It was the early Fifties and the greatest fear of every parent was polio.  My aunt got a case of it.  I wrote about it in our newsletter this week.  But my dad’s cousin Debbie was so stricken by polio that she still wears a brace on her leg.  This is how she lives her life.  I remember the stories in my family about Debbie’s mom.  A lot of people thought she was a mean mother.  You see, Debbie’s mom decided that polio was not going to get in the way of her daughter’s life. Rather than treat her as an invalid, she treated her as a young woman who had strength.  Debbie now drives a car and travels all over the country.  She teaches school, and is pretty good at it.  Debbie’s mom had the good sense to look beyond the disability and see the plan God had for her daughter.

In today’s scripture Jesus had preached his first sermon.  At first the crowds were excited.  “Did you know that was Joseph’s son?  What a wonderful job he did.”  When Jesus began to explain to them what that text might mean, they became so angry that they not only drove him out of town, they drove him to the edge of a cliff.  If they had pushed him over that cliff, you and I wouldn’t be sitting here today.  What was Jesus’ response to the people’s reactions to his first sermon?  Luke’s gospel tells us he walked through that crowd.  He saw beyond the anger, and the hostility and the danger.

For many of us life is a very blessed thing.  Sometimes more than we give God credit for.  We have the richness of health and at least the minimum or more of the material goods that we need.  We have relationships with family and friends.  Our lives roll along in a fairly peaceful way most of the time.  And then something happens.  There is a problem.   Because we are modern Americans we whine at the top of our lungs.  And if we can’t get anyone to listen we might even sue someone because we know that it’s got to be somebody’s fault.  A little bit of cash will make us feel better, right?

I have a very good friend that I have known for twenty years or more.  She is a therapist in the valley.  She separates people into two categories.  One group knows that life has problems, and because they know that, they factor it in and they go on and live their lives.  And then there are people who think that life is perfect and should never present problems.  When they have a problem, they become angry and bitter.  They blame people and they live extremely miserable lives.  We have decided that our Christian faith is about God somehow putting a Star Wars space force over us so that we will walk through life and not have one problem We need to let Jesus model the life that God intends for us.  As we study Jesus’ ministry, we recognize that Jesus experienced moments of great joy and moments of great challenge.  However, Jesus looked beyond the good and the bad to the Kingdom of God that He knew was coming.  Whatever the short term issues are in life, they are trivial compared to God’s Kingdom.

We live in an age that supports a short attention span.  What want what we want when we want it!  We aren’t patient.  We become frustrated when there are problems that won’t be settled in the next mega-second.  We fail to realize that some of the deepest spiritual growth that we will ever experience is the result of being patient enough to wait to see where God may be leading us.  There has never been a problem on this earth that had been solved by running away, by blaming it on someone else, or by giving up.  Every problem that has ever been solved has been walked straight through.  My hope and my prayer for all of us as we come to this communion table today, is that we will remember Jesus, not as a soft fuzzy figure, but as a person of strength.  As a person who was so centered in God’s calling that not even an angry crowd could stop him from doing what God had called him to do.  As we come to this table, we receive the living presence of Christ among us.  We go from this place of worship determined that we become God’s agents in this world.  God has a task for us to do. 

Let’s bow our heads for a word of prayer.