Oh man, oh man, oh man! I love this story! I mean, there are Bible stories that I like; there are stories that I appreciate; there are stories that I think are profound, but this story fires my blood! It makes me want to storm the state capitol, join a picket line, be sure the FBI has a thick file on me, preach God’s radical inclusiveness, radical inclusiveness, to racists, to the Christian right, to homophobes, to misogynists, to xenophobes, to any "phobe" I can find.

And you know why? ‘Cause I like to rile people. Y’all know that. And this is such a good story for a "riler" like me. We heard the first half last week. Jesus has been traveling around teaching, and he’s been "praised by everyone."

Sleepy town, Nazareth. No cable. No TV. No radio. No CD’s or DVD’s. When something unusual and exciting happens, you don’t waste it. So you can just imagine how exciting it is when this local boy is knocking them dead on the teaching circuit. When he comes back, it’s like a rock star returning to College Park. So on the Sabbath, everybody goes to synagogue. Even those people who usually only show up on the "high holy days" have come to check this out. Sleepy town, Nazareth. Nobody’s going to miss this.

So, the synagogue is full. Now, there’s no Rabbi — that doesn’t happen until later. They hold services by just taking turns taking the different parts. And the most important part is to read the scripture and then comment on it. Well, whom are they going to ask? Everybody knows. "Let’s see what you got, kid."

So Jesus gets up and reads this wonderful passage from Isaiah about being anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to bring sight to the blind, to bring freedom to the oppressed. (Ah, it fires my blood!) And then he rolls the scroll back up, gives it to the attendant, and sits down. Every eye is fixed on him. The room is silent; you don’t even hear the breathing.

Then he says something audacious, something so overconfident as to be impudent. Into the breathless silence, he says, "Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." This scripture! This scripture!! This scripture that is Isaiah’s poetic vision of the fulfillment of God’s hope for the world, this scripture of good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing! What an audacious thing to say.

And you know what? They love it! They start chanting, "Jee-sus, Jee-sus, Jee-sus." He’s done it; he’s won over the hometown crowd; he’s admired; he’s popular, and they say, "Ah, is not this Joseph’s son? A hometown boy." And an old man winks at him and says, "You done good, boy."

And then, you can just see it growing in him — he can’t stand it. He has just talked to them about poverty, captivity, blindness, oppression, and they’re patting him on the head. "Good boy. Good hometown boy." And you can just see it welling up in him: "I’ve got to rile these people up."

But there’s probably another voice in him (there’s always one in me) that is saying, "Don’t do it! Don’t you do it! Leave this alone, you hear me? These people are being nice to you, and this is a good gig you’ve got going here. Don’t you do it!"

And then Jesus—does it. He says to the hometown crowd, to the people who’ve known him most of his life, to the people who are celebrating his success: "Y’all are fine [by the way, Jesus said ‘Y’all (I’m sure of it)], Y’all are fine – with all these pretty words and meaningless flattery, but let me tell you something. I can’t work here because you don’t have faith."

"Oh, God," the voice is thinking.

"And that’s not all," Jesus says.

"Of course that’s not all," the voice thinks. "Why would that be all? I mean, they’re not ready to kill us yet."

"And that’s not all," he says. "In the time of the prophet Elijah, when there was a drought and famine in the land, there were plenty of starving people in Israel, but Elijah was sent to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. Sidon! You hear me? Gentile country! God’s prophet ministered to the people you call unclean heathens. Are you listening?

"And what about the prophet Elisha? There were plenty of lepers in Israel in his day, but what leper did he heal? Naaman the Syrian! Do you hear that? Do you get it? God loves everybody. Absolutely everybody, and you can’t contain God’s love and you don’t hold the monopoly on it. God’s love is wilder and more radical than you can imagine, and it is no respecter of the fences you try to put around it.

"You wanted to be taught? There’s your teaching."

Oh, yeah. That did it. They are plenty riled now. Filled with rage. Rage! They become a lynch mob, and they yell at him and grab him and shove him and drive him to the edge of a cliff. They want to throw him off, but —somehow — he just walks through the middle of them and leaves. We don’t know how he did that, but I’ve always imagined that it was the way he looked back at them. They glare at him with rage, hatred. And he looks back with pure calm, peace, love even. Love for them as they are trying to kill him. I can imagine that a look like that would part the rage.

