Epiphany 4 2007
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Ps 71
1 Cor 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
The call of Jeremiah is a story of retrospective awareness of God’s grace. Jeremiah is known as the moaning prophet. It is not popular to be a prophet – to speak God’s word of inclusion, warning about wrongs committed by individuals or nation-states. Seeing from the perspective of God is dangerous business. For Jeremiah it meant a resume of suffering, rejection by friends and powerful people, and finally exile. Jeremiah as the document we recognize in the Old Testament or first testament asks a question and answers it. For what was I born? “I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Despite his protest Jeremiah was chosen as an agent of grace – God will have her prophet! Those of us who struggle with some “call” of God leading us in new directions ought to take time to reflect on the consistent way in which the bible describes this experience. Jeremiah protested that he was only a boy, Moses protested that he was not good at speeches, Samuel only understands by way of his mentor Eli. The common theme is that God chooses the instrument of grace for the purpose God has in mind. We can protest, resist, or run, as Jonah did, but God will persist and our running and protesting will be nothing when we encounter the living God. You may struggle like Jacob but in the end even with a limp you will go the way God wills. Grace is the medium of God’s favor. Grace precedes any and all works of mercy and compassion and reconciliation.
From the call of Abraham to the opening “sermon” of Jesus in Nazareth the theme that God works in and through human agents for the benefit of all creation is continuous. Abraham was to be alight to the nations. Jerusalem was to reach out to be a model of a covenant with God and humanity. The laws of the ancient code was to allow the poor to glean the fields, to cancel the debts and allow people restoration by proclaiming the year of jubilee – what Isaiah called the year of the Lord’s favor. The message is clear – and the failure to adhere to the inclusive work of God’s grace is also consistent and clear.
Jesus was at worship in his home church – the synagogue in Nazareth. The townfolks objected to two parts of the teaching: the proclamation that the reading had been fulfilled in their hearing and the examples given in support of that statement. The passage Jesus refers to as being fulfilled was read last Sunday: “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.”
The local congregation must have thought Jesus was surely wrong about any hint that this prophecy was being fulfilled in their midst. Look around you – there are poor everywhere. See those soldiers out there in the streets of “our town” they are Roman soldiers. See the tax collectors taking so much of our hard labor to build grand estates for the Roman Governor. The prophet Isaiah promised liberation – our liberation and it is very clear that we are the poor and oppressed. Jesus knows that the attitude of his neighbors is very negative about foreign occupation of the HOLY LAND OF GOD’s CHOSEN PEOPLE = US! So if God is working today, God will run those Romans away, give us back our land, renew the sovereignty of Judaism and punish our enemies. We will be blessed because we are the chosen. God is on our side. God gave us the Torah.
Jesus was saying meant that they were not the only ones who matter to God. This point was made clear in the examples of Naaman the Syrian who was cleansed of leprosy by the prophet Elisha and Elijah helping a poor foreign widow. The work of God’s grace is not allocated to the “in” group. You are not the only people who matter to God! They are angry, resentful, and hostile. The good folks of the church tried to kill Jesus by running him off a cliff.
Jesus saw the poor, the blind, and the oppressed as those who were important to God. The label of religion, nation, political alliance, money, position did not distract Jesus from the compassion offered to everyone everywhere. Jesus upset everyone in church that morning by announcing the freedom of God to offer grace and forgiveness to anyone God chooses. The conditions we put on God are human constructions. The problem is one of self-righteousness! The congregation that day thought they were special – and they were – but they were not willing to accept that others – those thought less worthy were just as important to God. They were first – they were suffering – they needed liberation – they wanted blessings. They could not see the needs of others because their own needs occupied all their time and attention. Jesus saw things differently. Soon to be homeless and essentially an exile from his home community, Jesus knew that there were others that could be taught, others that would accept healing, others that would listen to the good news of God’s reconciling love. If those at home were locked in self-adsorption, there were others who would accept the blessing. Luke may have placed this story in the beginning of the gospel as a forecast of the passion narrative.
What about us? Are we also sitting here in this church, listening to the scriptures, singing hymns, praying prayers, gathering at God’s table for spiritual food focused on us, our family, our nation? If you are not as uncomfortable as the congregation in Nazareth when you hear that passage of Isaiah, you are not listening. We are not the congregation of the saved – we are the agents of grace that God is calling to go out and share everything with everyone. When we care more about saving for our grandchildren to go to first rate colleges than about feeding the hungry and providing housing for the homeless, we have joined the Nazareth congregation. When we care more about what kind of car we drive than whether our neighbors have access to healthcare we need to hear Isaiah 61 again as for the first time. When we ignore the continued spread of HIV in our world and allow our government to spend more for weapons of mass destruction than for medicine for the sick and poor and oppressed, we are failing the call of God today.
Now listen! God does love you, right now, right where you are, with all your fears and doubts, and hopes AND God loves your neighbor just as much AND God loves your enemy. That is the gospel message today. God is not confined to our categories. God is not restricted to our understanding. The prophet is right that God’s ways are not our ways – God’s ways are higher than our ways. Jesus by his ministry and way of life made that abundantly clear. If we would follow Jesus, we too must care about injustice in every form, in every nation, and we must act to correct it. Wherever the poor are, God is there. Wherever people are oppressed, God is there. God is calling us to works of mercy, charity, and justice. Our God is the judge of all. God cannot be domesticated or nationalized. God is not an American. God is not an Episcopalian. God is God.
By way of example, the insert in your bulletin this week speaks about why empowering women helps us transform the world. In our denomination, we have dioceses and parishes withdrawing from the larger communion on the grounds of ordination of women or men whose sexual orientation is different. Some bishops refuse to sponsor a woman for ordination thirty years after the General Convention declared it right so to do. The gospels present four different versions of the Good News, four diverse theologies about Jesus’ revelation of God. The church has been pluralistic since its inception. We spend too much time arguing about what is “right” and separating over our sense of righteousness and too little time focused on what unites us. We have work to do in this world, torn by war, riddled with poverty, ravaged by AIDS, and divided by religious strife – between Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. If we would be hearers of the word today, we will feel the judgment of God on us when we exclude anyone as outside the reach of God’s love. Until we are willing to admit that God cares deeply about those suffering the effects of poverty, gender discrimination, disease, and religious persecution, we will miss the year of the Lord’s favor.
This text should make us uncomfortable – enough so that it stirs up in us the same fever that caused Jeremiah to suffer as a prophet and Jesus to be exiled from his hometown.
The message of this text is direct and personal. The call of God always brings with it the power of the Spirit of Lord. The work of the spirit is justice, mercy, compassion, for the poor and the oppressed. When the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, you too will bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. The spirit of the Lord is upon you so that you will do for one another what the Lord has done for you!