Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Jan. 20, 2013 Epiphany 3
Luke 4:14-21
14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 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, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18'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,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'
20And 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. 21Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'
A good story teller does not tell you everything that happened, and sometimes what they tell you didn't even happen at all but what they do tell you captures the essence of what actually took place. The gospel writers are not attempting to give us an exact account of the life of Jesus. They are trying to tell us stories in a way that help us to understand Jesus, to feel like we know him, like we can get inside of his skin and his head.
In this account we've just read, Luke is telling us about a time when Jesus went to a synagogue, read scripture and spoke. Is this exactly the way it happened? No, of course not. The entire service of reading and preaching, if it happened this way, would have taken less than two minutes and that is not like any church service that any of us have ever attended!
When they went to synagogue it was pretty much for the day. The scripture readings were long, going on, sometimes, for hours. The preaching might be even longer, involving more than one preacher.
So Luke tells us about a service at the synagogue in Nazareth and he draws it down to just two verses of scripture and a single sentence. That's not how it actually happened but Luke distills this story down, like a good story teller, in order to let the full weight of a day in church rest on just this very concise image.
Jesus has returned to his home town. He is surrounded by the people he grew up with, cousins, siblings, his mother, and neighbors; everyone who thinks that they know everything there is to know about Jesus. And Jesus tells them who he is.
Now, if you were attending a public meeting..... let's say it is an inter-faith study class with Jews, Moslems, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus all in attendance, and if the leader of that discussion group turned to you and said, "To get us all started, why don't you stand up and tell us exactly who Jesus is"....... Would you feel comfortable doing that?
If you had to boil it all down to its most essential parts, who is Jesus?
You ought to be able to answer that. We're Christians here..... we ought to know who Jesus is. And Luke doesn't want us to be stymied by this question either. And so he tells us. Jesus looks at his old school chums, his family and extended family, and he uses the this brief passage from the prophet Isaiah to define what he is all about:
'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,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'
20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.
Who was Jesus? He was a religious prophet who specifically reached out to the poor. He understood himself to be a liberator of the oppressed. Now, you take that back to first century Nazareth where they had been living under the heavy hand of Rome's military occupation and you realize that the only kind of leader anyone was looking for was the kind of leader who could lead them to liberty.... But they were clearly expecting that to be a military victory.
You will hear me quote my Harvard professor, Jim Wallis, very often because he frequently cited this fundamental truth: If all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.
If you put all of your resources, all of your scientists, all of your manufacturing, all of your personnel, into building, equipping and arming an army then when you encounter a problem...... if all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. Jesus' contemporaries wanted to be liberated alright but they were not looking to sacrifice one of their own on a Roman cross to accomplish that. They wanted to be liberated by killing all of the Romans.
People in the first century and people in the 21st century try to project onto Jesus what they know good and darned well what he is supposed to be. His cousins wanted him to use his power and popularity to run out the Romans and give them back their country. The modern church wants him to hang on a cross and bleed so that they can feel that their sins are forgiven and they can go to heaven when they die.
Neither one has the slightest idea what Jesus meant by reading this passage from Isaiah and using it to define his ministry, his purpose, his essence. The early church laid a number of very metaphorical and spiritual sounding interpretations over the story of Jesus and every century since has tried to use the Jesus story to their benefit whether it is an emperor trying to raise an army, a government trying to raise taxes, a feudal lord trying to make peasants work harder, or some self involved American praying for a close parking place at the mall.
We've tried to make Jesus a military leader, a magical good-luck charm, divine fire insurance and the inspiration for a lot of really bad music and even worse art but who did he say that he was? Luke tries to make it easy for us.
Jesus is a liberator with a special passion for the poor. And if that is true, why don't all of the churches that bear his name look more like him?
As the early church heaped praise and religious language onto Jesus, they did so in adoration and respect but in many ways the end result was totally covering up the prophet whose message is so vital. Putting Jesus up on a pedestal is, in effect, turning him into a god and taking away everything he said and stood for.
How close are we to the Jesus who described himself as one who came to bring good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed? Most of us were raised in religious traditions in which we essentially put Jesus on a space ship and sent him way up to a golden throne far beyond the stars.
And from this great distance we were suppose to endure boring religious services and pay lip service to magical beliefs for which there was never any proof and from which any comfort we derived was as illusory as ghosts we used to talk about in the dark when we were children.
Rediscovering the voice of Jesus in his teachings about liberation and taking good news to the poor, we have found ourselves renewing our faith..... as the aroma of a hearty beef and vegetable soup travels from June's kitchen, and Elsie's, and Mary's... where they lovingly fills huge pots with stew or ham, to the dirty little building where the homeless come inside to warm up on Commercial Street and one of you ladles out steaming bowls of grace.
Men and women who have often found themselves estranged from everyone who is their blood kin, by reason of violence or addiction or crime, now are greeted by the smiling beautiful face of Mary Kapustka or Ruth Miller as she hands them a chocolate dessert she made just for them the night before, showing acceptance these people may not have felt from their brothers and sisters, mothers or fathers for years.
At Crosslines on Tuesday our crew handed food to nearly a hundred families.....so many that they were running out of food long before we were running out of time. We are not always good at following the rules..... we give out more food than we are supposed because, well because we had come to bring good news to the poor.... The year of the Lord's good favor.
There is resurrection in that.... There is baptism.... There is communion.... Confirmation... reconciliation, even incarnation in that...maybe even salvation... Without all of the Sunday school theology.
I remember our very first worship service 4 and a half years ago at the funeral home. There were forty or fifty of us there and I looked around the room and saw so many people I have known.... Ruth and Mel were there.... A couple who had four children and then started adopting children no one else wanted.... A little black boy, an Indian, an Asian family..... long before the Civil Rights movement had even started, before Martin Luther King, Jr. had even started preaching.... Mel and Ruth were risking their careers and their very lives to live liberation, the end of racism, the beginning of the year of the Lord's favor.
There was my old friend Jim Price, who has left the comfort of his Iowa college to go down to Nicaragua to use his own presence in tiny Sandinista villages to stop the American bombing of the peasants in Matagalpa. Jim went to Guatemala to be an escort to journalists who were in very real danger of assassination among the "disappeared" while that government was seeking to kill off hundreds of thousands of the Indians of Guatemala.
We had the support of my old friend Nelson Parnell, who had, with his wife Betty, worked for decent, safe housing for the poor, for social justice and civil rights for immigrants and the gay community.
In our short time together I've seen people showing such humility in service, .... Going to the home of a new friend who is recovering from surgery, not only with hot food but with a laundry basket to help them wash their clothes.
I've seen people invite total strangers into their home to share a meal and sometimes to move into the guest room for more than a year! I've seen such trust develop that they share with one another their life challenges.... Illnesses and addictions. What's more, I've seen people get sober, grow past their brokenness and have their lives restored and literally resurrected within the loving community of faith. There is salvation in that, isn't there? There is resurrection in that.
You can see Dr. David Adams at Crosslines anytime we are there..... but I have also seen David sitting in a café in Matagalpa with survivors of the Contra War in Nicaragua, talking loving with them about his hopes for their country..... and I've seen him stumble out of his huge garden looking like a poor tenet farmer himself, where he works full-time for months out of the year growing food for the hungry of our city. Can you feel the spirituality in that?
I could go on but I won't right now..... a good story teller doesn't tell everything... he just distills it down to the essence of the story.
Why did we start this church? Who are we? What is our reason for being here?
.....to bring good news to the poor.
....to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'
