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<DIV><FONT size=4><STRONG>PREACHING THE LESSON: Luke
4:14-21<BR><BR></STRONG>This week offers the first half of the account of Jesus
preaching in his hometown of Nazareth, and next week offers the second half.
Preachers might focus on scripture as revelation, and in particular on Jesus as
the fulfillment of all of God’s promises, an appropriate focus for
Epiphany.<BR><BR>In 4:14-21, Jesus returns from his temptations in the
wilderness “filled with the power of the Spirit” to begin his teaching ministry
to universal acclaim in Galilee, where he “was praised by everyone” (4:15).
Eventually arriving in his home town he goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, is
handed the scroll containing Isaiah, and whether by his own choice or by
prescription, he reads verses 61:1-2, that in Luke’s rendering is missing a line
of the original (“to bind up the brokenhearted”), includes specific references
to the poor and blind, and adds a line from Isaiah 58:6. These differences may
be more important to highlight in a Bible study than in the sermon.<BR><BR>The
passage Jesus reads in Isaiah speaks of the prophet being Spirit-filled and led
to speak on behalf of God to the people: from these words as much is learned
about the nature and character of God as about what lies ahead for those who are
the objects of divine promise. The poor receive good news, the captives have
release, the blind see, the oppressed are freed, and now is the year of the
Lord’s favor. These words connect with the year of the Jubilee in Leviticus 25
in which, not least, every fifty years families have a right to buy back family
land they have lost. God has special concern for the poor, the imprisoned, the
blind, the oppressed, and all of those who have received ill treatment in
life.<BR><BR>In the custom of his day, Jesus stands to read and sits to comment
or teach, so that there can be no confusion between the interpretation (the
sermon) and what is written (the reading). In this instance, however, because of
who he is, both are equally the Word of God. His sermon on this day opens in a
daring manner, he announces that this scripture is “fulfilled in your hearing”
by which he claims his anointment by the Spirit at his baptism, that he is
filled with the Spirit, and that he is the fulfillment of the prophecy. He
anticipates his own ministry in which he will act on behalf of the poor, release
those in bondage, restore sight, and proclaim the Lord’s favor.<BR><BR>A promise
is not worth much if it is not carried out. The preacher may note that the world
seems filled with promises that fall short: like the ads that imply that
drinking the right kind of beer will surround one with friends, wearing the
right kind of clothes will make one the center of attention, or investing with
the right company will allow one to reap unbelievable dividends.<BR><BR>The
Bible is filled with promises concerning God’s love, mercy, justice, and
faithfulness. How are these promises any more reliable than those of the world?
Many people, particularly those with little or no church background, regard the
Bible as a curiosity at best, and wonder why other books of great literature are
not also read regularly in church. For many, the notion of the Bible containing
the Word of God in any specialized sense is foreign. By contrast for others, the
Word of God is dynamic, living, something to be sought in the Bible and
something that once discerned is typically and publicly proclaimed in the sermon
on Sunday. Even greater than this is the sense in which Scripture is promise and
Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of those promises, in at least three senses: his
earthly life and ministry, his continuing work through the Spirit, and his
coming again at the end of time to make all things new. <BR><FONT
size=3> <BR></FONT><FONT size=4>When Jesus says to the folks in Nazareth,
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” he claims that the
promises made in Isaiah are fulfilled in him. How do we know that what he
promises is true? We have simple yet profound assurance in his resurrection from
the dead. To every promise that God has uttered we may point to the power of
God’s love that is stronger than death itself. The resurrection of Jesus is the
divine act that rightly banishes despair, brings forth justice, pours out mercy,
lifts up the weak, frees the oppressed, feeds the hungry, cures the sick,
restores sight to the blind, offers a home to the homeless, and brings outsiders
into community.<BR><BR>Too often as preachers we center on what people must do,
and too often we take for granted that people already understand about who Jesus
is and how God is manifest in him. Yet this kind of exploration holds most
potential for renewing faith. In other words preachers stop short of proclaiming
the gospel. Presumably every time we preach and make plain what God has done in
Jesus Christ and how this relates to our text, we may say of any scripture,
“this text has been fulfilled in your hearing.”<BR><BR>Paul Scott
Wilson<BR><BR><BR><B>"A WORD FROM THE LORD": Nehemiah 8:1-10; Luke
4:14-21<BR><BR></B>I had just taken on the responsibilities of the Interim
Senior Pastor in a congregation in a small Southern town. I was talking with
another UCC pastor in the area, when he asked, “So, has your church received a
visit from the barefoot preacher yet?” “The who?” I asked. He told me there was
a man had been showing up unannounced at church services around the county
wearing a preacher’s robes but no shoes. He would ask if he could bring the
people a word from the Lord. No one knew much about him, but this barefoot
preacher had shown up in several congregations in the area lately. I told my
colleague I’d be sure to keep an eye out for him.<BR><BR>I have to admit that
the description of this man really caught hold of my imagination. What would
this barefoot preacher be like, and what word from the Lord would he bring us?
How would my congregation react? It was the sort of place where everything was
always done decently and in order. They were accustomed to preaching that was
quiet, thoughtful and a bit on the intellectual side. No preacher, to my
knowledge, had ever shown up there asking to speak uninvited, let alone
barefoot.<BR><BR>So I wondered. If this man were to show up at my church, what
would happen? Would he rant and rave? Would he call on us all to repent because
the kingdom of God was at hand? Would the ushers try to throw him out? Should I
bar the door? Try to keep him quiet? The older people were unsettled enough
having a young woman in such a responsible role. If there were a disturbance, it
wouldn’t reflect well on my leadership. This sort of thing had never happened
when Dr. Irvine or Dr. Hamilton was there. Yet, for all I knew the man did have
a word from the Lord.<BR> <BR>Isn’t it strange? Week after week all
over this nation, preachers climb into pulpits and take out their notes, say a
prayer, take a deep breath and preach. Each one of us is supposed to be bringing
a word from the Lord. But nobody gets tense or worried. No body tries to throw
us out or hush us up. Instead we calmly settle in, read the announcements in the
bulletin, yawn, or maybe take a peek at our watches. We’re expecting a sermon,
but are we expecting a word form the Lord?<BR><BR>It was an ordinary Sabbath day
when Jesus came to the synagogue. He was in his hometown going to services with
his family, his neighbors, his childhood friends. Nothing could have been more
natural. The people sat on plain wooden benches. There was a raised platform at
one end of the room. In that day, there weren’t any professional rabbis. The
service was simple. Prayers were said, scriptures read and commented on, and a
collection was taken for the poor. Jesus had been away doing a bit of teaching
and preaching. People in the area had good things to say about him. Now he was
home. What could be more natural than to ask him to read the scripture and to
say a few words? They handed him the Isaiah scroll. He read a few verses. They
settled in to hear what he had to say. They were expecting a sermon. They were
expecting to go home commenting on what a fine job Mary and Joseph’s boy had
done. They weren’t expecting a word from the Lord.<BR><BR>A sermon, if it isn’t
too long, can be a nice thing. It may provide a good story or two, keep you
entertained, make you feel good. You can take it or leave it, agree with it or
not. But a word from the Lord can’t be ignored. A word from the Lord disrupts
our carefully ordered routine. A word from the Lord can change
things.<BR><BR>When the people of Israel returned from their land after their
long exile, Ezra was asked to bring the book of the law of Moses, the Torah.
Read to the people. It had been a long time since they’d heard it. We don’t know
what parts Ezra read. