Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Ps 19
1 Cor 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21
Jesus read the text and sat down to teach – to enter into dialogue with others and concluded, today this Word of the Lord has been fulfilled in your hearing. Have we not wondered why the good news of the gospel goes unheard in our homes, in our families and in our neighborhood and even in our country? Have we been too shy about our conviction? Are we lukewarm about the gospel in fear of offending others? I wonder about these things for my own message and yet this text is one cited so often in sermons that call us to a better understanding and advocacy for social justice.
The text of Isaiah is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago. Jesus recognized the prophetic words as a call for correcting injustice, a preferential option for the poor the radical inclusive love of our God for all people, everywhere, in every age, social, economic, and political situation.
The Good News to the poor is a theme of Luke-Acts. The text announces Jesus ministry as the fulfillment of God’s salvation-time and that time is NOW! One way to address the text is to ask who are the poor, captive, blind and oppressed to whom the good news is preached and for whom the acceptable year of the Lord has arrived? Edward Markquart in Witnesses for Christ offers this interpretation:
“God’s story is always related to human need. If a woman is dying of cancer, the gospel is God’s strong word of resurrection. If a person is permeated with guilt, the gospel is God’s assurance of forgiveness. If people experience extreme suffering, the gospel is the prayer, ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble’. For the starving, the gospel may be bread. For a homeless refugee the gospel may be freedom in a new homeland. For others, the gospel may be freedom from political tyranny. The gospel is always related to human need.” (p69)
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me …….to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind….to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
The content is as important TODAY as on the day Jesus taught in Nazareth. The poor are with us today! The captives are behind bars today. The oppressed cry out for release today. The poor today as then are not just economically disadvantaged but those who are excluded by our moral code of honor, those who are on the other side of the “acceptable line” however you draw it, those who are “outsiders” – all these are offered the redemptive, forgiving grace of God. Those people are welcome here, declares Jesus. It is no wonder that the homefolks got upset. Jesus declared that the good news for the poor is to be fulfilled TODAY. You, brothers and sisters, sitting here very comfortable in the town church/synagogue are able to break down those walls of division and strife and bring the good news of inclusive justice today, right here, right now. The time is always right to do justice!
Today is the time for change. Today is a time to encounter Jesus again as if the first time. Today we can rejoice in the forgiving grace of God given to all, or we can restrict the gospel to us and ours and find ourselves in that angry group who wanted to throw Jesus off the cliff. Today there are 36 million people living in poverty, 47 million without health insurance, 2 million households declaring bankruptcy in the United States. In our world TODAY, 3-4 billion people in this world are living on less than $2 a day which in purchasing power is 40 cents in the US. Einstein once observed, “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” We count what is important to us – like our retirement accounts and what the stock market did today, but we don’t count the impact of global poverty on global peace. There can be no peace without justice.
Jack is a father of four young children. Jack works three jobs, full time as youth pastor at a church, part time at a seminary and as owner of a small business but Jack and his wife cannot afford a house within an hour’s drive of his church.
Claudia and her husband Doug are farming land inherited by his family. They work hard, but a road accident left them swimming in medical bills. Typical of uninsured Americans coverage was “outside their means”. Such is the case for 46.6 million US citizens. (Sojourners magazine, Feb, 2007).
Minimum wage increases were approved in every state that put the issue on the ballot in 2006. It was good news to those advancing the cause of a just society. Coalitions of workers in health care, education, faith based and community based, labor, business, groups are often at odds about what is a fair wage for a worker. The minimum wage has not been adjusted in 40 years in this country. The issue is once again before the Congress of the United States. It passed the House this week and goes before the Senate. Will you join in this work of justice for the poor?
Justice corrects injustice. When an individual acts for justice, she stands for what is right. Social charity addresses the effects of social sin but social justice addresses the cause of these sins. Social justice is almost always economic and political. We like our principle of separation of church and state and often that means a warning to the preacher to avoid political issues. I know that it is risky to mention these issues from the pulpit. Some will take offense. I take comfort from the fact that Jesus did not give people only what they wanted to hear but challenged their closest held beliefs. Jesus told his family, his neighbors that they were not the only people God cared about. Jesus lays bare the subtle sins of the human heart: the sin of compromise for popularity, the sin of exclusive inclusion for those who agree with our views, and the sin of hording what is ultimately God’s for our comfort and pleasure.
The words of Jesus spoken in Nazareth ought to pierce our hearts today. Jesus took the words of the prophet Isaiah and used them as his own. We ought to hear in those words the mission of the church today. Our presiding bishop keeps emphasizing the mission we are called to do in this world. How liberating it would be in this season of Epiphany to focus on the mission to the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed instead of arguing about things that divide us rather than working for things that unite us. Paul urges us not to break up the Body of Christ: “God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
Today is a disturbing word, just as it was for the homefolks who listened to Jesus in Nazareth. Today calls us to action now. You may complain that the problems are too big, that you don’t know what to do, but the call of Jesus is meant to shake you out of excuses and complacency. People are poor today. Our neighbors need our compassionate intervention today. We heard the good news today. The spirit of the Lord is upon you today. Today has the scripture been fulfilled in your hearing. We are the members of Christ body in this world today. We are those who will help rebuild the homes destroyed by Katrina. We are those who will help build an orphanage in Honduras. We are called to work on behalf of the poor – to visit the captives – to stand in solidarity with the forgotten and excluded – to liberate the oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, because Christ is the head of this body!
Jesus continues to be known in the way we live, the way we love, the way we practice the text TODAY. When we give from our abundance, we see God take the gift, amplify it and make it count. When we go forth into the world today, some of us go to the Gulf Coast to rebuild houses, some of us go back to school to begin another semester, but all of us go into the world today – let us go to love and serve the Lord.