When is the day of the Lord's favour? (sermon from Sunday, January 23, 2022)

 Reading: Luke 4:14-22 

 

After the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph moved back to Nazareth in the northern province of Galilee.  Jesus grew up there, and except for one story about him travelling with his parents to the Temple in Jerusalem when he was twelve, the Gospel of Luke has no other stories about Jesus until he is thirty years old.

 

That’s when Jesus, like many others, goes to be baptized by John in the Jordan River because they believe the kingdom of God is close at hand.  At Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit comes down upon him like a dove, and a voice from heaven tells him he is God’s beloved Son. 

 

For the next forty days, Jesus disappears alone into the wilderness where he is tempted by the devil with different ways of bringing the kingdom of God to be on earth.  Resisting the devil’s temptations, Jesus clarifies his commitment to God’s way of healing the world, and then he returns to Galilee to begin God’s work. 

 

He travels around the whole province, teaching about the kingdom of God.  Now he is back home in Nazareth, and people are looking forward to seeing him in his home-town synagogue.

 

Two things in story are helpful to know.

 

One is that the weekly readings in the synagogue were not assigned.  The teacher of the day chose the reading he wanted to talk about.

 

The other is that the teacher stands to read – showing respect for God’s Word, and then sits down to offer teaching about it – showing humility about his own words.

 

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

 

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.

 

He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.  Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

 

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down.  The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.  He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

Meditation

(After reading the Gospel at the pulpit, the minister leaves the pulpit, comes down from the platform, sits in a chair on the floor level of the sanctuary – the same level as the congregation.)

I thought for this week, I’ll follow the pattern of movement in synagogue worship as it’s told in the story we just read.  With the reader starting at the lectern standing in that special sacred place, to read the Word of God for the day.  Then closing the scroll, leaving the lectern, and going to sit down to offer a teaching about it.

Up there, things sound pretty good.  

According to Scripture, the Spirit of God is at work in the world anointing a servant to bring good news to the poor, free those who are bound, make the blind to see, and let up those who are kept down. 

And the poor in mind here are not just economically poor, but all who suffer exclusion from community and have no place at the table for any reason – be it gender, race, education, occupation, illness, disability, social acceptability or anything else.  According to the Scripture Jesus chooses for his inaugural address, the day of the Lord’s favour for all who are bound up, pressed down, broken in spirit, and hungry for good news is coming.

I wonder how things sound – how things seem, down here.

this week I talked on the phone with one of our church members about our lives and our losses, about illness and change, and about uncertainty and fear and the way it reshapes a whole household.  We talked about other members and families of our church who also have suffered brokenness through illness, accident, bereavement, or simple ongoing isolation.  The stories were so endless that at one point all we could say was, “We’re all so broken.”

Exactly what my sister wrote in an email yesterday, that “brokenness seems to be a theme for friends and family right now.”

I also talked with someone else about catastrophic loss of health, mobility and independence of living. The word that made sense to her was the word “crumbled.”  It felt like everything she had built up over a lifetime, in just 2 or 3 quick years has crumbled to dust around her, until now – especially in the lockdown of the place where she lives, it actually seems a burden that she will live for many more years in the condition she’s in.

And how many people live in similar situations of brokenness – broken hearts, broken dreams, broken bodies, broken lives?  How many around us and around the world live daily, yearly, and all their lives with the crumbs that fall from a table of abundance at which only some have a place? 

Omicron is still cutting a swath through us, overwhelming our health care institutions.  And alongside it, are all the other challenges of our time – wars and threats of war, violence of all stripes, the catastrophic effects of climate change, racial injustice and economic inequality, breakdowns in civility and kindness, and rising epidemics of anxiety, depression, addiction and despair.  Is the daily news any different from our personal stories? 

Does the view down sound at all like the view up there?  Or does it make a lie of what was read?

Does it make us think that the good news of God’s good will for all who suffer is meant maybe for some future time?  Either some Golden Age still to come, or maybe as a reward in heaven after life on earth is done?

Does it make us maybe reduce the good news to something spiritual, metaphoric, not to be taken literally?  So we don’t get disappointed or lose our faith, when it doesn’t happen the way it says literally?

Or … do we take it seriously?  Take it the way Jesus does?  Do we come down from up there and say with all confidence and commitment as he does, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in our hearing of what is being done in so many places around us … and in our own doing and acting in accord with God’s will.  Praise be to God.”

In this, it’s important we understand “the year of the Lord’s favour” rightly.  What it is, and what it is not.

