Jennifer E. Copeland - "Raising Prophets" (January 28, 2001)
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| - | My first appointment after seminary | 0:06 |
| was in a large church, in a small town, | 0:09 | |
| in a state adjacent to this one. | 0:13 | |
| Borrowing from Paul, I had the job that Paul | 0:16 | |
| might have classified as the less respectable, | 0:18 | |
| or inferior, member of the staff, | 0:22 | |
| with apologies to Albert Moseley, | 0:25 | |
| I was the Associate Minister. | 0:28 | |
| Now, there are varieties of Associate Ministers. | 0:31 | |
| There are associates in places like Duke Chapel, | 0:35 | |
| who participate in great liturgical festivities, | 0:39 | |
| and there are associates in small towns | 0:44 | |
| who participate in liturgical festivities | 0:46 | |
| when the senior minister is on vacation. | 0:49 | |
| Well, my situation wasn't quite that bad. | 0:52 | |
| The Senior Minister I was paired up with | 0:55 | |
| actually listened to my opinions on a regular basis. | 0:57 | |
| And one year, as we were preparing for Lent, | 1:02 | |
| I suggested we invite the sons of the church | 1:06 | |
| back to preach for us during each of our | 1:11 | |
| six midweek Lenten services. | 1:14 | |
| There were no daughters, of course. | 1:17 | |
| And by using ourselves as bookends on Ash Wednesday | 1:19 | |
| and then during Holy Week, Monday, Thursday, | 1:23 | |
| we had just enough people from that congregation | 1:26 | |
| still living, mind you, who had chosen the ministry | 1:30 | |
| as a career that we could fill out the middle weeks | 1:34 | |
| of the Lenten season. | 1:37 | |
| I have never heard Luke 4:24 quoted | 1:40 | |
| in so many consecutive worship services | 1:44 | |
| as I did during that particular Lent. | 1:46 | |
| My own home church hasn't invited me back to preach | 1:51 | |
| in over five years, and I'm convinced it's because | 1:54 | |
| they don't want to hear me stand in the pulpit | 1:57 | |
| and say, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. | 1:59 | |
| That's like a public service announcement | 2:05 | |
| for a bad sermon. | 2:07 | |
| We're telling the congregation up front, | 2:10 | |
| you are not going to like this sermon. | 2:12 | |
| But we try to make it their fault. | 2:15 | |
| If I hadn't grown up here, why of course you'd like it, | 2:18 | |
| but since I did, you won't. | 2:22 | |
| Nothing could be further from the truth. | 2:25 | |
| Our home congregations are the most forgiving of all | 2:29 | |
| when we come back to preach. | 2:33 | |
| They'll overlook a great deal that they would never let | 2:36 | |
| someone appointed by the mission get away with. | 2:38 | |
| They'll forgive our arrogance, our impudence, | 2:42 | |
| and our immaturity. | 2:46 | |
| And if we happen to stumble upon a particularly | 2:48 | |
| profound idea, why they'll talk about it for years, | 2:51 | |
| reminding everyone within earshot that I was | 2:55 | |
| her junior high basketball coach, | 2:58 | |
| or he used to deliver my paper. | 3:01 | |
| Even Jesus was accepted in his hometown, | 3:05 | |
| at least at first. | 3:10 | |
| All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words | 3:13 | |
| that came from his mouth. | 3:17 | |
| Who knew, Joseph's son, | 3:19 | |
| what a wonderful accomplishment | 3:23 | |
| for a community to help raise up a child, | 3:25 | |
| and have that child turn out all right. | 3:29 | |
| Have that child turn out just like us. | 3:32 | |
| Same customs, same values, same political allegiances, | 3:35 | |
| same haircut, haircut's crucial. | 3:40 | |
| Same opinions, same prejudices. | 3:43 | |
| We've done all right with Joseph's son, | 3:48 | |
| yes indeed, he's one of us. | 3:50 | |
| The spirit of the Lord is upon me, read Jesus. | 3:53 | |
| I taught his fifth grade Sunday school class, | 3:56 | |
| someone might whisper. | 3:59 | |
| Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, | 4:01 | |
| announced Jesus. Hey, he used to date my sister, | 4:04 | |
| did you know that? | 4:07 | |
