The Now of Gospel
On
Luke 4:14-21
By Griff Martin
For
the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
On the
Third Sunday following Epiphany
January
27, 2019
Incarnate and Resurrected God,
we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and
breathing new reality we can all together experience. Make us aware of your
presence here in this space and in these words God, for if we are present to
you then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present to you then
nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the
Comforter. Amen.
One of my favorite writers is
Flannery O’Connor, the greatest theologian of short stories. She’s dark and
funny and brilliant and her stories read anew each time you open them. Revelation is a perfect example: the
story of one of her best characters Mrs. Ruby Turpin, a woman who is described
as a presence so large that she could make a small waiting room feel even
smaller with her very presence.
The story begins with Ruby
sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room, quietly judging herself to be
superior to everyone else there – especially, a poor, unkept teenager named Mary
Grace seated on the other side of the room reading a book. At first, Ruby
keeps her judgements to herself, but then she decides to share them out
loud. She tells Mary Grace that she is nothing but “white trash,” and the
lowest of the low. And in the blink of an eye, Mary Grace slams her book
shut and hurls it across the room, hitting Ruby upside the head, square between
the eyes. Flannery O’Connor writes that this “was the beginning of Ruby’s
road to redemption. Revelation, it appears, often begins when a large book
hits you in the head.”
It’s what this Gospel text is
all about; it’s what the practice of reading Scripture faithfully and truly is
all about: a large book hitting you in the head to wake you up. That is a
revelation, and if we don’t on a somewhat regular basis walk away from reading
Scripture with a bit of pain, well then church, we are not reading Scripture
the right way. Because sometimes Scripture hurts us in all the good ways,
because the good news has to be bad news before it can be good news.
Even when we want it to be
only good news, which is a trait we have long held as a people of faith who
gather and would rather get the blessings than the beatitudes. We do it, and
the first readers and hearers did it, too. Imagine this with me:
Think about the crowd around
Jesus for this first public sermon. These are his people, these are his family,
these are his friends. This is the town where he grew up. This is a place he
knew well, and they can’t wait to hear his Good News.
Nazareth is a small town,
maybe 400 people, which is often less than we have in this sanctuary on Easter
Sunday. It’s an important town, only because it sits on a major trade route – meaning,
it’s a pass through town; you get from
where you have been to where you are going (hold onto that, because even the
location of the town becomes part of the message for Jesus….A place that gets
you from where you have been to where you are going).
Because it’s not a big town; there
is probably no sanctuary or temple in the city. Thus, far in the exploration of
the holy lands, there has been no religious site found here. Meaning that
probably they gathered for worship outside in a courtyard in one of the bigger
homes, making worship incredibly and beautifully familiar.
And gathered there in the
crowd are the folks Jesus knows best, and those who best know Jesus. There
sitting next to his mother is one of her dear friends. She had a son about
Jesus’ age and Lord only knows (truly) how many times she bandaged his skinned
knees. There across the room is a couple for whom Jesus has done many handyman
jobs: built them a table, fixed a leaking roof. He was in and out of their
house so often it felt like his own. There sits his Sunday school teacher,
there sits the saints who got him through his teenage years, there sits the
elders who provided him wisdom. Jesus is among his balcony people.
And they are glad he is home,
because Jesus is starting to be a thing. Listen to the early part of the text: word
is spreading about Jesus, he is doing things and saying things and people are
talking. And his folks, the people of Nazareth, have gotten word. I imagine it
started with someone who heard from so and so in another town about something
Jesus said, and then the word quickly spread, and more news came in – Jesus of
Nazareth was creating quite a stir.
So, this worship gathering
energy was at a high; it was tangible. This was home, so what would Jesus do
and say here? The crowd was probably a bit larger than normal because Jesus was
there, and it was just assumed he would speak. Which is a custom in worship
those days – someone from the congregation would read the appointed text from
the scroll and then they would offer some words about it. Maybe a translation,
maybe something they had heard someone else offer, maybe a question they had,
maybe a testimony.
With Jesus in town, everyone
knew who would be given the scroll and who would do the reading that morning –
and they were on the edge of their seats.
Jesus is given the scroll, and
he chooses a text from Isaiah: a prophesy that was written to a group of exiles
who were returning home to a kingdom that was not quite what they expected. It’s
a text that is hopeful, but also contains a lot of work, because the good news
of the text depends on the people changing their lives and offering a new way
of living.
And this is the text that
Jesus offered to the community – a text that most theologians now describe as
his inaugural address, the heart of his Gospel, his mission and purpose
statement. And that, of course, means it’s our mission and vision and purpose
statement, too. Which saves us a lot of time and money with consultants and
wasted hours trying to craft the perfect vision statement. Hear these words
again this morning:
“The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me,
because
he has anointed me
to
bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives
and
recovery of sight to the blind,
to
let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the
Lord’s favor.”
That’s the Gospel. Compassion
and liberation and equality and freedom.
For those who say Jesus was
not political but was spiritual, please spend a bit of time with this text,
because it’s very political. And for those who say Jesus was not spiritual but
was political, please spend a bit of time with this text, because it’s very
spiritual. It’s both: political and spiritual. It’s about the poor and the
prisoner and the oppressed that exist in our society, and it’s about the poor
and prisoner and oppressed that exist in our souls. And in the tradition of
Gandhi, you can’t heal one without healing the other. This text is everything.
The crowd at this point is
most familiar with this text and they are anxiously awaiting Jesus’ sermon on
this passage, his commentary. Would he address the oppression of the empire? Would
he preach about the beauty of Jubilee? Would he offer some words on his
ministry? Perhaps one of those short stories that Jesus is becoming known for…
But Jesus offers none of these. You see, Jesus had been trained in the school
of John the Baptist preaching: short, direct and to the point. Hit them in the
head with a book.
