Sermon on Luke 4: 14-21 and
1 Corinthians 12: 12-31a
A few weeks ago I needed to call the customer service of my bank, which I shall not name here. I am convinced that Dante, had he known about customer services, would have used it to illustrate the concept of purgatory.
It started nice enough: ‘Thank you for calling our customer service. Your call is important to us’, the friendly automated voice said. Then, after a long time: ‘We experience an unusually high volume of calls at the moment.’ Silence. ‘Did you know that most of our customers find an answer to their queries on our super helpful frequently asked questions page?’
After going through a few rounds of this ordeal I was ready to give up. But then, lo and behold, a real, human voice spoke: ‘Good morning, xyz speaking, how can I help you today?’ The shock left me quite speechless first.
I wonder whether Jesus’ audience in Nazareth experienced a similar shock. Here they are, gathered in the synagogue, as one does on a Sabbath. Jesus is joining them in this. He is back in his home-town, people know him around here. Or so they think. A book is handed to him, Jesus is searching around a bit, literally ‘scrolling’, and then the familiar words from two passages in Isaiah are being heard. Words of comfort. Words of promise:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me
He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to those who are captives, to restore vision to the blind.
To liberate all those who are bowed down, all those who have been broken and mistreated.
And to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
Luke has brought the episode about Jesus’ visit in Nazareth right to the beginning of his Gospel. It is the first episode of Jesus’ public ministry after the infancy stories, the baptism and temptation. It is the first time his words to a group are recorded, so far we only heard him speaking to his parents and the devil – though I should probably not mention them in the same breath.
This is Jesus’ inauguration speech, if you like, which was a bit of a theme last week. This is what Jesus stands for: Good news to the poor, release of the captives, vision to the blind, release of those who are being crushed by the weight of their lives, liberty to all the oppressed and downtrodden.
This is the prophets’ and Jesus’ version of the ‘land of the free’.
But it does not stop there. Time goes into slow-motion when Jesus closes the book, hands it back to the verger and sits down. All eyes are on Jesus. And he just calmly says: ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
Today’s lectionary ends before the reaction of the people in Nazareth is related, which quickly moves from admiration to anger:
‘Who does he think he is? We all know he is Joseph’s lad’.
They all understand, that Jesus has not just read words about the Messiah, he claims to be God’s anointed.
Jesus’ words ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ must have struck them like I was struck by hearing a human voice after the well-known pre-recorded messages.
The words of promise are now heard on the lips of the promised Word.
The word made flesh.
And all the ancient, well-known promises of the Scriptures are fulfilled in him. Today, says Jesus. Not once upon a time. Not in some distant future. Today.
And this ‘TODAY’ is like a sunrise, like the sun breaking through the clouds. It will give urgency to Jesus’ ministry. It will give joy to his ministry.
It lights up the nightly fields of Bethlehem: ‘Today in the town of David a Saviour is born to you, who is Christ the Lord’ (Luke 2:11).
It pierces the fog and gloom of an insanely wealthy and depressingly lonely man called Zaccheus: ‘Today Salvation has come to this house (Luke 19:9)’.
And it shines forth in the darkest agony of a tortured man: ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23:43).
Today, Today, Today. Time contracts in this holy and joyful moment: The sun is risen and the Son of God has appeared.
But where does this leave us?
How do we live in God’s TODAY? How do we live in Jesus’ land of the free?
Paul’s image of the church as the body of Christ informs us that we are not at liberty to choose who we want to hang out with, who we like to belong to the family – which is a bit of a disappointment. We were all baptized into one body says Paul, this is just a given.
The body is of course a well-known picture both in the ancient world and today and the meaning is clear and not terribly controversial: People have different roles but all are needed.
The image can also have a fairly conservative ring. Everybody has their appointed place: The rich man in his castle, the poor man at the gate….
There is not much of social mobility! What on earth happened to freedom?
But then something strange happens in the middle of the text when Paul writes: ‘The members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, whereas our more respectable members do not need this.
But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may all have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it’ (1 Corinthians 12: 22-26).
There is a strange kind of ‘downward mobility’ at play if you like, where the attention is on the seemingly weak and those we think are a bit embarrassing members of the body.
Where the big question is how to serve and honour those members, not how to humour and please the rich and mighty.
It is not a straight-forward game with dangers lurking: Nobody wants to be a charity project. I would not like you to hold the door open for me because you think I am weird. Weakness can be wrongly glorified – or used to manipulate others.
And yet, this is revolutionary stuff. The Swiss constitution opens with the following words: ‘In the name of Almighty God. Knowing that the greatness of a nation is measured over against the well-being of its weakest members….’ Forgive me this moment of patriotism, but this is just mind-bogglingly great stuff– whether the Swiss nation lives up to it is of course a different question.
I am convinced these words have their deepest roots in the Gospel of Christ, who came in weakness and redeemed us in our weakness. We do no longer have to dread being weak, to make fun of the weak or trample on them.
It is the vision of a community where the seemingly weak and apparently embarrassing members get the premium of our attention and care. Because the strong and honoured ones do not need it. It is a vision where the strong have been liberated for love, liberated for compassion. Liberated from the terrible fear of becoming a loser themselves.
The weak and not-so-impressive members of the body are taken to the centre, with the strong rallying around them, protecting them, honouring them. What a strange country is Jesus’ land of the free!
But this is not a one-way street. All images have their limitations. Unlike the members of the body the members of Christ’s bodies have no permanently fixed roles in the sense of being ‘weak’ or ‘strong’. Paul seems to sense this when he changes to language of mutual care and honour. ‘If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.’
How wonderful is this strange country of Jesus’ land of the free. But how hard it is to believe it and take it on board.
We are trained to think that there are limited resources, that we have to fight our way up to power and independence. We are told to admire people who can buy anything, who cannot be touched anymore because they have limitless resources, who can play politicians like puppet-masters, who can fly to the moon and colonise Mars.
But in Jesus’ country, in Jesus’ body we are slowly learning a different truth: We may be weak, we may be strong, we may feel resourceful and we may feel exhausted.
But we are always held in the care of others, we suffer together, we rejoice together. And we may well discover that the seemingly weak members are indispensable in this, and we may well discover that we, too, are part of the family, though we can be a tad weird.
I believe that whenever we gather under God’s word and around Christ’s table God says TODAY.
Time as we know it stands still and there is only the NOW of salvation, for a moment less veiled, less painfully hidden.
Standing in that circle, receiving Christ’s body we become his body once again.
We become the people who lives in the land of the free, freed from fear, anger, jealousy and hatred.
Liberated for compassion and love.
Thanks be to God!
Amen