A Sermon from Falmouth Congregational Church…

A Sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship service of the Falmouth Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Falmouth, Maine on the Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 24, 2010. The scripture reading were I Corinthians 12:12-30 and Luke 4:14-21.

“Today this passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21).

 “The Vision”

Today’s readings begin a series about God’s call to individuals and groups. Sometimes the call comes directly in a vision, sometimes through scripture, and sometimes through another person. Today’s gospel reading affirms God’s revelation through the Word read to us in this congregation of believers.

“Have you heard the news? He’s back. Yeshua is back in Nazareth. Remember, Mary and Joseph’s oldest boy? He’s been away, doing who-knows-what, save that it wasn’t carpentry. He’s become a preacher. No matter, he’s safe and sound, sitting in the family pew, just like old times. Last night, the President of the Synagogue asked him to read the Scripture lesson. He took up the scroll and read out loud. It was Isaiah 61, familiar, full of hope and promise. It came through with beauty. He always was a good reader. How proud his Mother must be. And his first comment, after reading, was that the words we had just heard were coming true right now, right here in Nazareth. Wonder of wonders.”

Imagine if you will, Jesus standing up to address this congregation, perhaps on its annual meeting Sunday, and speaking about God’s reign of justice and peace in our lives. What words might Jesus proclaim in our midst, today?

If we heard Jesus’ words, how would we reference and reverence – both in our hearing and our living – his words of life? Can we step back in time and sit with the people of Nazareth, half expecting something new from the hometown preacher who had already excited the surrounding towns and villages? Can we receive the new and the controversial?

We can because we have. Our liturgist (Paul Theisen) read the word of God, in Isaiah chapter 61, just as Jesus did long ago in Nazareth. We heard it with varying degrees of acceptance and understanding as did those synagogue attendees back then. But that was and is only one-half of the equation. The word read must become the word heard and that, in turn, becomes the word-deed of our shared ministries.

When Jesus stood up in the synagogue to read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, he was bringing to fulfillment in himself all that his forebears had suggested, Isaiah being only one of them. The passage that Jesus read was his manifesto for his earthly ministry. He announced a new age for the world. He concluded by saying: Now you see this scripture lived, enfleshed and witnessed in me.

It was an old scripture given a new and controversial meaning. In his address Jesus set aside three things dear to the hometown crowd:

• The privileged position of the learned, the elect, the wealthy and the well born in their society was removed.
• The heavy yoke of the Law, with its burdensome translating of godliness into bondage, was lifted.
• The dreams of conquest and revenge against their Roman oppressors were dissolved.

Into the center of his thinking moved the poor, the brokenhearted, the captive, the blind and the bruised. These would form God’s Kingdom. Grace and not judgment, freedom in place of bondage, gladness and healing instead of bitterness and injury are to be marks of Messiah’s reign. Not many in Roman Palestine looked for such things as signs of the coming Kingdom. But these defined Christ’s purpose and dictated his ministry. He said:

• Concern for “the poor” will bear fruit in charity and justice.
• Care for “the brokenhearted” will restore tenderness and hope to a cruel world.
• “Deliverance of captives” implies an end of tyranny and oppression.
• “Sight for the blind” includes the vision of God for a world long groping in darkness and error.
• “Healing for the bruised” involves the righting of wrongs and the protection of the powerless against misuse of power.

Jesus’ words still revolutionize our understanding of what God is after in the earth, and that we strive to build.

Like Jesus, we too have our “hometown,” spheres of influence, our immediate world of friends and acquaintances and colleagues whom we see and know. We gather weekly to celebrate and worship together. Annually we meet in Annual meeting. And it is here, among us, that it must begin: “Today this passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” It is here within this congregation, that each of us has to take on the mission of Jesus to preach and to teach; to heal, liberate and bring joy to others. The gospel words must take flesh in us or they will be lost. It is the mandate of Christ made ours at our baptism into Christ’s mission.

The Apostle Paul gave us the rationale and impetus for accepting the challenge of Jesus and making Christ’s manifesto our own. “You are the body of Christ,” he said.  “Every one of you is a member of it.” He praised the individuality, creativity, and beauty each of us possesses and the need we have to serve one another. Each of us is commissioned to bring our unique gifts to Christ’s mission and to carry forward hiss ministry in our own special way.

We are all in this mission together. The ultimate challenge is: that, one day, we might be able to say, through the lives we live: “Today this passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” We must become living words: the words Isaiah wrote and Jesus fulfilled.

Elsewhere in Scripture (Matthew 25), Jesus’ points out that we will be judged on how well we perform the ordinary tasks in life, how well we give drink to the thirsty or feed the hungry. Until we begin to sensitize ourselves into seeing God’s will in the ordinary things and tasks of life, we are not likely to recognize it in the extraordinary things.

If we believe that we are created in the image and the likeness of God, if we also believe that God is love, then we have been created to do the loving thing in all situations.

We can claim as our own the words of the late Hasidic Rabbi Abraham Heschel: “Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.” If we viewed all of our work, no matter how seemingly unimportant, as God’s will, we would try to do our best consistently. If we did our best in all the repetitive things in daily life, we would be better prepared for the extraordinary events that do occasionally come our way.

Listen to the words from a Native American prayer: “O Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds and whose breath gives life to the entire world, hear me; I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than others, but to fight my greatest enemy, myself.”

The message of today’s worship is clear: in the midst of the realities of modern life, you and I together stand out as a present and living sign and symbol of God’s kingdom. If Christ’s mission is to be accomplished, then we must be part of it.

God in Christ gathers us in a community of faith that is united through mutual care. The Body of Christ is a place and a group where all people have a valued part, and where we may be our true selves. For we are, with the power of God’s Spirit here and now, better and much better together.