SERMON FOR SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2022     TEXT: LUKE 4:14-30
     The most recent issue of The Atlantic magazine has as its main feature an article entitled “January 6 Was Practice.”  It is an extensively-researched and thought-provoking piece by Barton Gellman, a staff writer for the periodical. It includes a section on the work done by the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats in the wake of the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2020. The group gathered court documents, public records, and news reports to compile a profile of the participants. Their research focused on two basic questions: Who were the insurgents in demographic terms? What political beliefs animated them and their sympathizers? 
     The first thing that caught their attention was age. Decades of previous studies of violent political extremists in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East showed that they tended to be in their 20’s and early 30’s. Among the January 6 participants the median age was a wildly atypical 41.8 years. There were economic anomalies as well. Only seven percent of them were unemployed, whereas over the previous decade one in four violent extremists arrested by the FBI had been. More than half of the group had white-collar jobs or owned their own businesses. There were doctors, architects, a Google field-operations specialist, the CEO of a marketing firm, and a State Department official. Moreover, although some had ties with known extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, or the Three Percenters militia, six out of every seven who were charged with crimes did not.
     The research team then mapped the participants by home county and ran statistical analyses looking for patterns that might help explain their motivation. The findings were counterintuitive. The higher Trump’s share of votes in a county, the lower the probability that insurgents lived there. Similarly, the more rural the county, the fewer the insurgents. The researchers tested another hypothesis: The participants on January 6 might be more likely to come from counties where their household income was dropping, but it turned out that household income made no difference at all.
     Only one meaningful correlation emerged. The insurgents were much more likely to come from a county where the white share of the population was in decline. For every one-point drop in a country’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent. This was a strong link, and it held up in every state. 
     Remember the words the crowd heard that day that set them on their way from the White House to the Capitol: “Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period. You’re the real people. You’re the people that built this nation. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Who are the “you” and the “we” envisioned here? Who is entitled, even obliged, to become violent because they are the real people, and who is cast as the “other,” the ones who don’t belong, the enemy they must fight? What is really at stake?
     The lectionary divides today’s story from Luke into two parts, presenting the first half as this week’s Gospel and the second half next week. But it is better, I think, to consider the whole at one time, if we are to understand the force of Jesus’ words. According to John, the Lord’s first public act was the sign he performed at the wedding at Cana, changing water into wine. According to Luke, he inaugurates his ministry by teaching in the synagogues in Galilee, including this return to his hometown. He reads the words of the prophet Isaiah and then sits down. Those gathered await his teaching. It is brief and breathtaking: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke tells us, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” 
     Then the tone abruptly changes: They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “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 said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way (4:22b-30).
     What happened here? Does the realization suddenly hit the audience that the man they are praising shouldn’t be commanding that kind of attention? Wait a minute, Joseph’s son? Who does this guy think he is — as the son of a common carpenter, he should not be teaching with such authority and distinction! Everyday prejudice at work; he’s not the right type. A hometown boy making good would excite envy and feed our nasty natural urge to cut people down and diminish their accomplishments. Jesus calls it before they even get started taking potshots at him: “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”
     Or is the problem that Jesus refuses to provide them with the kind of sign, confirming his prophetic role, that he did elsewhere? His reputation has preceded him. Why would he not live up to it here in his own hometown? Shouldn’t these people have, not just equal, but preferential status? Well, if that’s what they were expecting, Jesus curtly informs them, they can think again. Then he boldly compares his action, or in this case the lack thereof, to the prophetic prerogatives of Elijah and Elisha. They acted selectively. Of all the stories about them Jesus could have chosen, he picks two about the prophets reaching out to people who were definitely not part of the hometown crowd. They weren’t even Israelites. Moreover, they are people in desperate need — a widow on the brink of starvation, whose son dies and is restored to life by Elijah; a celebrated warrior afflicted with leprosy, healed by Elisha. By using these examples, Jesus reveals to his audience something about his own prophetic ministry, something that clearly does not sit well with them. The proclamation of Isaiah that he read, that he has come to fulfill, now sounds differently in their ears. Who is it for? Who are the poor and the blind? Who is actually suffering oppression? 
     The year of the Lord’s favor refers to the year of Jubilee commanded in Leviticus 25. Every 50th year was to be set aside as a time for liberation and restoration, when indentured servants (including resident aliens) were to be released, debts forgiven and land and property returned to those who had lost possession of them. There is little evidence that it was ever put into practice; instead, it was projected into the future as part of the coming of God’s kingdom. Yet Jesus announces it as fulfilled here and now in his presence. That would sound great to those trapped by economic hardship but to those benefiting from their deprivation, not so much. The words the crowd initially experiences as gracious, they now find offensive. The hometown boy becomes an outsider; his truth-telling a threat; his boldness an affront; and the crowd resorts to violence.
     “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . to bring recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” Fear blinds us, and the fury and hatred it fuels oppress everyone they touch, from the halls of Congress to the FaceBook pages of some of our own friends and relatives. Know the difference between the threats that are real and the ones that are manufactured. Then “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven . . . .” (Matthew 5:44-45). That is what Jesus tells us; that is what Jesus did.  Our Lord has shown us that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). In this angry age it is hard to believe that is true, but we must live our lives as if it were, until by his grace we make it so. Amen.