Sunday, February 3, 2019

Fulfilling Scripture


A Sermon preached at the Family Service on Epiphany III, Jan. 27, at St. Augustine’s Wiesbaden

Luke 2:22-40, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30




Because we started today’s service with a Candlemas celebration, we are able to compare and contrast two very different appearances of Jesus in religious houses, one in the Temple and the other in his home synagogue! I am reminded of the Palm Sunday service. There too we start with a celebratory event, Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, which is later followed by the story of his rejection, capture, and execution.

Today too we started with a celebration. Simeon, described as righteous and devout, takes the baby Jesus in his arms to praise and thank God for having sent him as our salvation, and as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." (Luke 2:32) And although her words are not recorded, the prophet Anna joins in praising God and “speaking about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” (2:38)

But where there is light, there is often also shadow. Simeon warns Mary that there will be opposition to Jesus and what he stands for, “a sign that will be opposed,” and that she will suffer great sadness: “a sword will pierce your own soul too." (2:34-35) We do not have to wait very long when Jesus starts his active ministry before this prediction becomes true. It is right there in today’s second Gospel passage about Jesus’ visit to the synagogue at Nazareth.

When Jesus tells the congregation that, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," (4:21) everyone is still happy. They “spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” (4:22) Yet just a few lines later we are told, “all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” (4:29-30) He escapes this early death, but it looks forward to another hill, Calvary, and to the death that Jesus will have to pass through.

So, what went wrong, why did they turn against him?  In the version of this episode in Mark’s Gospel (6:1-6), the people of Nazareth are against Jesus from the very beginning, because they doubt that the “carpenter,” as they call him, has either the wisdom he claims, or the power. Immediately, “they took offence at him.” ….. And he could do no deed of power there.”  That is not the case in Luke’s account.  “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” And it seems they are looking forward to Jesus  doing the things that they had heard he did at Capernaum.

It can’t be disappointment either. This is the very beginning of his ministry. Later people do turn from Jesus out of disappointment. Because he is not the Messiah they wanted. Not the military leader, not the one who will reward his followers with power and wealth. Or because it all takes too long and too much effort. The Kingdom of God does not come over night. The transformation of the world is a gradual process, through the transformation of the individual. We see this sort of impatience so often. Look at President Macron in France for example. He was elected with a huge majority to implement a program of reform, at the end of which, he promised, France would be much better off. Unfortunately, pain comes before gain. And not only are the “gilets jaunes” unwilling to wait, but also, according to polls, a majority of the French people are also now disappointed. It’s best not to expect miracles from humans.

No, the reason that the people in Nazareth turn against Jesus, is because they are motivated by the question, “what’s in it for us?”  They want him to do the things he has done elsewhere in Capernaum, healing the sick and the possessed, perhaps even what he did in Cana, providing them with free wine for a party, here in Nazareth, for them, and now. When he says, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” (4:21) the scripture promising liberation, recovery of sight for the blind, and the forgiveness of all debts, they think it means them first, and perhaps also greater Israel second. They deserve it, don’t they? He’s one of them, Joseph’s boy. They helped bring him up. And they are all good and faithful Jews who go to the synagogue every week, study God’s word every day, and pray morning, noon, and night.

But Jesus has other ideas, just as Simeon foretold in the Temple when he called Jesus the “savior prepared for all the world to see, a light to enlighten all nations.” (Luke 2:32) When Jesus reminds them that during a great famine Elijah was sent to a foreign widow in Zarephath, although there were many widows in Israel, and that Elisha cleansed a Syrian leper, and a general of their great enemy, he is telling them that God’s power cannot be restricted to their little community, or to their people. God’s power does not belong to us and God does not belong to us. We belong to God.

As we heard, this did not go down well, and so, metaphorically shaking the dust off his feet, he passed through the midst of them and went on his way, continuing on his mission to bring good news to all. The scripture was being fulfilled in their hearing, but not the way they thought. The people of Nazareth attending their synagogue that day wanted God to do their bidding. But it’s the other way round. God calls peoples and individuals to do God’s bidding.

Israel was chosen to be a light to the Gentiles, to witness to a God who cares and loves. And the people of Nazareth, and everyone who listened to Jesus, were also chosen, if they accepted, to be a light to others, and to use God’s power in service and love. As St. Paul tells us in that passage that is a firm favorite at weddings, “faith, hope, and love abide, these three and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor. 13:13)  

The Christian Church, as the New Israel, has the same role: to be a light to all, to bring the Good News to all, to serve all. The God we witness to is not a God who lives only in Israel, in this or our home countries, in the Church, in our denomination, in our parish, or within whatever boundaries we try and set. God is not ours. Jesus is not ours. We are his. One of the seven practices of the Way of Love, the Rule of Life that our Presiding Bishop introduced at last year’s General Convention is called “GO: Cross boundaries.” “As Jesus went to the highways and byways, he sends us beyond our circles and comfort, to witness to the love, justice, and truth of God with our lips and with our lives. We go to listen with humility and to join God in healing a hurting world. We go to become Beloved Community, a people reconciled in love with God and one another.”[1] That is what Jesus is telling the people in Nazareth and us through this story. We are to go beyond the boundaries we set just as Elijah, and Elisha did. St. Paul also heard this message and took it to heart, crisscrossing the known world, willfully breaking rules if he felt that they stood in the way of the Gospel. 

If we want to be able to say, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, we must not just hear scripture, but embody it, act upon it, in one sense become it. And we cannot keep it to ourselves, or only look after our own. Jesus, the word of God, is ours, but ours to share. The Good News is ours, to share. Using God’s greatest gift, the power of love, we can bring freedom from poverty, liberation, healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness not only to our own, but to all those who are God’s own. So, to every human being. That is what the dismissal at the end of the service means, whether you are sent forth in the name of Christ, or in peace, or in the power of the Spirit, it is always to love and to serve.

Amen.








[1] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/way-love-brochures

Thanks also to https://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/sermon/we-are-his-epiphany-4-c-february-3-2019 for inspiration and some of the interpretation
 

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