Fourth Sunday After Epiphany, Sunday Morning Worship, February 2, 2025
Sermon: WHAT did you say?!?!
Accompanying Scripture: Luke 4:21-30

WHAT Did you say?!?!

What happened?

What in the world is going on in this passage that triggered the crowd to attempt to kill Jesus? One minute, they’re amazed and impressed; the next, they’re trying to send him to his doom.

Perhaps those kind words weren’t so kind. Perhaps the crowd was patronizing: “Oh, that’s Joseph’s boy. Isn’t he charming?” Perhaps they weren’t ready to accept him in their hometown. Jesus speaks about this in all four gospels: that prophets are not accepted in their hometown.

What if the town’s people saw his great wonders and healing powers in the ministry as an opportunity for gain? They’d be in the In Crowd and everyone else would be out. Jesus, being Jesus, addresses the elephant in the room. “You’ve heard all about my healing in other communities. Are you wondering what’s in it for you? You’re looking for special treatment, and it’s not going to happen. Let’s look at scripture.”

He then explains about the Widow of Zarephath who, by the way, was a gentile. She had just enough oil and wheat left to make one more loaf of bread. She and her son would eat it and she would watch him die before she did. The famine was that bad. Along comes Elijah and he tells her you won’t run out of wheat and oil. But feed me first. Sure enough, for the next three and a half years she never runs out of wheat or oil.

Jesus points out that Elijah didn’t save the widow of Israelite descent.

The Gentile Naaman was a great Syrian General. Sadly, he was covered with sores all over his body. His wife’s Jewish slave said, “You know, if you went back to my homeland, Elisha would be able to help you.” Sure enough, Elisha told the General to bathe in the Jordan River, and he was cured.

The Nazarenes didn’t want to be reminded of that. That’s when everything goes Wrong. The crowd is angered, and they want to kill. Yet isn’t this just a little bit over the top? Isn’t this too dramatic?

What Luke was writing about is an important message for us today. Let’s take a look at today’s view of mob mentality.

Miriam Webster defines it this way: “mob mentality is a large disorderly crowd of people, especially one bent on riotous or destructive action.” That was the Nazarene crowd. They were bent on destruction. The question is what happened to bring them to the point that they would take another human being and try to kill him?

Life happened. They were poor. Nazareth was hardly on the map and under the thumb of Rome. Galilee and Judea and Samaria were a hot bed. They were a powder keg and Jesus dares to tell them love God love, neighbor, all their neighbors. That does it. They can take no more. There’s a rupture and something unrecognizable happens to an otherwise peaceful crowd.

I did some research this week and found an article by a psychologist named Gayook Wong, MSW¹. It was published in Psychology Today a few years ago. In it, she says that mobs begin to lose sense of their own self-awareness and self-identity. They begin to identify as one with the crowd, and I suspect that later on the Nazarenes may have been wondering what happened and how we became this way.

Their emotions heighten in extreme ways. Their anger is over-the-top anger. They’re raging, and I’m sure many of us in this room have known that kind of rage that shakes you to your very core. Eventually, their unacceptable behaviors become acceptable, and the group loses their sense of identity and accountability. They feel anonymous. This was a group of people angry to the bursting point. It could have been Jesus, it could have been anybody who pushed the right buttons to send them over the edge.

I think the best example we have before us is what happened on January 6 when people got tired of not being listened to. They were tired of being set aside and they became a mob.

Guns are prolific in our society. All too often people use them to resolve differences that end in death.

I had a young caregiver who took care of my husband when he was ill. Tom loved him and the two of them got along great. Jarrett was a little bit on the “let’s push the envelope” side of things when he was not in our home. One day he said that he was driving home when somebody in another car didn’t like what he was doing. His solution was to point a gun at him. When I expressed shock and awe, he responded, “Oh it’s all right. I could tell it didn’t have bullets in it.” Really? Someone will have to explain that one to me.

This was a traffic incident where someone flipped out and tried to use a gun to intimidate

The Good News is that God is present and ready to listen. I know that doesn’t sound strong enough sometimes. But rest assured that God knows this kind of anger and God has got a handle on what this world is up to. God is still in charge, so give those concerns, give that hate, give that anger, give it to God. God has a plan. We may not be able to see it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

We resist this Good News because every day we all see the wrong headline in the paper or pushing through to our cell phones. Our emotions are a hair trigger that goes off easily. And it does feel so good to lash out, doesn’t it? It relieves a lot of Stress. We want to be freed and liberated from it and God is waiting for us to go to our knees and give it to God.

Jesus hopes for us to find peace in him: that peace that surpasses all of our understanding.

Give it to God.

God will help you figure it out.

God will help you figure out an even better way.

The Nazarenes discovered how easy mob mentality is as a response. It takes time and patience to avoid it. It takes love, tough love, firmness and a desire to learn from the other side.

It requires humility; a lot of humility. It requires a bit of tongue-biting.

And, sometimes, we have to accept that we’re wrong.

And often the truth lies somewhere in the center.

All glory and honor be to God.

Amen.

¹ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/facing-trauma-together/202101/the-psychology-mob-mentality