EPIPHANY 3 C
JANUARY 23, 2022
LUKE 4:14-21
“THE REVOLUTIONARY GOSPEL”
14Then 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. 16When 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.”
John Lennon penned
these words, “You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to
change the world.” Yes, but, not everyone agrees on how it should be changed.
The Gospel lection
for today begins with these words, “Filled with the power of the Holy
Spirit...,” which Jesus received on the day of his baptism (Luke 3:21-22),
Jesus began his ministry in Galilee. That is where we begin today. Jesus has
emerged from his baptism consumed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Emboldened
by the power of the Holy Spirit. Everybody in the towns and villages around the
Jordan River started talking about his preaching. Communities invited him to
teach in their synagogues. He was in demand because his preaching was powerful
and new. Unlike any they had heard. It seemed empowered from beyond.
The Gospel writer Luke
makes a big deal of the Holy Spirit, both in the Gospel and in the Book of
Acts. In fact, in the Acts of the Apostles, the official name of the book in
the Bible would be better entitled, the Acts of the Holy Spirit. In Acts it is
the Holy Spirit that is the primary actor, moving the early community of
believers outward from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
It was THAT Holy
Spirit that had inhabited the whole being of Jesus and it was pushing him
forward into the world. The Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he went out
preaching in a world that might not ultimately welcome the good news he was
preaching or even see it as good news. There were many people who responded
positively to his message. Luke says that the people praised his preaching. They
thought well of him. He seemed to be the small-town boy making it big. Of
course, we know, because we know the whole story, that as time passed and the
message of the Holy Spirit infused Jesus began to sink in not everyone was impressed.
Where we find ourselves
in Luke today is for Luke the launch of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. Jesus had
come home to Nazareth where he was graciously invited to offer an
interpretation of the scripture reading for the day. Jesus was enjoying a
growing celebrity in the surrounding communities, so it seemed proper to invite
him to his home synagogue to bless them with a bit of his Spirit-infused wisdom.
Luke tells us that
Jesus was handed the Isaiah scroll, from which he read a word from Isaiah
61
about the ministry of the Spirit, which served to anoint a preacher who would
bring good news to the poor. One is sure that Jesus read the text faithfully as
he spoke the words of Isaiah detailing the nature of this good news.
Captives would be
released.
The blind would
receive their sight.
The oppressed would
go free.
The year of Jubilee
would be proclaimed.
Surely, the
congregation at the synagogue knew these words. They were words of hope for a
nation of Israel that had for centuries been overrun, enslaved, exiled and
diminished. Isaiah’s Spirit-inspired message is one of justice and mercy, of
righteousness and freedom, and no doubt it was solace for the weary Hebrew
soul.
When Jesus finished
reading the passage he sat down, and with every eye in the congregation focused
on him, they awaited his wisdom on this passage. What would the famous teacher
have to say? What fresh understanding would he bring?
“Today this scripture
has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
In other words: I’m
the one Isaiah spoke of. By the power of the Holy Spirit I am going to do these
very things. You say you want a revolution? It starts today, with me.
We all want to change
the world, but we don’t all agree on how it should be changed, or what it
should look like after the changes. For Jesus, the blueprint for revolution was
this passage from Isaiah 61. It was controversial and revolutionary from the
start, from the moment he sat down and told his hometown powerbrokers that he
was the one, powered by the Holy Spirit, that was ushering in a change. The
world was about to turn upside down, and inside out.
Each year on Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. day our Facebook feeds, our Twitter timelines are filled
with quotes. Each one of them important and inspirational. Dr. King reminds us
that we are called to something bigger and more important than our own selfish
desires. He calls us to a blessed community where all are valued. He was not
always so beloved, as you may recall. In the 1960’s his was a message that was
roundly rejected and so was he. Dr. King was not only a controversial figure,
he was loathed. The FBI investigated him actively. He was the subject of
violence and threats daily, and his family as well. Even his clergy colleagues
urged him to tone down his rhetoric. In Birmingham, AL the clergy colleagues
wrote a letter published in local papers asking him not to engage in public
demonstrations for the poor, the incarcerated and the oppressed in their town.
Dr. King, infused by the power of the Holy Spirit kept working for what he
believed Isaiah and Jesus called him to do. Then, one day, he was murdered from
afar.
Revolutions that
unseat power can extract a price; I suppose. Jesus surely was not oblivious to
that when he stood to read the scroll from Isaiah, nor when he sat down to
proclaim its fulfillment in the hearing of his hometown neighbors; the people
he had known and who had known him all his life. The audacity of the
carpenter’s son. Who does he think he is?
Ah, we love Jesus.
2000 years since his passing we who are Christian proclaim our love for him,
but his words of revolution and transformation and systemic change are often
ignored by a church that is comfortable and entrenched. His words that so
offended the people of his hometown and of his own faith that they openly
plotted his demise often barely intersect our lives.
Where is the power of
the Holy Spirit now? How do we find the revolutionary Jesus in sermons whose
transient truths are as fickle as the Kentucky weather?
Once upon a time,
long ago, a person said to me after worship that they would have preferred I
preach less social justice and more gospel, more good news. OK. I heard you.
But I respectfully disagree with your premise and your conclusion. Look how
Luke introduces the ministry of Jesus here. “God 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.”
Here is how I read
this. If the Good News we proclaim as a church, if the Gospel we are preaching
isn’t good news to the poor, isn’t good news to the captives, isn’t good news
to those who are blinded, isn’t good news about freedom for those who we have
systematically oppressed, isn’t good news about the Kingdom of God on earth as
it already is in heaven, then it isn’t the Good News that the Holy Spirit inspired
in Jesus.
Is that radical? Is
that revolutionary? Yes. If it wasn’t then the Jewish religious authorities and
the Roman oppressors wouldn’t have paid him any attention. People wouldn’t have
given up everything they own to follow him. And the world would have just kept
on going as it was. Without hope. Without a promise. Without a savior. Without
the revolutionary Jesus.
Jesus, standing with
the scroll of Isaiah in his hand in the synagogue where he grew up and was on
the cradle roll, where attended Hebrew school; looked at the people who had
known him since birth and dreamed of a world infused by the Holy Spirit, where
the oppressed were set free, where the blind recovered their sight, where the
poor received good news and where the Kingdom of God broke into Galilee like it
already was in heaven.
Today, he told them,
I am going to make good on this passage. And he did. All his days from that day
forward were spent doing just what he said he would do. Just about every moment
of his every day forward was spent working on good news to the poor, recovery
of sight for the blind, setting the oppressed free and proclaiming God’s
Kingdom come to earth.
I have to ask myself
when I prepare a sermon every week. Every week. How can I be faithful to the
text, to the Good News? If you take it lightly it doesn’t really amount to
much. If you take it seriously, well, then you must call yourself as the
preacher and the church as your hearers to account. Jesus has told us what the
Good News is. May the same Holy Spirit that emboldened and empowered Jesus
infiltrate this community until there is Good News for all. Amen.
