Proud of Where You Come From?

Danny Moore - March 21, 2023

I’m from Idaho. If you’ve known me for as long as a month, I’ve probably brought that up to you somehow by now. It’s a place I love being from. We have a few names for Idaho: Mountain Country; The Forgotten Wonder; The Gem State (yes, it is the Gem State, not the Potato State); and most everyone in Idaho agrees that Idaho is God’s country, whether they believe in God or not.

I’m proud to have grown up in Idaho; I love the place! It formed me; it built me. But it took me a long time to get over my pride of having grown up in Idaho. It took me a long time to stop correcting anyone who said they were looking at a hill. A hill (to my reckoning) needed to have a grade steeper than 30 degrees and be longer than 100 feet; less than that was a mound or a speed bump. When my wife and I drove around Washington and Idaho she kept remarking, “Oh my gosh, look at those mountains!” I had to keep telling her, “Those aren’t mountains. Those are hills.” You see, a mountain requires more than a day to climb. (Can you hear the pride and snobbery in my words? So can I…now…)

This week we reflect on the idol of heritage and nationality. We read in Luke’s gospel of when Jesus, in the early days of his ministry, returned to his childhood synagogue and was asked to read the scroll for that day. He read from the prophet Isaiah:

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. (Luke 4:18-19)

The people murmured in awe, seeing how the boy they once knew had become a powerful figure. Perhaps their thoughts turned quickly to how this would benefit their humble town. “A miracle worker…from Nazareth?! He will put us on the map! Maybe he’s the one foretold who will overrun our enemies and make us a great nation once again!!” Their hearts and eyes and ears were still filled with the pride of David and Solomon’s kingdoms. Jesus, seeming to sense their self-idolatry, tries to set them straight.

“…the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut for three years and six months, and there was a sever famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.” (Luke 4:25-26)

Jesus is telling them (and us) that they (we) don’t understand what God is trying to do. Jesus didn’t come to draw lines between people, he came to erase them. He didn’t come to magnify people, he came to magnify God. We often say “God bless America.” We like telling God what to do. We should be praying for America to bless God. Anything else only serves ourselves.