For the people of Israel, “the year of the Lord’s favour” was “the year of Jubilee,” that was part of the law God gave to the people of Israel when they first came into the Promised Land.  It’s in Leviticus 25 in the midst of all the other laws God gave for keeping things right and good for all in the promised land.

What it says is that every 50 years, a giant re-set button is to be pushed in society and all across the land so all who have lost out, been pushed out, or have fallen to the bottom of the pack have a chance to start fresh again.  All debts are to be forgiven.  All land that’s accumulated in the hands of the fortunate and powerful is to be given back to its original owners.  Every family and every household is to be able to go back to their original holdings, and have once again a chance and the resources they need to provide for themselves – a chance equal to anyone else around them.

It was to be a giant re-set of society every fifty years.  An equalization.  A rebalancing for the good of all, of what had become tilted in favour of a few.  A way of honouring and making real the unity and community of all God’s people, and the care of each one for the well-being of all.

That’s what it was.

Which means it was not the restoration somehow of an endless Garden of Eden.  It was not the appearance of an eternal Paradise.  It was not the beginning of a Golden Age once for all that would last for a thousand years.  It was not the end of imperfection, suffering, loss and sorrow.

Rather, it was the commitment in the midst of these things, in the midst of the imperfection of life and of humanity, to set things right at least once every 50 years.  In the midst of brokenness to bring support and healing.  In the midst of crumbled lives and dreams, to bring comfort and new life.  In the midst of division and exclusion, hierarchy and the imbalance of privilege and oppression to recognize and act out community, and our sharing together of the whole human lot.

And isn’t that what we are about in our life and our mission as a church in the name of Jesus, and in the power of his and God’s Spirit?  Isn’t this what we share in, in the ways we reach out to others in need?  In real time, in the real world, down here, bringing to fulfillment what we read and let ourselves be reminded of up there?  Day after day and year after year, however and whenever the opportunity arises, living out the Lord’s favour for all who feel far from it, because folks who know the news of the day down here, also need to know the good news for all, including them, that comes to us from up there.

Not to make the world perfect, not to end all suffering, not to usher in a golden age of endless possibility and wonder once and for all.  But day by day, week by week, year by year to bring good news to the poor, to help set free those who are bound, to help people see themselves and others in new and fuller ways, and to let those who are oppressed rise up and be empowered with new strength and hope.  

Making today, each day – as Jesus says – a day of Jubilee, a day of the Lord’s favour somewhere and for someone who needs it.

Fear and love at the water's edge (sermon from Sunday, Jan 16/22)

 Reading: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 

This story marks the beginning of Jesus’s ministry and the unfolding of his identity as son of God.  The story echoes many things – the Spirit of God brooding over the chaotic waters of the world in Genesis 1; Noah’s passage through the Flood; Israel’s journey through the Red Sea to escape bondage to Egypt; and Israel’s crossing – and recrossing years later, of the Jordan River into the promised land.  Far from being a unique story, it's a foundational story of all true and redeemed

The story also reflects how much John the Baptist was revered by many in the earliest church.  John was a charismatic figure, and to some his message was more attractive than Jesus’.  John preached radical and violent change, high-principled moralism, the destruction of those who are wrong, judgement, and redemption through punishment, violence and fear – a message that always appeals to the human heart, sometimes more than Jesus’ even more radical message of all the world being made good by grace and by love, and that God loves us, accepts us, and works through us as we are.

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah.  

John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”  And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.

When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

 

Meditation 

What keeps us from wading into the water?  What keeps me from walking step by single, faithful step into the heart of the river?  What keeps any of us from letting ourselves go under, becoming part of its flow, and letting it wash away our old baggage that holds us back?  What keeps us from rising in it new, as renewed children of God – sons and daughters of our Father in heaven?

Even Jesus had to do it.  Even with all he knew – surely must have known – about himself and his Father, about himself as son of God, about himself as healer and redeemer of the world he was in.  Even Jesus had to leave the shore and step into the water, walk step by faithful step into the current and the flow, let himself go under and become part of it, let it wash away whatever needed to be left behind, and let himself be raised anew as the beloved Son of God filled with God’s Spirit for the good and the well-being of others.

I was baptized when I was twelve into a Baptist church in Winnipeg.  For me, it was largely out of fear and to calm my fears that I was baptized.  Looking back on it now, and in light of today’s reading from the Gospel, I see that it was very much the kind of baptism offered by John the Baptist.