A nine-word sermon: “Today
this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
And there is one word in that
sermon that stands out above the rest: today.
I think Jesus was a master at
understanding humanity. You see, that is what being human will do to you. And
there is an odd trait that us human beings have evolved and developed, and it’s
a really messed up concept of time. It comes with our incredible awareness, our
intelligent cognition. It’s a gift and a curse. It’s a gift because it has
allowed us to dominate the evolution bracket, but it’s a curse because it means
that unlike other living things that only focus on the present, we focus on the
past and future to the exclusion of the present. Psychologists write that we
are hard-wired to think and live exclusively in terms of past and future. This
is central to our struggle as human beings with anxiety and depression.
We think in terms of what we
could have done and what we should do. You get bad news and your first thought,
what could I have done and what should I
do next time? And if you think that is bad, it happens with the good things,
too. You get good news and your first thought is what did I do to deserve this and what can I do to make this happen again? Heck, we actually do it
with time itself. You are running late for a work meeting and all you can think
is I should have left 15 minutes earlier while at the same time thinking I am
going to miss the first part of the meeting and be behind the rest of the
meeting and be totally out of place. Even when we are thinking about time, we
can’t think in the present.
We rely on learning and
planning, which are good things if we know how to do so properly. But they can
also distract us from the present moment, which is really all we have.
And one of the most important
lessons we learn as human beings is to live in the now, in this moment. And
that lesson becomes even more important when you follow the great theologian
Paul Tillich’s train of thought and realize that God is the Eternal and Great
Now. Just start with Torah and God’s name, I
Am (not I was or I will be…although, I think I Am contains both of those statements,
as well).
God as the Eternal Now and us
human beings lost in the past and the future.
A few weeks ago, I began my
spiritual direction session by reporting on my week and all the things of the
week, and I did it in my way by listing all I had done and needed to do and
should have done. I finished and expected the usual discussion of “that is
great and all but how do you feel, not what did you do and think?” Instead, I
got this: “Do you want to take a nap here? Because with all that fixing and
planning, you must be quite exhausted.”
She then went on to let me
know that I really needed to watch my vocabulary; that rarely has she worked
with someone who uses so many fixing and planning verbs, which I thought were
really good verbs. But they aren’t because they are distracting verbs that are
keeping me from being in the present moment. They are keeping me from the
Eternal Now. They are keeping me from the Gospel that Jesus just
preached.
I need to learn to live more
in Today, because Today is where I find God doing God’s work. If you want to
find God, start in the present; look around. Practice silence and contemplation
and meditation. Listen and pay attention. God is now.
And that does not mean the
past does not matter, quite the opposite. The past matters a great deal because
it got us here and it is hard work and good work and it has so many lessons for
us and so much beauty to be celebrated and treasured. History is our story of
what made us us, and if we forget it,
we are nothing. Humans have evolved because of how we have been able to learn
from the past and honor the past.
And that does not mean the
future does not matter, quite the opposite. The future matters a great deal
because it is where we are going, and if we don’t know our direction we are
wandering aimlessly and will get nowhere we intend. Our future gives us
something to anticipate and hope for. Humans have evolved because of how we
have been able to plan for the future.
But we must learn that both
the future and the past have a very certain role in our lives; they are guides
and wisdom and hope, but they are not dictators. They have a voice and a vote,
but they do not have veto power. They have a place in the car, but it’s not the
driver’s seat.
Think about the town of
Nazareth again. A place that gets you from where you have been to where you are
going. And yet, it’s there in that middle place, the transition from where you
have been to where you are going, which is to say the Now, it’s there Jesus
tells us his purpose. Today….
Because it’s Today that
matters most. Because Today is where the Scripture is fulfilled. Jesus’
language is now. In the words of Diana Butler Bass, “today places us in the
midst of the sacred drama, reminding us that we are actors and agents in God's
desire for the world. "Today" is the most radical thing Jesus ever
said.”
What Jesus is promising us is
that the best is not yet to come and it’s not already past, it’s here and now,
it’s today, it’s this moment, now. Stop and breathe. Really, right now,
take a deep breath. This is what we have, this moment.
Which means that there is
something going on today that we can’t miss, and it involves the Gospel coming
to life. It involves freedom and it involves God’s year of Jubilee and it
involves compassion and equality and compassion. It’s salvation and it’s everything
we desire and want about the Kingdom of God. It’s the Good News of Jesus all
around us, if we choose to see it by living in this moment.
And it’s not what has happened and what will happen, although both are true; but
they are true because it is happening now, today.
God’s time is now. God plays
in the present and we don’t want to miss that. Jesus’ invitation this morning
is now, today. This is happening and I want you to be part of it.
Jesus’ invitation is to honor
our past. Which is key, and it’s why Jesus does not tell a parable here but
instead reads from an ancient text that is still powerful today. He honors what
has been. Jesus’ invitation is about our future; this is Kingdom of God, this
is our destination.
And we honor that past and we
celebrate that future by living today. By living this text out today, living
out Jesus’ mission statement.
Today this Scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing.
Which means that something is
going on right now, this very moment and God is inviting us to be part of it. God’s
ongoing work of liberation and freedom and salvation, the love song, the joy,
the goodness, the beauty… that is happening today, and our invitation is to
join it.
Because when we join it, we
make it Truer. It’s the words of Desmond Tutu: “Without God, we can’t. Without
us, God won’t.”
The Good News is here in the
present and our invitation is to join Jesus into making it a reality today. Not
yesterday and not tomorrow – today.
May we join in today, for
salvation is in the present. Amen and Amen.
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