| Everything has gone well up to this point. | 4:09 | |
| And then Jesus starts talking about all these foreigners. | 4:14 | |
| Sick foreigners, hungry foreigners, | 4:19 | |
| well we've got our own hungry people right here at home, | 4:23 | |
| and sickness, well, just take a look around. | 4:26 | |
| We've got physical ailments, emotional ailments, | 4:30 | |
| social ailments, mental ailments, and we're well on our way | 4:33 | |
| to political ailments. | 4:37 | |
| Who needs a Syrian to take care of? | 4:39 | |
| Even a righteous Syrian. | 4:42 | |
| Who needs another widow to feed along with her hungry child, | 4:44 | |
| even a deserving widow, even an innocent child, | 4:48 | |
| wasn't Joseph a Republican? | 4:51 | |
| What happened to this boy. | 4:53 | |
| The community invests so much | 4:56 | |
| in its children, you know. | 5:00 | |
| We rate our schools, we test our curriculum | 5:02 | |
| so they can receive the best possible education. | 5:05 | |
| We monitor our water, our air, our paint, | 5:10 | |
| to keep the children from being unduly poisoned | 5:14 | |
| by the poisons we're pouring into the environment. | 5:18 | |
| We introduce them to sports so they can learn about | 5:21 | |
| teamwork, we enroll them in dance, and music, and art | 5:24 | |
| to expose them to the cultural excellence, | 5:27 | |
| we raise them to envision a world without limits, | 5:29 | |
| where they can be whatever they want to be. | 5:34 | |
| Especially doctors, and lawyers, and CEOs. | 5:37 | |
| We send them to colleges that always rate among | 5:42 | |
| the top ten in US News and World Report because, | 5:44 | |
| because we love them. | 5:47 | |
| We want what's best for them. | 5:53 | |
| We want them to be happy because we love them. | 5:56 | |
| Parents and communities take great pride in their children, | 6:01 | |
| not just because they want to have bragging rights. | 6:06 | |
| When the plaque goes up at the entrance to town | 6:10 | |
| announcing that as the birthplace of Jimmy Carter, | 6:13 | |
| or John Glenn, or Babe Didrikson Zaharias, | 6:16 | |
| you all know who that is, right? | 6:21 | |
| When that sign goes up with her name on it, | 6:24 | |
| or anyone's name who could put that town on the map, | 6:27 | |
| there's more at stake here than look at us, | 6:31 | |
| we're famous now. | 6:33 | |
| At a deeper level, the town is saying, look who we produced. | 6:36 | |
| Look what we're capable of when we're at our very best. | 6:41 | |
| And so it is incumbent upon the children | 6:47 | |
| to do their very best, to become president, | 6:50 | |
| to fly to the moon, to win Olympic gold medals. | 6:54 | |
| We want to lob them right into greatness, | 6:58 | |
| and right into happiness. | 7:03 | |
| Jesus, never one to wait for others to bring it up, | 7:06 | |
| introduces the topic of his life's work, | 7:10 | |
| before anyone has even asked the question. | 7:13 | |
| He mentions Capernaum, because they all know he's been there | 7:16 | |
| and in a masterful defense move, Jesus quotes | 7:21 | |
| for the home team a few extra versus of scripture | 7:25 | |
| than just the assigned lection from Isaiah. | 7:29 | |
| He recounts for them two stories about God's saving | 7:33 | |
| activity among non-Jewish people. | 7:36 | |
| First, the story of Elijah feeding the widow and her son | 7:39 | |
| at Zarephath, and then the cleansing of Namaan the Syrian. | 7:42 | |
| Before anyone can even ask, what? | 7:48 | |
| Jesus has in effect said, I told you so. | 7:52 | |
| When the people of Nazareth quoted that proverb, | 7:58 | |
| doctor, cure yourself, they meant stay here | 8:00 | |
| and take care of your family and friends. | 8:04 | |
| The people who raised you, the people who want | 8:07 | |
| what's best for you, and when Jesus referenced that proverb, | 8:09 | |
| he knew that's what they meant. | 8:13 | |
| He's from around there, remember. | 8:16 | |
| He's also, at that very moment, doing | 8:18 | |
| what the proverb demands. | 8:22 | |
| He's reading scripture in his home synagogue, | 8:25 | |