I was twelve.  I was feeling all kinds of strange, unruly things within me.  Adolescent anger at my parents.  Stirrings of pre-teen rebellion and restlessness.  Probably the first flushes of puberty.  And I was taught, or I convinced myself – or both, that this was evil.  A sign of the devil alive and at work within me.  It was wrong, there was something bad about me, and God would surely be – was surely, angry with me.

I was afraid of hell, and of going there.  So, on my 12^th birthday actually, I went forward at an evangelistic rally at our church, to give my life to Jesus, who would surely save me from God.  A few months later, after prayer with the minister and some baptismal classes with 10 or 12 other kids about the same age, I was baptized into the church.  Largely – primarily, to save my soul.  To save myself.

And that’s sometimes how the religious life – how a spiritual life and a walk with God, or for God, begins.

But beyond that, it also grows.  And I grew into other reasons for leaving the shore, for wading in, for walking step by step, and for letting myself go under, and to undergo real change in the flow of God’s life and love in the world.  Reasons that had less to do with ego-driven fear, and more to do with love – with self-giving love of God and of others.

There were life-shaping things that I gave myself to, step by faithful step until they became my life – like answering the call and the invitation to ordained ministry.  It seemed the right thing to do, but the idea I had at the beginning of what being a minister was, never really panned out.  The path into the full flow of the river had so many unexpected twists and turns along the way, but at least it got me started … and here I am, and grateful for it.

And there were other kinds of life-changing things that I gave myself to, that started out as a single step – just putting a toe in the water, but then step by step led to something more, bigger, and better than I ever would have agreed to had I known it all at the start – like meeting someone in need, feeling your heart go out to them, and then instead of letting it be just a one-off conversation and even a prayer for them at the end that makes you feel good, you let it become a real relationship, with ongoing – maybe weekly, conversation, and real help and support that changes both them and you for the better – and all because of love for the other, and love for God as you see God alive and active in the other.

You know how it happens.  You say yes to one little plea for help, you respond with a simple action, you notice how it feels inside you, and you decide to learn a little more.  That leads to another action.  And then more learning – maybe about yourself.  That leads to … one step after another, until you find yourself doing and being and becoming something you never would have imagined at the start.  And now wouldn’t ever want, not to be and to be doing.

Elizabeth O’Connor has written, “Where I put my energies and my treasure, my reluctant heart sometimes follows.  If any of us had to be fully committed when starting out, very little would ever be begun.  It would be like having to decide to marry on the first meeting.  What we have to do is to take one step at a time and if it seems good, take another.”  (Cry Pain, Cry Hope, 1987. p. 68)

I think of how Japhia started at the SAM program, a day-activity program for adults with multiple disabilities.  It began as a school placement, a requirement of her Social Service Worker Program.   It was the first of two practical placements she needed to complete her diploma credits. 

And  step by simple step, the required placement turned into a deep love – her love of it, and their love of her – and the three-month stint turned into an application for the job, turned into the staff being sure she got it, turned into her never going to a second required placement for the diploma, and turned into her becoming a gift of God to the clients of the program, and them a gift of God to her. 

And in the way she was with them and they with her, immersed alike in openness to one another, I can only imagine them and her feeling the flow of God’s love around and over them, and at some point, maybe every day the Holy Spirit descending upon the SAM rooms where they met, and a voice from heaven in some way saying, “You are my beloved child; in you I am well pleased” – both to her and to whichever of her clients she was with.

We’ve all known and answered calls and invitations to take a step like that a hundred times over, in as many ways as there are days and people living them. 

And of course, what we offer anywhere is not perfect.  How can it be?  What we offer is always filtered through our weaknesses, our sins, our own needs, our emotional and physical and spiritual limitations.  We are human – divine breath in human and mortal bodies and lives.

But what counts, and makes us count, is the stepping in.  The becoming part of the flow.  The giving of ourselves – of our gifts, our assets, our weaknesses, our experience, our sinfulness, our humanity – that gives God something to work with, and work through.

Because what else does God have to make a difference for good in the life of the world?

And what holds us back?  What keeps us from stepping in, and letting ourselves become part of the flow?

Ironically – at least in my experience, and if you’re at all like me, it’s usually the very thing that got me baptized in the first place.  Fear.  Ego-focused fear.

Fear that says, what will people think?  Will I lose myself too much?  Or too much of myself? What if I don’t know how to do it?  Surely, I’m not qualified, or experienced enough.  What if I get in over my head?  What if I fail, or others see how inadequate I am?  Maybe someone else should do this, and I should stay where I am – safe on the shore.

