The Price Tag of Popularity
Luke 4:16-30
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Rev. Daniel T. Hans
September 23, 2007

Jesus never took Dale Carnegie's public speaking course: "How to Win Friends and Influence People."  That's obvious from our passage this morning. His first public speaking venture was nearly his last!  His hometown sermon was so disastrous he barely got out of town alive. What happened?  One minute he had them eating out of his hand, the next they had their hands around his throat!  What went wrong?

I

It started out okay.  Jesus went to worship in the synagogue.  That's the place where the people of Jesus' Jewish faith met to read the Scriptures and hear a sermon. An elder in charge invited someone deemed a competent interpreter of the Bible to speak. The speaker stood to read the Scriptures, then sat to preach.  There's great wisdom in that lost format as it lets the preacher know what it's like "to sit through one of his or her own sermons"!

The Bible passage Jesus read was a favorite of that day.  The words from the prophet Isaiah carried a promise of hope for the hopeless and freedom for the trapped.  Those words were commonly associated with the coming of God's Messiah, God's chosen Savior.  It was a popular reading, but what Jesus added was brash & brazen.  He claimed to be the fulfillment of that promise!  He connected his ministry to the Messiah's coming! The people back then believed God's Messiah would come,  but not in the form of the kid next door, not as Joseph's boy.  Think about your own feelings if some kid on your street said to you: "Some day I'm going to be your minister." 
As a kid, my neighbors would have shuddered at such a prospect!

While the connection of Jesus’ own ministry to the Messiah's coming raised a few eyebrows, his follow-up comments drove the nails into his coffin. His hometown heard of the healings he performed in other towns.  They were perturbed that he did no such wonders in their town.  Why hadn't he shown them any special favor. This hometown crowd was like: those who claim "Charity begins and belongs at home" or  those who have an "America first-America only" platform or those who get angry at their Congressman for voting for a bill that helps the nation as a whole but doesn’t help their home district.

Jesus implied that his ministry as the Messiah was not specifically for his hometown and not exclusively for the people of Israel.  He told two stories out of Israel's history that showed how God's favor went out to everyone, even non-Jews.  During a 3 ½ year drought and famine, the prophet Elijah was sent by God to assist not Jewish widows but only a foreign widow!  Likewise, God used the prophet Elisha to heal not the lepers in Israel but a leper in Syria who was a commander of the Syrian army, Israel's enemy!

These examples show Jesus' understanding of Isaiah’s words.  God's love goes out to all people, especially those in the margins of life, those easily and readily written off as lost causes.  Luke’s Gospel expresses better than the other three gospels Jesus’ concern for the “other”, for the outsider, and for the outcast.  The “it’s all about us and it’s only about us” crowd became irate when Jesus suggested that God includes others not like “us”.  Not liking the message, the crowd wanted to kill the messenger.

II

So much for Jesus' homecoming sermon!  What could he have done differently?  Wouldn't common sense suggest a different tactic?  Build a consensus first; gain popularity!  After all, being popular provides job security, a bigger audience, a greater influence, and the peace of mind that comes with being accepted by others.  Why didn't Jesus start his ministry by telling the people what they wanted to hear, or at least open his first sermon with a good joke?  Gain their loyalty, win their affection, then you can push and probe and ruffle feathers a bit.  Popularity and crowd appeal were not foremost in Jesus’ ministry. He believed his message from God was more important than his approval rating from the crowd.  Right from the start of his ministry and throughout his ministry, Jesus’ knew the price tag of being unpopular.

In 1816, a young, New England lawyer moved to Adams County and opened a law office where the Gettysburg Hotel now stands.  Upon his arrival, he witnessed fugitive slaves escaping from bondage in the South.  He devoted his legal skills and energies to help free slaves.  Later, Thaddeus Stevens became a powerful, anti-slavery influence in the US Congress.   As a side bar, Thaddeus Stevens rented a pew here in our church.  He wasn't a member and there's no evidence of regular attendance, but he did support this church by renting a pew. (Some people still do that today!)  At his death, he was virtually alone. Before being buried in an obscure cemetery in Lancaster, PA, he stated his reason for selecting that cemetery:  I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but, finding other cemeteries limited as to race by Charter Rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the Principles which I advocated through a long life: Equality of man before his Creator.
Thaddeus Stevens knew the price tag of being unpopular.

III

There is a cost of falling out of favor.  There is a price tag for losing popularity.  Public opinion, however, produces another costly price tag. The price tag of being unpopular can rob us of present peace, but the price tag of being popular can bankrupt our destiny & legacy.  Herein lies one of faith's great ironies: It may be more costly to be popular than to be unpopular.  There is a price tag for popularity, especially in the long run.

Luke's account of Jesus' hometown sermon follows on the heels of his temptations in the wilderness.  The devil tried to seduce Jesus with instant success, with human power, and with victory free from suffering.  After these temptations, Jesus returned home to face the greatest seduction of all - popularity!  There's nothing wrong with being popular per se; there's nothing wrong with high approval ratings;  there's nothing wrong with being liked by the crowd - provided qualities more important and enduring than popularity are not sacrificed in the process.

One of the costly price tags of popularity is the loss of integrity.  Seeking approval can undermine a commitment to what is right.  As Christians, we do things based not on public opinion, rather based on what we understand to be God's will for us.  As people of God, we do something not because it is the popular thing to do but because it is the right thing to do.

