Fulfilling scripture

 

A Sermon preached on Epiphany IV, Jan 30, 2022, at St. Augustine’s

Jeremiah 1:4-10, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30

I don’t know if you have ever attended a synagogue service, but it is worth doing if an invitation is possible. Sadly, security concerns make this difficult. They haven’t changed too much over the centuries. According to scholars, the order of an ancient synagogue service was that first the Shema was recited: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might,” (Deut. 6:4-9) followed by prayers, including some set prayers. After this the Scripture was read, beginning with a portion from the Torah (the first 5 books: Gen—Deut) and moving next to a section from the Prophets, which for our Jewish siblings includes the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Instruction then followed and often the speaker linked the texts together through appeal to other passages. The service then closed with a benediction. It sounds a lot like a Service of the Word such as MP or EP – because that’s where we Christians got that structure from.

At the synagogue service we heard about both last week and this week, Jesus gets to read the second lesson and is the preacher. His text is Isaiah 61:1-2, a passage that promises the coming of God's salvation. But his sermon is very short indeed, at least what is recorded, he simply says, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4:21) I think you would be very surprised if I said that. For one thing I usually say a little more, and for another it is a massive claim. So, it is no wonder that the congregation in Nazareth were surprised both for what he said and who he was, Joseph’s son. Maybe he should have left it like that, with them just amazed, as his additional instruction leads to a potentially violent reaction. I have seen the brow of the hill in Nazareth and while it is not really a cliff face, Jesus would at least have been badly hurt. But Jesus has to say more, he must speak the truth, otherwise it would just be an easily forgotten “nice sermon vicar” sort of homily, without any chance of effecting change.

To understand what he means by “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” we need to go back to the Isaiah text again, one of the passages in that book about the Messiah who is to come. It begins with the words; the Spirit of the Lord is on me. This is Jesus claiming to be directed and anointed by God, which we, the readers know happened at his baptism: “when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” (Luke 3:22) The goal of the anointing, his mission, is to preach good news to the poor and to bring release to prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed. To say, “today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” is to say I not only declare good news, I also fulfil it, I not only proclaim release, but I bring it. That is the role of the Messiah – I am that person, is Jesus’ claim. The synagogue congregation is surprised and amazed and also sceptical, they don’t believe him, but they are not yet upset. That comes next, when Jesus expands on and extends the definition of what Messiah means and what he has come for.

First, he cites a proverb that implies they want him to prove it. "Show me" is their basic response to his claim. Yet we know from all the gospels that even when Jesus gives a sign, there is still doubt ; miracles alone never convince one who does not want to come to God. Later in Luke’s Gospel Jesus will refuse to perform a miracle for that reason, pointing only forward to the greatest sign of his resurrection: “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” (Luke 11:29) And after showing Thomas his wounds as proof of his resurrection, Jesus says “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” If we are not willing to hear the Word of God and receive it, we just won’t see God working in the world.

Second, Jesus quotes another proverb that prophets are not honoured in their hometown. Sadly, this is what has happened in the past. God's messengers were repeatedly rejected. This theme will also surface continually in Luke’s Gospel. God's message is often met with rejection, especially when it is uncomfortable and upsets the status quo.

And that of course is the theme of the third statement, when Jesus recalls the history of Israel in the period of Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17—18; 2 Kings 5:1-14). At that time, when rejection of God was at an all-time high, God had moved God’s works of compassion outside the nation into Gentile regions, as only a widow in Sidon and Naaman the Syrian experienced God's grace. God chose Israel, but never restricted God’s mercy and grace and healing to one nation, to one people, or to one church or group. God’s power is not ours and God is not ours. Rather, we are all God’s. I don’t know if Jesus’ listeners that day noticed that he left out a section of Isaiah’s prophecy. In the book of Isaiah, the phrase (he sent me) “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,” is followed by “and the day of vengeance of our God.” (Isaiah 61:2b) This is a deliberate omission. As Messiah, Jesus has not come to take revenge on other peoples; the God who anointed him and whose Spirit rests on him is the God of all peoples. He is the Prince of Peace.

This was not what the good people of Nazareth wanted to hear, they wanted a partisan God and a military Messiah. And so they move from what was still polite scepticism to outright rejection.

I said earlier that you would be very surprised if in a sermon I said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” But really it should be. That is why we read scripture and why you allow me and Douglas and Robert and Dorothee and others to expound it: To make something happen, to bring about a change. The purpose of reading and explaining scripture is to understand what it means for us today so that we not only hear it, but also embody it, act on it, and make it part of our lives. None of us are the Messiah, but we are all anointed, many literally anointed with oil at our baptism or confirmation. We are all set apart by God to take on and carry on the work Jesus gave us to do. At the heart of the work of the Gospel is, as Paul tells in the extract from Corinthians, love. This is our prime motivator. In the words of the heavy metal band Metallica: “Nothing else matters.” One line of the lyrics of that 1991 hit single is “All these words, I don't just say.” I couldn’t put it better. We don’t just say the words, we act on them.

