Epiphany 3 C - Sunday, January 27, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC
Epiphany 3 C - Sunday, January 27, 2019

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

I have heard hundreds of sermons in my life, and preached by a rough counting about two hundred.  Some were short, and some not so short.  Some left me wanting more, others rejoicing that they were finally, mercifully, over (including one or two of my own).  A few have been life-changing, so memorable that phrases and images continue to live in my memory years, even decades later.  What made those few memorable was the unique meeting of a message and a messenger and a hearer that had conviction in proclamation and experience.  In some mysterious yet real way the Spirit was present in the preacher and in me to turn the words on a page into an event that was and continues to be alive.

The last sentence in the Gospel reading this morning is, in terms of length, possibly the shortest sermon in the world.  Only nine words, but nine words that changed the direction of Israel’s hope, declared salvation present, and initiated the movement of forgiveness, love, and mercy that is the reason for our celebration of the resurrection this morning.  Not bad for a nine-word sermon.  And these are nine words the listeners to Jesus were least expecting.  The synagogue community was used to the routine, repeated every sabbath.  Messiah will come – some day.  We will know and receive the liberation from our oppressor – some day.  The injustices and inequalities of the society will be addressed and rectified – some day.  In the meantime, we wait and long.  They had been waiting and longing for a long time, for centuries.  So long, that their expectation had grown cool, their belief that God would come faded into a resigned acceptance of the status quo.  Perhaps some had come to believe that Israel would be occupied – oppressed and enslaved forever, that the poor had no prospects of security, that God had even abandoned them.

Jesus enters the synagogue on what begins as an ordinary sabbath and sees familiar faces, some people he had likely known his whole life or younger ones he had seen born and grow.  He knows the promises of the prophets as well.  And as he inaugurates his public ministry recalls words from Isaiah that provide a kind of mission statement, a vision of what is to be taught and done in the next three years.  He quotes words familiar to his hearers, of a hope given by God so many centuries ago that point to a future that seems so far away.  Then comes the nine word sermon:  “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  The Roman Empire is still in power, there are still slaves and blind persons and captives, so the meaning is obviously rhetorical and metaphorical.  We automatically translate the “today” into something other than this day.  Yet what if Jesus meant what he said, meant “today”?  From God’s point of view, the fulfillment of the kingdom is present, everything good is offered, if we would but receive it and live it.  The whole salvation of God is on its way today.

We look through the dark glass for signs of the fulfillment of God’s promise, but Jesus sees with perfect clarity.  He will go forth from the synagogue and do exactly these things: good news to the poor, sight to the blind, freedom and release to slaves and captives.  His acts of teaching and compassion and healing are not his way of bringing the fulfillment of the prophecy into the world, they are the acts of one who already sees the world as it can be, as it is becoming, and indeed will be, and goes about as if it is true and happening.  This is not inserting good into a hopelessly evil world, it is unveiling the hope beneath all the ways humans have distorted and misused it.  He does not overlook or disregard the evil that he has surely come to rectify, but he will strike at the very heart of the human longing for peace and justice.  The fulfillment he brings is to disarm the power of evil, undermine its categories, refuse to participate in the attitudes and structures that perpetuate and preserve injustice.  He will call us to wake up from our collective agreements about the boundaries of insiders and outsiders, worthy and unworthy, respectable and dispensable.  The fulfillment is not firstly the instant elimination of all the sin and evil that harms, but the entering into a world that will not capitulate to their ongoing power, and thus can proclaim that there is no longer any such thing as us and them, but just us – all made in the image and likeness of God.  The poor are not a label, but our brothers and sisters in need, the blind and oppressed and enslaved are those in need like us and recipients of grace like us. His movement becomes ours as we see what he saw and act the way he acted.  Jesus does not ask us to change the world into the fulfillment of God’s promise of peace and justice.  Jesus asks us to live as if that world is already and truly breaking into ours and cooperate in its arrival and unveiling and joy.  Because Christ is here the peace and justice that is promised and given break out of us because Christ lives in us.  That is the “today” of Jesus – that Jesus himself is God’s “today”.

We preacher/theologian types are fond of the phrase “already, but not yet” to refer to the reign or kingdom of God, which is Jesus’ favorite way of talking about the good news.  The phrase seeks to acknowledge both the reality of Christ’s work of reconciliation active in the world and the ongoing presence of evil and suffering.  We live in a world that has been visited by salvation and wait in hope for the completion of that salvation. But the phrase “already, but not yet” can become a trap.  “But not yet” can mean, “we will know and receive true human equality in our world – some day.  The injustices of our world today – of bigotry, poverty, prejudice will be addressed and rectified – some day. In the meantime, we wait and long.  What we really mean by “not yet” is really just a plain, old-fashioned, “no”.  The “not yet”, if expressed honestly, is “it would be great if there was change, but the problems are too deep, the resistances too strong, our strength too poor”.  The “not yet” of the good news is not God’s unwillingness to show us the way and empower us to live it, but our resistance to embracing the “today” of change, of living in the reality of what Jesus declares has come.  God says “already”, humans say “not yet”.  We cannot use waiting and hope, as real and important as they are, as excuses to avoid acting as we can, doing today what God has entrusted us to do while we wait and hope. We have received an invitation to act now, to put our whole lives on the line, there is no more time, we cannot afford to wait any longer.  If the scripture is fulfilled today in our hearing, then our lives change today.

Now the fulfillment does not come as lightning, all at once, until the end, but like a mustard seed, in the small gifts of abundant generosity, freedom, joy, and seeing.  Sometimes imperceptibly small, but coming nonetheless.  Coming because I do the small, faithful, selfless thing, because I choose to consent to the potential of today, that whatever seed I can plant today will grow, but there must be an act of planting, a decision that reflects my belief that the fulfillment is here now. Believing in Jesus’ today means we live in the presence of the future.  Jesus is never saying “later”, but always saying “now”.

The Spirit is opening new doors today.

The Spirit is changing evil to good today.

The Spirit is making the impossible possible today.  Amen.