil of this world undue attention. 

Imagine if we were given titles based on what we give our attention.  Think about it what do you spent most of your attention on?  What would be on your name tag just below your name? Would it be Health worries? CNN/Fox News?  Family issues?  Sports? Hunting? Perhaps your mind is occupied by other things.  Would you want whatever it is printed on your name-tag for everyone to see?

What we are striving for is for that name tag to read “disciple of Jesus Christ.” 

What would it take to make that happen for you?

Our Gospel reading today is a continuation from last week when Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach.  Remember?  He was given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and he read the scripture, rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, sat down and said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

Remember how we talked about the scripture was defined by Jesus not the other way around? I used the analogy of a race at a track meet.  The starting point is your mark. Our starting point is the Scriptures.  The next command by a track official is “set.” That means “get set” and don’t move a muscle until you get the starting gun.  This is a moment when you are poised for action, singularly focused on the task at hand.  

Jesus read from the scroll and said what he said and they were amazed at the gracious words coming from his mouth.  Then someone said, “Hold on!” Well, scripture doesn't record those words but the feeling is there.  Someone said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

Jesus just had made a bold proclamation about who he was.  He was telling them that he was the messiah.  He is the one they have been waiting for but the one in the synagogue couldn't see past the fact that this was Joseph’s son.  You know Joseph, the one that didn't make it into rabbi school.  He was a year ahead of me in school back in Nazareth.  You've had these conversations.  How could someone who was the son of that guy, a nobody, be the messiah?

Their expectation was that the messiah would be someone important and powerful.   If he is the son of Joseph then it can’t be him. You’ll notice in verse 22 that it wasn't just one person that felt this way it says “they said. Is this not Josephs son?”  It was the mood of the room that Jesus was not really who he was claiming to be. 

So Jesus fires right back and says, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”  And he brought to their memory stories about the history of the Hebrew people when foreigners were blessed when they were not.  This upset them a bit. They drove him to a brow of a hill with the intent to do him harm. 

There is a passage in a book in the Bible called Deuteronomy where is says, “But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak, that prophet shall die.”  This may be their justification for trying to chuck Jesus off a cliff.  They think that he is saying things that God has not commanded him to say.  They get him all the way to the hill top and scripture says, “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”

Whoever wrote this story down clearly thought that this was vindication for Jesus.  The inability of the crowd to kill Jesus that day was proof that what he was saying was true. 

I also think that this gives us another layer of understanding as to why the crucifixion was so devastating.  On a Friday sometime later, the crowd was able to kill Jesus.  If the one claiming to be messiah was able to be killed then he must have been a false messiah.  But as we know, the crucifixion was not the end of the story.  The resurrection, two days later, was the triumphant defeat of death. Again, attention was paid to the wrong thing.  Jesus sacrificed himself but his followers only paid attention to the apparent defeat. 

We are shaped by that which we pay our attention. 

How would your name-tag identify you?

If come to have faith in Jesus Christ and continue to live the way we have always lived then we are not “set”.  We've joined the team. We wear the uniform.  We know the schedule. We know the rules. We know where the starting line is. But are you getting into the race?

If you are not actively working on growing as a disciple of Jesus Christ then you are actively growing as a disciple of whatever you are paying your attention to.