Nemo Propheta in Patria

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

4th September 2022

Luke 4:21-30 

 

Those of you who link with me on Facebook,

may have noticed that in my biography section

I include my personal motto, and my personal vision statement.

The vision statement is fairly straightforward,

and was actually written here at Bloomsbury

when we were writing our church Vision Statement.

I don’t know if you remember the occasion,

but we were asked to consider what our personal Vision might be.

Well, here’s mine:

Thinking carefully.

Feeling deeply.

Living joyfully.

Acting intentionally.

I try to take this seriously in my life and my ministry,

and I commend the task of writing your own vision statement

if you’ve never done this before

But if you read beyond this on my Facebook bio, 

you’ll get to my motto,

which is a bit more obscure,

not least because it’s in Latin:

Nemo Propheta in Patria

Does anyone want to have a guess at what this might mean?

A prophet is not without honour except in his hometown

There’s a very specific story behind this,

and it goes back to my baptism at the age of 14,

at the Vine Baptist Church in Sevenoaks.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the practice 

of giving people a special verse at their Baptism?

It’s not something that we tend to do here at Bloomsbury,

but some Ministers place great store by it,

and my minister at my home church was one of them.

Normally it’s something uplifting, something encouraging

something to sustain the newly baptized person

through the months and years following their baptism

Well, in my case, I got something rather different.

There I was, in the pool,

having made my confession that Jesus is Lord,

and the minister turned to me and said:

‘Simon, remember this: 

A prophet is not without honour except in his hometown’

He didn’t say it in Latin,

but he might as well have done!

My mind just about had time

to articulate a startled ‘What on earth???’

before the waters closed over my head.

Well, in the years since I have pondered this strange verse 

which actually from Mark’s gospel (Mk 6.4)

And when I was ordained, Brian Haymes, formerly of this parish,

who had been my principal at Bristol Baptist College

asked me what passage I would like him to preach on,

and so I gave him this verse…

He preached, as I’m sure you can imagine,

a very fine sermon about what it means to be called

to a ministry as a prophet with honour.

And here we’re not talking about a prophet as someone who sees the future

but rather as someone who sees as God sees 

and who speaks God's truth into a disordered world.

And so Brian challenged me in my ministry

to be a prophet with honour.

And I hope that my personal vision statement

captures something of that desire.

And here’s something I’ve learned:

Sometimes it’s easier to be a prophet 

when the people I’m speaking to don’t know me.

I find that I can stand before a group of strangers, 

and fearlessly proclaim the word of God.

And on the whole I get instant respect!

But when the people know me well…

well…

Do you know the most difficult church for me to preach in?

It’s the Vine Baptist Church in Sevenoaks.

This is the church I started attending before I was born,

It’s where I was dedicated as a baby

it’s where my faith grew and was nurtured,

it’s where I was baptized

it’s where I sensed my own call to ministry,

and it’s where my mother still attends.

Of all the churches in this world

it is the Vine Baptist Church where I feel most ‘at home’,

even though these days 

there are a good number of people in the congregation

who are unknown to me,

and those I do recognize are increasingly in the older age demographic

within the church.

So why, oh why, is it that, when I go there to preach

as I occasionally have been invited to do,

I find myself nervous and anxious in a way I rarely encounter elsewhere!

Why is it that I find myself standing metaphorically naked before them

with all my qualifications, training and experience

lying in tatters around me?

Well, in today’s reading from Luke’s gospel

we encounter this same saying from Jesus.

But Luke rewords it slightly:

Instead of ‘a prophet is not without honour except in his own town’ 

as we find it in Mark,

Luke gives us a slightly starker version of the saying:

‘no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town’.

And this, I think, is why 

I find it so hard to return to minister at my home church…

Just as Jesus, preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth,

encountered people saying ‘isn’t this Joseph the carpenter’s son?’

So when I go to Sevenoaks 

I encounter people who remember me as a small child

all too ready to bring to mind and to voice

all those little incidents from my past 

that you, here in Bloomsbury, don’t know anything about

and quite right too!

It is very hard to be a prophet in your home town

And yet, for most of us, most of the time,

this is exactly what we are called to do.

It is only some of us, and even then only sometimes,

who have the calling to go 

and exercise our ministry ‘out there’, or even ‘over there’.

For the rest of us, our calling is to here,

to this community

to this church

to this expression of the body of Christ

It is here, in this place, and through this, fellowship

that we are, each of us, called to ministry

And it is here, in this place, that we too encounter

exactly what Jesus encountered in Nazareth:

Which is, that it’s very hard to be a prophet in your home town.

It’s very hard, for example, for the person 

best known as a teenager in the church

to be accepted and welcomed by that same congregation

into a position of leadership.

It’s very hard for the person who comes into the church ,

at a time of weakness and vulnerability,

to shed all the preconceptions that come with this,

and to enter fully into the life of the church as an equal partner,

with those of use whose difficulties have been less visible.

It’s very hard for those of us

who have grown accustomed to doing things one way

to find the courage to give voice to the inner conviction

that something must change

And yet these, and those like them, are the voices of the prophets,

they are the voices from the margins,

they are the voices which proclaim the word of the Lord to the rest of us,

and which challenge us in the name of the Lord,

to rise up from our sedate sense of security and self-satisfaction.

These voices, and those like them, 

are the voices that the church needs to hear

if it is to retain its prophetic edge,

if it is not to miss the voice of Jesus who comes to us 

to challenge and change us

and to call us into a new way of being.

