Rollins Chapel
Luke 4:14-30
Richard R. Crocker
Those of you who were here last week may remember that we read this scripture passage, but I did not address it. Today I will.
It is a very curious passage. Jesus had begun his ministry in Galilee and had attracted some attention for being a great preacher and a miracle worker. Naturally his home-town folks were pleased when he showed up, with some of his friends, at the local synagogue. They asked him to read the scripture, and he chose a passage from Isaiah that he said referred to him. This made them very proud. Then they fully expected, understandably, that he would do the best miracles in his hometown. But he didn't. He refused to do so, or he couldn't so them - we don't know why. But the hometown folks were disappointed, and they were angry. They got angrier when Jesus began to cite other scriptural stories of prophets like Elijah whose miracles were not given to Israelites, but foreigners. In fact, they got so mad that they wanted to throw him off a cliff. But somehow he escaped.
We don't hear this passage so often, do we? It's very puzzling that the people who supposedly knew Jesus best, his fellow townspeople in Nazareth, maybe people who had been his teachers or his playmates or maybe his customers at the carpenter shop should all of a sudden want to kill him. But of course this little scene is a parable for what would happen to him in his life.
The people at Nazareth were not bad people. They were, we may assume, good people. So how could they want to kill this young man? How could good people do bad things?
Most of us think we are good people. I hear it a lot - "I'm a good person." And I agree. Most of the people I deal with - most students and staff at Dartmouth, most of my clients, most of my neighbors, most of my family, most of my fellow Americans - are good people. I have spent a good deal of time ministering to people who are incarcerated, in prison and mental hospitals. Most of them were good people. Some of them had done very bad things. But all of us, if pushed in a certain way, will probably strike out. We will slander, we will attack, we will kill. But we are still good people, right? And how can good people do bad things?
Now there is a strand of Christian thought that answers this difficult question, "Why do good people do bad things?" by simply denying the premise. This school denies that we - any of us, are good. Depravity, it's called. Total depravity. If that's the view of human nature you have, why it certainly is no surprise when people do bad things, because, essentially, we are all self-centered, sinful creatures.
Now the doctrine of total depravity is not a popular one. I doubt you've heard it defended lately. But it has a lot to commend it. It helps us know why people who are considered decent and upstanding behave in deplorable ways. It explains war. It explains September 11. It explains Abu Ghraib. It explains jealousy and cheating and slander. What it does not explain is genuine self-sacrifice, which is people doing something for another person that they are not required to do, not expected to do, and from which they not only do not gain, but lose.
Most of us do believe in the possibility of people doing genuinely good things. But we must also admit that, when we are threatened, most of us will react with vengeance and anger, if we can. That's what happened in Nazareth. You see, people - especially groups of people - have a great deal invested in being told that they are right and special. And as long as people who think they are special are treated that way, things are fine. But when people, who think they are special, who think they are God's favorites, are told otherwise, they react with anger. Sometimes it's a lot of anger. That's what happened in Nazareth. I wonder if it ever happens anywhere else?
Copyright ©2005 Richard R. Crocker
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