A political leader's greatest obstacle to doing what is right may be opinion polls.  Because of public opinion polls, leaders make hasty, appealing decisions that may not be in the nation's best interest long term. We need national leadership that is willing to commit political suicide for the sake of the nation's and world's future well being. We need leaders as defined in the following anonymous reflection:
The world needs more people who do not have a price at which they can be bought; who do not borrow from integrity to pay for expediency …who are not afraid to risk; who are honest in small matters as they are in large ones; whose ambitions are big enough to include others; who know how to win with grace and lose with dignity…who are not afraid to go against the grain of public opinion … who are occasionally wrong and always willing to admit it. (The Measure of Our Success, Marian Wright Edelman, p. 68)
Selling one’s soul for votes, sacrifices integrity for popularity.

Preachers fall into the same trap. The desire to be liked by the congregation can have a neutralizing effect on their ministry, causing them to avoid some of the Bible's most demanding and important passages. I have to admit there are Bible passages I read and then conclude: I can’t preach that! It's too demanding, too challenging, too truthful.  If I preached that stuff I might threaten the good thing I have going here! Again integrity takes a back seat to popularity.

The same holds for the family. Parents want to be popular with their kids.  They want to be liked. However, as with being a prophet or a leader or a Christian, being a parent is not about popularity. If parents place being liked above being truthful, above teaching their kids what is right, above fighting with their kids to establish good values, then parents will pay a costly price for being popular. The price tag is their children's future social and moral well-being. In his book, No: Why Kids - of All Ages - Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It, David Walsh asks: Do your kids suffer from discipline deficit disorder?  Hint: Symptoms include “the gimmes” and a “me first” attitude.
For parents, saying “No” is not popular but it is necessary.  Parents need to ask themselves- Am I doing what is popular with my kids or am I doing what is right for my kids?  In standing for what is right, parents will find their kids pushing them to the edge with statements like: "I hate you" or "I wish I lived in a different family" or "I can't wait to move out of here."  If parents give in to such threats from a desire to be liked, integrity is once again sacrificed to popularity.

Jesus cannot be accused of taking the popular path.  He sacrificed personal well-being and peace of mind to his calling to speak for God and he did not lose his integrity before God.

IV

Another casualty of popularity is identity.  When we always follow the crowd, we lose sight of who we are.  Jesus was born into the Jewish religion.  He could have remained a Jewish rabbi, working within the system, becoming quite popular. However, to do so would have meant abandoning his true calling, his deeper identity, as God's Messiah.

Popularity has enticed many a person to abandon a true life calling. The god of popularity causes us to forget who we truly are. We get so caught up in doing things to please others and to gain their liking that before long we wonder: "Who am I?  This isn't me!  This isn't what I want to be or do!  What have I become?"  Going along with the crowd and doing things just because everybody else is doing them can cost us our identity.  It was said of British philosopher and ambassador, Isaiah Berlin:  He became a master at fitting in at the price of lingering self-dislike.  (Isaiah Berlin: A Life , Michael Ignatieff.)

A much earlier English philosopher and church leader was Thomas More whose story is told in the film A Man for All Seasons.  Cardinal Woolsey comes to visit More, who has stood up to King Henry VIII and is now in prison.  The Cardinal says, “You’re a terrible regret to me, Thomas.  If you could see facts flat on, without that terrible moral squint of yours… you could have been a statesman.”  More replies, “Can I help my king by giving him lies when he asks for truth?”  Later, when More’s daughter comes to visit and asks her father to compromise his stand for truth and justice to save his life, More says, “When a man makes a promise, he puts himself in his own hands, like water.  And if he opens his fingers to let it out, he will not be able to find himself again.”

We must ask ourselves: Did God create me to be like everybody else or did God create me to be me?  Being ourselves means listening to God's leading for us more than looking for the crowd’s liking of us.  Being ourselves means standing alone at times (maybe even being buried alone), knowing who we are and liking who we are even as we stand alone.

One day at lunchtime at a high school, a group of students formed a circle around an unpopular girl.  They were making fun of her, picking on her, trying to make her cry.  Each time someone fired a cutting comment at her, the rest of the crowd laughed.  A cheerleader, one of the most popular girls in the school, walked by and stopped to see what was going on.  Some of the kids in the circle urged this cheerleader to join in the fun.  The girl in the center of this gauntlet belonged to the same church youth group as the cheer-leader.  In fact, the two girls had just been on a retreat together and had talked late one night about their personal thoughts and struggles with their faith.  As the cheerleader scanned the circle of kids, she saw some of her friends, some of the coolest kids in the school.  She looked again at the girl in the middle and saw her pain.  “What should I do?”  Before she could answer that question, she had to answer another question- “Who am I?  Am I just one of the crowd?  Am I someone who goes along just to get along?
Am I interested only in being popular?  OR am I this girl's friend, maybe her only friend?”

Reminding herself: who she was answered the question: what should she do.  She stepped into the circle, put her arm around her friend and said, "She's my friend.  If you're going to make fun of her then you have to make fun of me." Well, that killed it!  The fun ended.  The crowd disappeared.  But it cost that cheerleader her standing in the popularity-ranking in that school.  She may have lost some friends but she found herself. Only she can say if it was worth it. Popularity can cost us our integrity and our identity, if we let it.

V

Jesus never took Dale Carnegie's course "How to Win Friends and Influence People".  But then, Jesus wasn’t all that interested in public opinion.  He came to step into the circle of human cruelty and to stand for what is true and right regardless of the price tag.  The Christian life is not the way of the cheering crowd; it's the way of the lonely cross, where we hang our lives on God's promise to be with us and to stand by us as we stand for God's way of justice, truth, and love for all.

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