And this is the tragedy 

of the reception which Jesus encountered in Nazareth.

He came to bring healing and wholeness,

to bring release to those in captivity, 

and good news to the poor.

And yet those in his own town, the people he loved,

those who had nurtured him in his faith,

failed to receive the ministry he came to bring!

Oh, they loved him alright at the start…

‘Here he is, look at him!’ 

‘Local boy made good’

‘Preaching in the synagogue and doing ever such a good job!’

As Luke tells us: 

‘All spoke well of him, and were amazed at the gracious words

that came out of his mouth’ (Lk 4.22)

It’s almost as if, at this early stage of the story, 

Jesus was something of a curiosity for the people of Nazareth.

And there’s something of a hint of patronization 

in the fact that those listening to him 

were ‘amazed’ at his gracious words!

As if this was something unexpected from one of their own…

But the spell doesn’t last long.

Jesus hasn’t come back to Nazareth 

to perform circus tricks to amaze a sceptical crowd.

He’s come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,

and that’s a prophet’s task,

not a job for someone seeking affirmation from his old friends.

And so, when those listening to Jesus

started down the ‘isn’t this Joseph’s son’ line

he came straight in with a direct challenge

to their disbelieving and patronising attitude.

Jesus 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 in Capernaum’

And here Jesus cuts right to the heart of the matter

as he tended to do!

Highlighting their attitude for what it really was.

The people in Nazareth didn’t want to listen to Jesus

because of his proclamation 

that the year of the Lord’s favour had arrived,

or because he brought good news to the poor, 

release to captives,

or recovery of sight to the blind…

Not a bit of it!

They wanted to see if the reports of a local boy

doing impressive things in a town 20 miles away, were true!

And they wanted to see whether he would perform the same ticks

for them as well back home in Nazareth.

To their great loss, they could not see past the image

of a local boy made good,

to the true picture of a prophet sent from God,

and so they missed his message.

Recognising this, Jesus quotes them another saying, almost in despair:

‘Truly I tell you’ he says 

‘no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town’

But, he doesn’t give up on them at this point either,

rather, he decides to have another go

at communicating his message,

at leading them out of their parochial mindset

and into an appreciation of the universal nature

of the kingdom he had come to announce.

And so he uses his despairing cry about a prophet

not being accepted in his home town,

as a springboard for a couple of stories

about two of the great prophets of Israelite history:

Elijah and Elisha.

Jesus reminds those listening to him

that Elijah was sent away from his home town,

and indeed his home country,

to Zaraphath in Sidon, in the heartland of Baal-worship country,

to bring food to a widow there,

bypassing the widows in Israel 

who were also experiencing famine

He reminds them that Elisha brought healing to Naaman the Syrian,

but not to the many lepers living in Israel.

The point Jesus was making is clear:

Just because a prophet lives somewhere

doesn’t mean that those who live there too

have a monopoly on the word of God.

Just because you grew up somewhere, 

or have made your home somewhere,

doesn’t mean that they own you.

This directly challenges the attitudes of those in Nazareth

who thought they owned Jesus 

because they knew his father the carpenter.

But it also does something more than this:

It doesn’t just challenge their attitude towards Jesus,

it also exposes their flawed attitude towards God

You see, just as those in Nazareth thought that they owned Jesus,

so also many in Israel though that they owned God.

And by drawing a comparison,

between the way his own ministry was received in Nazareth,

and the way Elijah and Elisha went beyond Israel and into Gentile territory

to perform the works of the Lord,

Jesus was making a very sharp point:

He was saying to those listening to him,

You do not own me,

and neither do you own God!

My ministry is bigger than Nazareth,

and God’s calling goes far beyond Israel.

And this was not a message 

that the Jews of Nazareth wanted to hear.

They didn’t want their nice, safe, secure worldview to be shattered,

they wanted to own Jesus, their local boy-made-good,

and they wanted to own God, 

the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

What they could not deal with was a local boy,

a carpenter’s son, for goodness sake!

coming into their synagogue, and shattering their worldview

by stating that their God was the God of the gentiles as well…

And so, of course, Jesus’ saying about a prophet

not being accepted in his home town,

is proved true.

And the people in the synagogue are filled with rage,

and they take Jesus from the place of worship

up to the local cliff so that they might hurl him to his death.

At which point Jesus leaves them to their self-righteous anger

and their murderous intent;

he passes through their midst and goes on his way

to seek others who will grasp the radical nature

of his proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favour

And so what about us?

How do we respond,

when Jesus challenges our preconceptions to the core?

How do we respond,

when he says to us, ever so directly,

that we don’t own him

and neither do we own God?

How do we respond,

to the prophets among us who make us feel uncomfortable,

who threaten our neatly ordered world?

How willing are we to be the prophets?

to put our own futures on the line,

to proclaim the justice and righteousness of God’s kingdom.

How willing are we

to risk our reputations, both individually and as a church,

in order to bring good news to the poor,

recovery of sight to the blind

and release to those in captivity?

How willing are we 

to do battle with those who claim to own God,

and to show by our words and actions

that in the name of Jesus Christ, 

God is bigger than we can possibly imagine,

and that he recognises no boundaries,

whether they be boundaries of politics, 

ethnicity, 

gender,

sexuality,

social status, 

or economic privilege

How willing are we to be the prophets of our time, here in this place,

challenging the world in the name of Christ Jesus.

and proclaiming the message of the one who said,

Today, here and now, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing

The year of the Lord’s favour has arrived.