I can’t tell you how much of real life with God and with others – for God and for others, I have missed out on because of concerns like these.  Ego-driven and fear-based concerns that keep one’s feet firmly planted on the shore. 

The question is, though, shall we let fear shape our lives?  Or love?  Love of God, and love of others?  And love of God that we see and come to be part of, in the lives of others?

Where is God calling you?   

Not in terms of some big project or some grand goal you can see from the start.  But what little step – what good next step, is God calling you to take?   

Into what river of God’s love for others, is God inviting you to enter – just step by single, faithful step?

Giving in to the gift (sermon from Sunday, Jan 9, 2022 -- Epiphany Sunday)

 Reading Matthew 2:1-12   

In many Gospel stories, it’s through the unfamiliar coming-together of normally disparate and separate people that the real meaning of Jesus is brought to light – something to notice in the stories, and something to be aware of in our living as well.  Who would ever have guessed, for instance, that the beginning of the revealing of Jesus to the world would come in a meeting of magi from the East and Mary in her home in Bethlehem?

The reflection that follows the reading is spoken in two parts – from each of their perspectives. 

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.

“In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
    who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.

On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

 

Meditation

Part One: One of the Magi

We were so smart!  That’s our job.  But the farther we got on our journey, and the more clearly we saw where we were being led, the more we realized how much we still had to learn.  And un-learn.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

I’m one of the Magi who went to see Jesus in Bethlehem.  My name is … oh, it doesn’t matter.   My name is not important.

What’s important is that we thought we were so smart.  But in the end, it was something else that was needed.

Not that we aren’t smart.  We are, in the world’s terms.  We’re among the best and the brightest the world has to offer.

We are the Magi – descendants of the venerated “sixth tribe” of the ancient Medes – the people who have seemed forever to be dominant in the great plains of the Tigris and Euphrates watershed, the cradle of civilization.  Among our people and in our culture we are the high priests of Zoroaster – the diviners of wisdom and understanding.  We study the stars of the heavens, the seasons and inner workings of the earth, and the movements and traditions of its peoples.  From this we know the secrets of life and of all time.  And because of this, we have power and privilege, the ear of the emperor, and the respect of the ordinary people.

Which is why we were among the first to notice the star at its rising, and maybe the only ones to know its meaning.  It was the great star of the line of David, heralding the coming of One – a great divine One – who would change all the world for the better. 

Unlike so many others of our time who thought all time is only cyclical and never really changes,and certainly not for the better, we foresaw the promise of real change, of the coming a new way of peace and understanding, of a new and more humane society, and of prosperity that will be shared and enjoyed by all.

So we set out to find this One, and to help show the way of the world’s redemption.

Except, we made a mistake. 

We assumed this One would appear in a palace or some other place of power, privilege and prestige.  We ourselves held that kind of place, and were used to working from the top down – a kind of trickle-down theory of the world’s healing and salvation.  And when you’re used to being privileged and among the world’s top 10%, it’s easy to assume that the answer to the world’s problems will appear and will come from the same kind of place you occupy.

So when we reached the land of the star’s design, we went to the court of King Herod.

It didn’t take long, though, to realize we were in the wrong place.  There was little but confusion, there.  And anxiety and fear.

Thankfully at least they knew the old teachings well enough – even though they didn’t seem to live by them – that they could steer us in the right direction.  It was pretty clear, though, that they had no interest in journeying there with us.  Their concern – the concern of both the political and the religious leaders of that place, was just to gather useful information, not to undergo spiritual transformation.  Rather than follow the leading of the star wherever it might lead, they chose to sit tight wherever they were and hang on to what they had.

We were happy to leave them.  And as I said, as we found ourselves led to Bethlehem, we began to realize just how different this God, and this God’s way of saving the world is from what we were used to, and from what most of the world assumes.

The town of Bethlehem was little.  It had a noble heritage, but it was small and unimportant. Not a great centre or hub of anything.

And the house we were led to was ordinary.  Humble.  You might even say poor and meagre.

Suddenly we felt silly coming to that place with all our great entourage.  Everything we had brought was designed to impress people of importance, who were accustomed to only the best and most up-to-date premium version of everything.  We felt we had to show the same, to be credible to them.

But now we were just embarrassed by all we had brought with us, and thought we needed.