Love was a bit short in supply on that day in Nazareth when Jesus’ own neighbours drove him, the true personification of love, out of town. And love is still in short supply today! But it is love that we need to fulfil scripture, love to see God at work in the world and in all people, love to show us the needs, and love to help us meet them, whatever the obstacles. Amen.

Reading the signs

A Sermon preached on Epiphany II, Jan 16, 2022, at St. Augustine’s and St. Christoph

Isaiah 62:1-5, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11

Jesus’s attendance at the wedding in Cana comes at the end of what in John’s chronology of events has been an action-packed first week of ministry. On day 1 we met John the Baptist who refers to Jesus as the “one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me.” (John 1:26-27) and on day 2 John and Jesus meet and as John reports: “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.” (1:32) One day 3 Jesus picks up two of John’s disciples – Andrew and the “beloved” disciple: “The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus” (1:37) and later the same day he meets Simon, Andrew’s brother, and renames him Peter. This all takes place in Bethany across the Jordan.

Then on day 4, after a mad dash back to Galilee, Jesus finds and recruits Philip and Nathaniel. And now, a further three days later, he is in Cana with his disciples for a wedding. Mark’s Gospel is often described as one in which Jesus seems to be in a hurry, rushing everywhere with frequent use of the word “immediately” or “at once.” But John’s Jesus is impressively fast too. After a week like that I wonder if Jesus just wanted to relax and enjoy the wedding party and perhaps that’s why he reacts rather dismissively to his mother’s comment: “When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’” (2:3-4) Of course his hour, the hour of glorification through his death and resurrection has not yet come, we are still at the beginning of the story, even if that final hour is present in the background throughout the Gospel.

John’s carefully crafted Gospel has seven signs, as he calls miracles, and this is as we heard, the first. To call something a sign means that is has a deeper meaning and that it points to something or somewhere else. The other signs seem more dramatic with 3 healings, the feeding of the 5000, Jesus’ mastering nature by walking on water, and then raising Lazarus from the dead … not forgetting his own resurrection as what could be seen as the eighth and greatest sign. So, isn’t turning water into wine, just to allow a party to go on, a little banal in comparison? Why is this the first public sign? I think it is important and comes first for three reasons, for three things that it points to.

Let’s start with the setting, a wedding. This is a big and joyous event in the life not just of the couple, but of the whole community. It would be a big celebration – and that’s why it would also have been very embarrassing if the wine had run out halfway through. A marriage is a public declaration made by two people as they enter into a relationship of mutual trust and joy and support and, we hope, of love. This particular wedding is important in our understanding of marriage, which is why we make reference to it in the marriage ceremony in the prayer book: “Our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.” In the prayers used at an Episcopal wedding, we also emphasise that marriage is a sign with a meaning that goes well beyond just the life of the couple when we pray: “Make their life together a sign of Christ's love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.”

In the Old Testament, marriage was sometimes used as a metaphor for the divine-human relationship. In the book of the prophet Hosea, whose ministry began before Isaiah’s, Hosea’s own marriage illustrates the breakdown in the relationship between God and God’s people. In the extract from Isaiah, our first reading, marriage is also used as a metaphor. But here, well over a century later, it stands for the restoration of the relationship between God and God’s people, as their exile in Babylon ends. God addresses Zion, Jerusalem in terms of love and endearment: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you.” (Isaiah 62:4) This restoration of relationship is a key part of Christ’s ministry, which is the first reason why his first sign is in the context of the celebration of a wedding, the sacrament of relationship and love.

The second reason is to be found in what actually happens. Water is turned into wine, it is transformed. Wine itself already carries a message of transformation – grapes are transformed by fermentation into wine – but here Jesus takes fresh, living water from stone water jars that were used for the ritual purification and turns it not just into wine, but into the very best wine.  It reminds me of Isaiah’s promise of future deliverance (25:6): “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines.”

One of the three petitions in the special blessing for Epiphany is that “God, by the power that turned water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana, will transform your lives and make glad your hearts.” Jesus came to transform us and our lives and through us the world. At Cana, Jesus offers the first sign that he is the Messiah, the light and saviour of the world, so that all who witnessed it or later heard or read about would believe in him and in his mission and be transformed to new life. Our way of being should be as hospitable, abundant, and generous as was Jesus’ act at the wedding. His sign also already points to the means by which we are to be transformed. Through the water of Baptism, the ultimate cleansing, and the very beginning of our life in Christ, and through the wine of the Eucharist, that together with the bread of life sustains, strengthens and renews us on our journey and allows us to encounter Christ at this Table.

The wedding at Cana embodies the image of reconciliation, of union, and of a loving covenantal relationship as prophesied by Isaiah and the miracle of transforming water into wine as a symbol of the transformation that Christ came to effect. But I said there are three reasons for this being the 1^st sign. I think the third reason is because it is about something ordinary. Two people marrying. A party. Water. Wine. It means that anything and anyone can be transformed. In his sermon last week, Douglas quoted from a poem by John Milton: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” We don’t have to be special, or powerful, and we don’t have to be saints before we are transformed. Our power is not our own, nor is our righteousness. They come from God who sets us apart and makes the ordinary special. What we have to do is believe and to follow the instructions that Mary gave to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” (John 2:5)

Amen.