Year C

Luke 4:14-21

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The God Who Loves Sinners

The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life.” The French philosopher Voltaire said, “Pleasure is the object, duty, and goal of all rational creatures.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher and poet sees it differently: “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate; to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” Jesus would have agreed far more with Emerson than with Aristotle or Voltaire. We hear this difference today when he announced his purpose and his mission with the words of Isaiah, revealing the useful and compassionate direction his life would take with the poor, the blind, and the oppressed.

Today’s gospel takes place at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry after his baptism and 40 days in the wilderness. He hasn’t even called his first disciples yet so I’m sure he is still seeking to discover what God would have him do and be. It does seem that everyone else knows. We heard read that “A report concerning him had spread through all the surrounding country.” After the devil is finished tempting him, Jesus decides to go to his childhood home, Nazareth where he enters the familiar synagogue where he attended with his family since a young child. We can just imagine how proud the people must have been to have one of their own back in their presence thinking he is someone who will make a difference for them. No doubt he will put the despicable Samaritans in their place. He will affirm the party line and champion the best causes. His friends will be the right people. Their enemies will be his enemies, and their values his values.

Because he is a rabbi, he is asked to read one of the scripture lessons. The synagogue service had three readings. There was a psalm and a selection from the Torah, the books of Moses, or the first five books of the bible. Both of these texts were assigned for the day so that in a three-year cycle, much like we do today, the law and the psalms would be read through. But the text from the prophet was the choice of the reader. Jesus asked for the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolls it to the 61st chapter and begins to read one of the most cherished portions of the prophet Isaiah. “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.”

These very familiar words of Isaiah to the synagogue worshipers were the expectations and description they had attached to the Coming Messiah and before their very eyes Jesus reinterpreted these words to people who were waiting. He rolls up the scroll, returns it to the attendant, and sits down. Then says from where he was sitting: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” This announcement means they can no longer see him simply as a village carpenter or as Mary and Joseph’s boy. He is the one that they have been waiting to come all of their lives and their grandparent’s lives and the generations before him. The carpenter’s son is the Messiah? No way! So they run him out of town.

Why the anger? Because, they had already defined him. He was going to be one of them, take care of their needs, and protect them. His mission was to be to the right people-them. Yet, he defined his mission in terms that were not only different than they had assumed, but downright scandalous! He had come not just for them but to spend his life with the poor who would be the recipients of the good news. He had come to serve the prisoners-scum who were getting what they deserved. His mission was to the sick, the blind, and the afflicted. He would set free the oppressed. No wonder the crowd is stunned and if how he put it wasn’t bad enough, the rest of the gospel of Luke describes how he did it.

His friends were sinners, tax collectors and scandalous women. In his best stories, the heroes were of a no good son, a Samaritan, and a beggar whose sores the dogs licked. And his ministry went on, and grew, and continued to grow after his death and resurrection, even to this very day. It is as if his role were written not only into the scriptures, but even into our very nature making His mission our mission. “You are the body of Christ,” says Paul in today’s epistle. That means his ministry is our ministry. In defining who he was and what he was about he has defined who we are and what we are called to be about. According to Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, there is no such thing as belonging to this body of Christ without participating. A body does not work when one part checks out; not only will its function be unfulfilled, but the rest of the body will be thrown out of balance.

The human body has 206 bones, 639 muscles, and about 6 pounds of skin, along with ligaments, cartilage, veins, arteries, blood, fat, and more. Every time we hear a sound; every time we take a step; every time we take a breath, hundreds of different parts work together so that what we experience is a single movement, our minds and bodies working as one unit. Even the greatest engineers struggle to achieve anything like it in mechanical form. The human body is one of the most complex systems in existence. This is why the body is one of the most powerful images for the church offered in scripture. Sometimes we find it difficult to name our place in the church, but asked to envision ourselves as a part of the body; children and adults of all ages have little difficulty identifying themselves as hands, feet, brains, and funny bones!

 This is an example of Paul’s vision of the church, a body of people, caring for one another, sharing the work of God in the world, all with the help of God’s Spirit that lives in us. Just as the Holy Spirit came and filled Jesus with power for his urgent ministry of grace to all. We are given the Holy Spirit’s power and sent out by Jesus to bring about justice, to speak good news so that people will be healed by God’s forgiveness, to act so that people will be fed and cared for physically. People will be amazed much like the worshipers in the synagogue that day by what they heard from the mouth of “Joseph’s son. They missed the Epiphany moment because they had already judged him. The minute he denied their special status he went from favorite son to stranger, who offended them so badly they decide to kill him.

This is how sensitive we are to being told that God loves those who offend us or are different from us and who belong to God just as surely as we do. Yet, God keeps inviting us to follow this Jesus who preferred the company of tax collectors, scandalous women, and sinners. Sinners just like you and me; the body of Christ alive in today’s world. May this be our Epiphany eye opening moment for as the spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus, so it is upon us to “preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and liberty to the oppressed.”