In the passage of the Gospel we just heard, Luke tells us that a group of people who had been very pleased and even amazed by Jesus, got so angry with him that they threw him out of the house of worship, ran him out of town and wanted to throw him off the cliff. Now that is angry! Jesus’ reputation as a spirit-filled leader had spread around the country. Last week we heard that all spoke well of him, when he read from and commented on the scripture at the religious gathering in Nazareth. So what made them turn on him? Luke tells us what Jesus said to make them so angry – but it doesn’t sound that bad does it? He reminds them about the story of Elijah being sent to a widow (probably a Syrophonecian woman) at Zarephath in Sidon and about Elisha healing the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian. He was reminding them of stories that were part of their own tradition and it made them so mad that they wanted to annihilate him. It wasn’t new stuff he was telling them – it was old. And it was a main Bible theme – not an obscure part of their tradition. The reading we just heard from the prophet Jeremiah tells about how Jeremiah understood himself to be sent to proclaim that God’s message was not just for Israel but for all nations. So what is the problem?

Maybe you remember how this story started. We heard it last week. Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, about proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor – the year of Jubilee in which debts were erased and slaves were freed. Every trespass was to be forgiven, every IOU erased – everyone was to start over again with a clean slate. For whom is this good news? For whom is this bad news? Well, if you hear the Jubilee proclaimed and want to jump up in celebration, it’s probably because you are in so much debt that you cannot ever repay, or because you are captive or in some kind of prison and you’re about to be released. You are about to be let out of some kind of dungeon without having “served your sentence.” If you hear the Jubilee proclaimed and want to jump for joy, it’s probably because you do not have enough to eat or enough to wear, or you are utterly stuck and need to be set free.

But if this news makes you mad, it might be because you were anticipating repayment of a loan; because you paid good money for a slave who is about to be released before you’ve gotten your money’s worth; or because you have been working hard for what you have; because you have been on the giving end and not on the receiving end of the socio-economic equations and you want what you are owed. You have paid your dues and you paid full price. You don’t want to have the slates erased because then it won’t be fair. And probably you don’t feel so wealthy that you can afford to suffer these losses, without suffering yourself. Probably you feel as if you are just getting by as things are.

Jesus wasn’t talking to a congregation of wealthy cosmopolitans. According to Luke, Jesus was in his hometown of Nazareth, a small-time community with no more than several hundred residents according to archeologists. Jesus was talking to a faithful group in Nazareth – people living in occupied territory, people who were overtaxed, over extended, and extremely overworked. These were the people who snapped when it became clear to them that Jesus was talking about God’s Jubilee – God’s saving grace for other people – not necessarily for them. They were scandalized. Why was Jesus not talking about God’s saving grace for them? They were not the occupying army. They were not rich. And Jesus was not just talking about saving other miscellaneous people; Jesus was talking about God saving faithless people -- sinful people. That their response was an attempt to stone him, is particularly telling. That’s because stoning was a requirement of the law in those days when someone was no longer deemed fit to be a member of the community. It could be accomplished by throwing stones at someone or by throwing someone onto the stones (like off a cliff).

But Luke’s story is that Jesus passed through them and went on his way. So this is the story of the day Jesus became homeless. People who had known Jesus since childhood ran him out of town that day and as far as we know, he never went home again. As far as we know, he never had a home again. This is the story of when Jesus, the beloved child of God, became homeless.

There are some who understand Jesus as so divine that his feet barely touched the ground while he was alive on earth. That kind of Jesus might not have felt particularly bothered by being homeless. But I imagine a much more human Jesus – a Jesus who was profoundly changed by the experience of being homeless. Since this is the first story of Jesus’ ministry in Luke, it’s hard to know how he was changed, but I think the experience of being homeless must have made Jesus so much more radical in his ministry. I imagine he learned something more deeply about what liberation theologians call, “God’s preferential option for those who are poor.”

You may know that some years ago, the Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island, The Right Reverend Geralyn Wolf, as part of her sabbatical, spent a winter month living out of a backpack, staying in Providence shelters and eating in soup kitchens. With messed up hair, some garish lipstick and some dirty old clothes, her minimal disguise was astonishingly effective. Her journal from her experience was published in a book called Down and Out in Providence: Memoir of a Homeless Bishop. There are many compelling stories, but the one that gets me every time I read it is in the entry for Sunday, January 12. In it, Bishop Wolf wrote:

“I go to a big church for Mass, but I am too late for one liturgy and too early for the other. Breakfast is being served, so I go downstairs and ask if I can have some fruit. ‘The cold breakfast is three dollars,’ the man says. ‘I don’t have $3,’ I say…. ‘Well the cold breakfast is $3 and the hot breakfast is $5. You’d better make up your mind because we are closing breakfast. It’s time for the adult forum.’ ‘Please,’ I say, looking at the leftovers, ‘I only want some of that fruit.’”

She continues: “I am moments from tears, moments from weeping for the whole church and for my deepest hopes for the church I love.”… “I go to the adult class to hear a lesson about historic Christmas sermons. ‘Hello, Father,’ I say, ‘I’m coming for the lesson. I came for breakfast, but I didn’t have enough money.’ He says distractedly, ‘Yes, well come to the class.’ …. The lecture is excellent, but I hunger for rightness. I guess I could have begged for breakfast with tears, since I was so close to weeping for the church that I love, but true generosity must not be manipulated by imposing guilt.”

"I can’t sit in the class any longer, because when the priest starts talking about the manger from which the cows ate and in which Jesus was born and how Jesus is the manger, from which we are all fed, my inner flames reach my tongue. I stand up and say, ‘I came for breakfast, but I did not have enough money, and so I say to you, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’’ And I leave...I do not have answers, only deep pain at being part of a society that does not care for its poorer members.”

Now before any of us at Emmanuel congratulate ourselves about how we would never do what that church in Providence did (we never charge for coffee hour and we don’t serve breakfast, and besides, we have a shelter in the basement!), I encourage us all to think of circumstances when we haven’t dug deeper. I want to encourage us to reflect on circumstances where we could be more generous with our spirit, more generous with our money, more generous with one another and with strangers, more generous with those who owe us something, more generous with those who annoy or anger us. It’s a moral imperative but it’s not about guilt. It’s about practicing gratitude for whatever we have and it’s about freedom and new life that we sorely need. It’s about understanding that we are beggars who know where some bread is, who know where some money is, who know where some shelter is. We are beggars who know where some kindness is. It’s about showing what we know and sharing what we have with other beggars. It’s about the freedom and the new life of joy in one beggar showing another beggar where some treasure is.

Bishop Wolf wrote in her journal the next day, on January 13: “I was tired with a pablum Jesus before I entered my pilgrimage. The pastoral ministry often sacrifices the painful road to personal transformation in order to maintain a false sense of contentment. …. Unless we identify with the crowd that cries, ‘Crucify him. Crucify him,’ [or I would add ‘throw him off that cliff,’] we have yet to claim the fear and anger, envy and sloth that dwell within us. Failure to admit our participation in perpetuating the plight of th[ose who ar]e poor and rejected inhibits us from receiving the freedom and new life that we desperately seek. I know that if humanity is to inherit the …[realm] of God, it will be because th[ose who ar]e poor have opened the door.”