January 23, 2022

 Today’s Gospel reading is half a story, so I hope you’ll keep that in mind, and come back next week for the rest of the story.  Today Jesus is coming to preach in his own church.  He’s coming back to the synagogue where he grew up. 

            The folks he will see there knew him as a little boy.  They held him as a baby, taught him in Torah school, saw him make mistakes, stopped him running in the halls, corrected him, saw him grow up, wrote him letters of recommendation, were on his paper route, gave him jobs to do, and sent him off to study to be a rabbi.

            Today, they are filled with expectations.  Jesus has finished his studies and word has reach the town that he’s graduated at the top of his class.  He’s gotten a good start.  He is praised by everyone.  Maybe he’s done a few miracles, taught with authority, brought some other synagogues into line.  Now he’s headed their way and they are excited for a sampling.  They are filled with expectations.  Maybe he will perform some miracles for them—maybe he can stay and be their rabbi, their own special access to God.  Maybe they can keep him, control him, get what they want from him.  Maybe he can be their ATM machine, open 24 hours a day. 

            Jesus opens the scroll and begins to read.  First of all, he can read—something that very few people could do.  Secondly, he can find his way around a scroll.  Thirdly,  he opens to Isaiah, who here is speaking about himself as a prophet.  Isaiah came for these reasons, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and to proclaim the year of Jubilee.  Jesus here is identifying himself with Isaiah.  This is Jesus’ mission statement—why he’s here. 

            He’s bringing good news to the poor.  He’s giving food to those who are hungry.  He’s praising the widow who gives her last coin.  He’s gathering children all around him.  He’s inviting people to feed themselves on the Sabbath.  He’s giving himself away so that abundant life will be poured out for many.  Jesus’ good news for the poor isn’t that someday they can go to heaven and be free of their poverty.  It is real good news that makes a difference in that moment.  Jesus provides a glimpse in his upcoming ministry of what bringing good news to the poor looks like.

            Jesus is releasing the captives.  This one is a little harder to see.  Jesus doesn’t release John the Baptist, the first to be arrested in this story.  Jesus doesn’t come down from the cross and save himself, as he is mocked.  It seems that the releasing of captives comes when Barabbas is released instead of Jesus, and then later when Paul is imprisoned and the earthquake breaks down the walls of the prison.  But still Paul doesn’t escape.  Instead, his captors are impressed that he stayed put and celebrated him.  Release to the captives could refer to the criminal on one side of him on the cross who Jesus promises will be with him in paradise.  It could refer to all the ways we are captive—to our expectations, to our selfishness, to our greed, to our judgements of other people.  Jesus is proclaiming a release to the captives.

            Jesus is providing recovery of sight to the blind.  This is literal healing of blind people.  This is also pointing out the blindness of the religious leaders and the comfortable people. One such comfortable person was Zaccheus, the tax collector, who climbed the tree to see Jesus passing by.  His eyes are opened when Jesus comes to his house and invites him to live a different way.   Jesus as the light of the world, is shining a light that reveals injustice and blindness and the hope is that we would all allow Jesus to show us what we couldn’t see before.  In Jesus’ ministry he provides recovery of sight to all kinds of blind people. 

            Jesus is letting the oppressed go free.  People who have been blamed for their illnesses, people possessed by demons, women on the margins, divorced, bleeding, mourning—all these people Jesus blesses, invests in, shares a freeing word, reveals God’s perspective so different from the world’s view.  Think of the woman at the well-she’s been shunned because of divorce.  Because of her conversation with Jesus, she learns she access to abundant life, living water, and she gets to be the evangelist, sharing the good news with the whole town.  She, who was oppressed and marginalized, becomes the center of renewed community relationship.  She is never seen the same way again.  In Jesus’ ministry, he is setting the oppressed free.

            And finally, Jesus is proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.  This is the jubilee year, the Sabbath of Sabbaths.  Every 7 days you take a day of rest.  Every 7 years you let your fields lie fallow, so they can be restored.  And every 7 times 7 years, after the 49^th year, you celebrate the 50^th year in which all debts are cancelled, slaves and prisoners freed, land returned to its original owners, and families reunited.  It is an economic, cultural, environmental and communal reset.  But a Jubilee was never actually celebrated in Israel.  It would have been a lot of good news to a lot of oppressed people on the margins, but it would have been inconvenient for wealthy people in power and so those people stood in the way and never followed God’s laws for a Jubilee year. It would take a lot of trust in God, for wealthy people to let go of their wealth and power that they had come to worship and let God be in the center, and they never did. 

            Jesus family and friends in Nazareth heard these words probably in a similar way that we do.  They are inspiring.  They are lovely.  We can imagine the day when all the blind will see.  Maybe we’re not so thrilled about throwing open the prison doors, so we like to think that’s just a metaphor.  We are excited about the thought of heaven where we can go when we die and everybody will be happy, but we’re unwilling to put God at the center, to stop worshipping our wealth and comfort and all the ideas about what we deserve.  We struggle to see how we might work together so that glimpses of heaven can happen today.

            Jesus says in the Gospel, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  This isn’t about someday.  It’s about today.  And it is not about accumulating more blessings for myself or going back to the glory days when our church had a Sunday school of 100 kids and a youth choir.  This is about new life, right now.  It is about making sacrifices to bring a vision into being in which all people can know God’s blessing, forgiveness, love, and new life, which means you and me and our churches hoarding a lot less new life for ourselves. 

            In the reading, today, from Nehemiah, the Israelites had a reset.  They were taken into captivity for a whole generation.  Now, they’ve returned and everyone is on equal footing.  They have learned their lesson about putting their own comfort first.  They saw their captivity as punishment for the injustice and inequality in their communities.  Now they weep to hear God’s word read day after day, and they are paying attention.  It won’t be long until they forget, but that’s why we need to practice Sabbath weekly—putting God at the center and taking a break from work and from requiring others to work, and taking a break from defrauding people of a living wage and oppressing them a million other ways.  

            In the reading from 1 Corinthians, Paul is reminding the believers in Corinth to value each part of the body of Christ.  That’s really what Jubilee and the life of Christ is all about.  It is about valuing and nurturing the whole, because to take any one part by itself is ridiculous.  But that’s what injustice does—it values certain parts more and neglects others.  But that’s not abundant life for anyone—even the ones getting more respect and attention.  The guard suffers just as the prisoner, does.  Those who eat junk food suffer just as those who don’t have enough food.  Those of us who are wealthy are ruining our planet with pollution and waste and we suffer from cancer and asthma, too.  We are destroying ourselves.

            Let’s not try to make Jesus our vending machine, our wishing well, our personal ATM.  Let’s not hear his words and think how nice that sounds for someday when we we’re dead.  Let’s hear his word and accept his challenge.  He’s remaking the world, resetting the systems of oppression and injustice.  People like you and me are standing in the way, because we like the world how it is.  It is comfortable for us.  Jesus is about today—the Kingdom of God coming today, justice and peace breaking in, today, putting God at the center today.  And to put God at the center means taking many of our priorities and moving them out of the way.  Receive the bad news that God is remaking the world and those things that propped you up won’t be there any more.  And receive the good news that something better is coming to replace it that is life-giving, equitable, loving, and sustainable for all life, humans, animals, the air, the water, the plants, all of God’s creation.  Receive the life that really is life, the gift of Jesus Christ our savior, our challenger, the disturbance of our comforts, and the one who can save us from ourselves.

            Stay tuned next week for the second part of this story in which Jesus’ home congregation gets so angry they are ready to throw him off a cliff.