Man, I love that story! It just fires my blood. And you know what? It fired my blood when I preached about it on February 1^st, 1998. That was my first Sunday, my first day, at St. John’s. And on that, my first day with you exactly six years ago, I told you that I had two pieces of good news. The first was that the parish had been in decline. The second was that I didn’t know how to change the first. I said that these things were good news because they meant that God had a lot of room to work in the parish and in me. I said that St. John’s was a wonderful place for powerful ministries to continue and for new and exciting things to happen.

And then I said, by way of introduction, that we were going to have to answer a question together, a question from the story: which God will we worship? The god of the townspeople, the god who is "comfortable, passive, kept, owned, possessed, limited, patted on the head? Or the radical, wild God whose love will not be contained and will burst forth from this place in new and exciting and challenging and sometimes upsetting and disturbing ways?"

As I begin my seventh year, I’d like to take a moment to take stock, to look back to that first Sunday and see how we’re doing. Are we comfortable, or are we riled up?

Both can have value, and both can be destructive. At the vestry retreat two weeks ago at Camp Mikell, we had a long discussion about this. Comfort, calm, peace, stability — these are good things. And in 1998, they were especially important in light of the fact that this was a parish that had been through lots (and lots!) of conflict for a long time. At Camp Mikell I told the vestry that the thing that pleased me most about the last six years was that we had not had any civil wars. Some disagreements, of course (we are, after all, breathing!), but we’ve handled them and often grown as a result.

And, to your great credit, that peace has been maintained in the midst of lots and lots of change. Not just at General Convention, but also here. Those of you who were not here six years ago (and I’m glad to say that there are lots of you) probably cannot appreciate how much change this parish has been through. We have changed signs, trees, bulletins, information in the narthex, music, liturgies, Sunday school, and candles. We have a sexton, web site, and Calling Post, none of which we had six years ago. We watched painfully as Christians Academy closed, and we invited Odyssey into our space. We’ve been through a divisive war together. We’ve supported the Bargain Shop while starting new outreach ministries, such as Begin Again. But most importantly, we are changed, literally. We have more people of color, more gays and lesbians. We have a long way to go, but we look more like the parade of all God’s children into heaven. We’ve had lots of change, and we’ve managed to do it in peace, continuing to care for one another.

And that stability, that peace, is a great comfort, and it should be. But while we thank God for comfort, we also need to be wary of it. Of course, riling people up for no good purpose is destructive, and Jesus never did that. But comfort has it’s own dark side, too. When we get too comfortable, we tend to just go on autopilot, and then we tend to start patting Jesus on the head.

I don’t think we’re doing that, but I’m worried. I think we’ve hit a plateau. We’ve accomplished an awful lot, and it’s been remarkably smooth sailing (considering), but I think now we need more wind in our sails.

I’m not sure how that should happen. Should we sponsor another refugee family? Should we hold a jazz mass once a month on Sunday evenings? I don’t know. But one thing that’s clear to me is that we need to focus not just on what we do, but, more importantly, on how we do it. We don’t need the people who’ve been pulling the rope at St. John’s to just pull harder. We need more hands on the rope. And that means that some of the people on the rope will have to make room for others, which isn’t always easy, even when those with blistered hands say they want help. But it also means that we need to figure out ways to get more people (some of you) involved, more people trained for leadership and service, more people coming to church (I invite people all the time, but you have to invite them! My collar comprises me: they think I’m inviting them because I’m paid to.), more people excited about serving God.

How are we going to do that? We’re going to have to work that out together. The vestry and I welcome your suggestions. Why should we do that? Why not just enjoy our well-deserved calm and peace and congratulate ourselves that we climbed up to this plateau and now we’re doing good things and humming along pretty well?

Well, I keep thinking of a guy who didn’t like plateaus, didn’t like people who were too comfortable, didn’t like autopilots.

Let’s get riled up! Those of you who haven’t been involved, or who could be more involved, let’s get riled up! Good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, God’s wild, untamed and untamable love — let’s get our blood fired!

After all, we follow a guy who almost got thrown off a cliff. Let’s be very, very careful that we’re not trying to pat him on the head.