At the door I waited to be invited.  I dared not presume that I was welcome in this place with all my pride and power and privilege on display.  But when I said what I was there for – to see the One who is God’s messiah, I was invited in.  I entered humbly. I knelt before the baby and his mother.  Hardly dared look up.  And waited in submissive silence before this One who seemed so much less than me, and was actually so much more.

  

When that child reached out a hand to touch me, I felt like I was being kissed by God.  An unfamiliar warmth spread through me.  I knew I was truly in the presence of the love, the light and the hope that all the world longs for.  On the precipice of a different kind of kingdom than most of the world knows how to look for.

And I found it not in the palace before a great throne, but on my knees in the plainest of homes in the most ordinary of towns.  It makes me wonder – being new to this God – just how often this is the way of the coming of this God’s kingdom on earth. 

I just hope that having involved Herod and his court – having alerted the political and religious leaders of the day to what God is up to, and how this God is found, that we haven’t wrecked it all.  I hope we haven’t made too much trouble for Mary and the baby.

I feel there is still so much for me to learn about the way of this king.  So much also to un-learn. Enough for a lifetime.   

It’s time for me to go home by another route, to live a new way.

Part Two: Mary 

I was not pleased.  I was frightened.

When I saw the caravan nearing town, my heart sank.  When it became clear they were coming to my house, to see me and my baby boy, I felt like running out the back door.  Just running with my son in my arms.  And not stopping.  Until I could hide somewhere.  And never be found.

Instead, though, I stood there and just asked myself over and over again, “What do they want with me?  What do they want with him?”

 I mean, these were obviously people of some importance.  They were dressed in strange, exotic robes made of colours and materials I had never even dreamed of.  They were obviously rich, and powerful.  And just as obviously foreigners.  Not Jews.  They were not of God’s chosen people.

"What could they want with me?  What could they want with Jesus??”

As they came closer, I could also see … I could guess … and yes, it turns out I was right … that they were astrologers and people of great learning and wisdom.  Forbidden learning from what I was told.  Leviticus – or somewhere else in the Torah – explicitly condemns their way of using the stars and other things to know God’s will and to discern what will happen.   I’m pretty sure it does, anyway.

And so, step by step, I kept asking inside my head, “What do they want with me?  What do they want with my Jesus?”

Should I let them in?  I mean, having an angel of God appear in my home, and saying “yes”is one thing.  Letting God and God’s Spirit into my life to change it completely was hard,but in the end it was good.

But this?  What good could come of letting these people in?  

I mean … I had just begun to settle into the comfort and consolation of raising the baby son of God to save our people.  So, he could maybe reform us, make us better Jews.  Give us more influence and power.  A better place in the world.  Help us have a happier life.

Isn’t that all that anyone really wants?  Isn’t that what everybody wants God for, in their life? To make their life better?

But what could these foreigners want?  What did I have to offer these rich, wise people with their own ways of knowing God?

But then ... the way they came in … and the way they greeted me … the way they greeted my son … greeted Jesus … the way they bowed down … and knelt … silently … offered their gifts … seemed to offer themselves in submission …

And then something happened.

I saw my son … the son of Almighty God entrusted to me, reach out a hand, and touch them,like a blessing … it was a blessing … upon them.

And as he did that, he turned his face up to me … and smiled … as though this is what he was here for … as though this is what he was waiting for … maybe from all eternity … for people like these to come from as far as they had … across so many miles and so many boundaries between us … so they could be welcomed in … to bow down and be blessed … and we could be friends together even just for a moment in the blessing of God.

Something shifted in me.  I began to see a little bit more of what God, and God’s son, and God’s Spirit were about in me.

This wasn’t what I thought I signed up for.  But I saw that this is what it meant.

First of all, that it was not just me and my people that Jesus came into the world to bless and to heal.  It’s really all of us – all the world – all people who care at all about truth and love and justice and peace and the well-being of the world that God has made.  And who are willing to seek it out together.  Regardless of where we come from, and what boundaries may separate us.

And second, that my humble home, and my little life are what people need as long as Jesus is in it.  As long as what I nurture in my home, and hold in my arms, and honour in my heart is the life Jesus, the Word of God planted in me by God’s Spirit.

This was what they wanted.  This is what they came to me and to my house, for. And it makes me so happy that God has given this meaning and this high purpose to me and my life.  That as long as I say yes to God, as long as I nurture his Word within me, as long as I hold Jesus in my arms and my heart and my home, I have what others seek.

What could they want with me?    

What they want is the love I have known in my life from God,and that God wants to touch and to bless all the world, with.