| he's proclaiming the word of God for his family and friends, | 8:28 | |
| he's offering them a cure, or trying to. | 8:32 | |
| But part of his proclamation includes the observation, | 8:36 | |
| you just don't get it do you. | 8:41 | |
| Their own faith tradition illustrated time and time again | 8:46 | |
| how God's love has no geographical boundaries, | 8:50 | |
| God's love shows no ethnic favoritism, | 8:54 | |
| God's love creates no age limits. | 8:57 | |
| Jesus is only telling the home crowd what they already know. | 9:00 | |
| He's only repeating what he learned | 9:05 | |
| growing up in that synagogue with them, | 9:07 | |
| week after week after week. | 9:10 | |
| They taught Jesus about Naaman. | 9:13 | |
| They taught Jesus about the Zarephath widow, | 9:16 | |
| and Jesus went to Capernaum. | 9:20 | |
| When Hurricane Hugo slammed into South Carolina | 9:24 | |
| 11 years ago, I was living 200 miles inland | 9:28 | |
| doing that associate thing that I mentioned earlier, | 9:32 | |
| but our community still received hurricane force winds. | 9:36 | |
| We had trees blocking the roads, weeks without power, | 9:39 | |
| basements filled with water, | 9:42 | |
| that usual post hurricane havoc. | 9:44 | |
| But within the week, I had left that town | 9:47 | |
| and headed off to Charleston where the eye of the storm | 9:50 | |
| had passed over, headed to Charleston with a van load | 9:54 | |
| of food, a pocket full of cash, and a chainsaw. | 9:57 | |
| A news reporter saw the church van with its hometown | 10:02 | |
| emblazoned on the side, and he ran over | 10:07 | |
| with his cameraman in tow to ask me, | 10:10 | |
| what are you doing here? | 10:12 | |
| Didn't you all have it pretty bad up your way, too? | 10:15 | |
| Cameras are rolling, a small crowd is beginning to gather, | 10:19 | |
| and I, rising to the occasion, pounded on the Bible. | 10:24 | |
| Didn't Jesus offer salvation to Capernaum | 10:29 | |
| even before all of Nazareth was saved, I asked. | 10:32 | |
| Didn't Paul take the gospel to the Gentiles | 10:36 | |
| even before all of Israel believed? | 10:38 | |
| Oh, the crowd murmured. | 10:41 | |
| The truth was, my best friend lived in Charleston, | 10:45 | |
| and I wanted to be down there helping her. | 10:49 | |
| I was tired of mopping out basements | 10:53 | |
| in the upstate of South Carolina. | 10:55 | |
| And somehow, I don't think that confession | 10:57 | |
| would have made the evening news. | 11:00 | |
| But do you see how we must always validate our desire? | 11:03 | |
| Not to stay home and do the work that needs to be done here. | 11:09 | |
| When the Duke Wesley Fellowship sends international | 11:15 | |
| mission teams to Jamaica or to Palestine, | 11:17 | |
| the question is always asked, couldn't you use that money | 11:21 | |
| more effectively right here at home? | 11:25 | |
| Why, look how much it cost to buy the plane tickets | 11:28 | |
| for 15 students from here to Palestine. | 11:30 | |
| Well, it cost about $15,000 I guess. | 11:35 | |
| Maybe it cost more. | 11:40 | |
| And then you heap on top of that, building supplies, | 11:41 | |
| food, and lodging, a cash layout begins to go | 11:44 | |
| even higher, and when it's all said and done, | 11:47 | |
| why, we have money left over. | 11:49 | |
| Money left over to spend here at home, | 11:53 | |
| or perhaps to save for next year's trip. | 11:55 | |
| Money is not the real issue. | 11:59 | |
| The issue is why are you helping those people | 12:02 | |
| instead of helping these people? | 12:05 | |
| It's as if good news for the poor has to mean | 12:09 | |
| Or release for the captives has to mean captivity | 12:15 | |
| for the oppressors. | 12:19 | |
| Why can't we all be rich and free? | 12:20 | |
| Is there some limit on God's grace, | 12:24 | |
| pushing us into a scarcity of resources? | 12:27 | |
| Economic theory theology? | 12:31 | |
| Can we get that class at Fuqua? | 12:34 | |
| Probably not. | 12:37 | |
| But you know the old story about the pump in the desert. | 12:39 | |
| The pump sits there in the desert, | 12:43 | |
