August 29, 2016–Devotions — Rio Olympics
Badminton

“When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” Luke 4:16-22

When you are used to watching and playing badminton in your back yard, watching Olympic Badminton is a revelation. Whereas playing badminton in your backyard involves a lot of high arching shots, and a lot of “whiffs”, in Olympic badminton, the play is fast and furious. When I attended Penn State back in the 1980’s, we were required to have so many credits in physical education. A college like PSU had many, many different options for gym classes. One of them was badminton. Now, I did not take that class, I enjoyed taking classes like “squash” and “Lacrosse”, but my roommate did take badminton. He thought it would be an easy “A”. Little did he know the gym teacher was one of the coaches of the football team (I believe), and this was not your ordinary, backyard badminton. What he thought was going to be one thing, turned out to be something quite different.

The same is true for the local residents of Jesus’ home town when they went to hear him preach and teach in the local synagogue. They were expecting one thing, and what they got was something so completely different. The text says that they were first filled with pride for who it was teaching in the synagogue that day. “All spoke well of him”. But then, something changed. “Is not this Joseph’s son?” The question has an air of doubt – doubt that this uneducated, young carpenter would have the knowledge and the wisdom to teach them. So, knowing they were doubting him, Jesus goes on to tell them that their “familiarity” with him would get in the way of his ministry – especially his ministry in their midst. His way was going to be a challenge to the status quo, the local understanding, and this would ignite their rage.

So often we go into a situation expecting one thing, and through the experience we get something different. This does not always have to turn into a confrontation, or a disappointment. The way that we grow our faith and our understanding of the world around us is to engage people who will question our established ways and understandings. If we close them off completely (like is happening so often in our political realm), we will never grow to the lengths and heights that is possible for our faith understanding. We must always be ready to defend our faith, but also be ready for others to “teach us” new understandings. Through these experiences we can be “filled with rage”, or we can listen for the Spirit to continue to enlighten us in many and various ways.’

Pastor Dave