| with a bucket of water beside it, | 12:46 | |
| and a sign instructing people not to drink the water, | 12:48 | |
| but to pour it into the pump, priming the pump | 12:53 | |
| for an unlimited flow of water. | 12:56 | |
| Sooner or later, somebody's going to come along | 12:58 | |
| and drink that bucket of water, | 13:01 | |
| without pouring it into the pump, | 13:04 | |
| because he just can't believe there'd be a well out there | 13:06 | |
| in the middle of the desert. | 13:10 | |
| He doesn't want to go thirsty. | 13:13 | |
| Forget the people who will need water tomorrow. | 13:14 | |
| We just can't believe | 13:17 | |
| that God has enough grace to go around. | 13:20 | |
| We just can't believe that college students | 13:25 | |
| would take the time to tutor children | 13:27 | |
| right here in the Durham public schools, | 13:30 | |
| when they could be on a plane to Jamaica | 13:32 | |
| to tutor the children there instead. | 13:35 | |
| But you know what, they do both. | 13:39 | |
| Somehow, God manages to spread that grace around | 13:43 | |
| so that everybody has enough. | 13:46 | |
| Jesus goes to Capernaum | 13:50 | |
| because the people in Nazareth | 13:54 | |
| have done such a good job bringing him up. | 13:56 | |
| They taught him all about freedom for the oppressed, | 13:59 | |
| and good news for the poor. | 14:02 | |
| They taught him all about compassion for the outcast, | 14:04 | |
| and hospitality for the stranger. | 14:07 | |
| They taught him the story of God's saving grace. | 14:10 | |
| When the story, when the gospel interrupts our | 14:17 | |
| carefully orchestrated lives and the courses | 14:22 | |
| that we have plotted for our lovely children, | 14:25 | |
| why, it can be scary. | 14:28 | |
| It can be a bit threatening for us. | 14:32 | |
| Often our first response is self-recrimination. | 14:35 | |
| Where did we go wrong? | 14:38 | |
| Who forgot to tell him that we hate the Syrians? | 14:40 | |
| Who forgot to show her how to walk the path | 14:45 | |
| of the straight and narrow, without noticing all the | 14:49 | |
| derelicts lying in the ditches. | 14:52 | |
| And then we recall that, well maybe we did mention | 14:56 | |
| to our children something about compassion. | 14:59 | |
| We taught them that rule, you know, | 15:03 | |
| even before kindergarten, do unto others | 15:05 | |
| as you would have them do unto you. | 15:08 | |
| Can't really blame the child for taking things | 15:11 | |
| a bit too seriously. | 15:14 | |
| Well, that's the problem with the gospel then, isn't it. | 15:17 | |
| Some people want to take it so literally. | 15:21 | |
| Maybe we should just sing a song now, a psalm about | 15:26 | |
| a fruitful harvest, because there's nothing very threatening | 15:30 | |
| about bringing in the sheaves, is there? | 15:32 | |
| Trouble is, it's too late now. | 15:37 | |
| Jesus has spoken the truth, right here at home. | 15:41 | |
| Right in the midst of his family and friends, | 15:47 | |
| we are those people. | 15:50 | |
| It was a good sermon. | 15:53 | |
| It was faithful to the text, it was an exegetically sound, | 15:56 | |
| and creative in its approach to the material, | 16:01 | |
| all those things they look for across the quad, | 16:04 | |
| in a preaching class. | 16:07 | |
| When you hear a sermon that good, | 16:10 | |
| you only have two choices. | 16:12 | |
| Either you agree with the preacher, | 16:16 | |
| or you kill the preacher. | 16:19 | |
| In Nazareth, they opted to kill the preacher. | 16:22 | |
| They were unsuccessful, on this attempt. | 16:26 | |
| But given our familiarity with the rest of the story | 16:29 | |
| we know it's just a matter of time. | 16:32 | |
| In the meantime, we learn that the power of Jesus | 16:34 | |
| is beyond our control. | 16:40 | |
| Ignoring him won't change the message. | 16:43 | |
| Killing him won't stop God's grace. | 16:47 | |
| Following him, however, | 16:51 | |
| makes all the difference | 16:55 | |
| in the world. | 16:57 | |
| In the name of the Father, and the Son, | 17:01 | |
| and the Holy Ghost, Amen. | 17:02 |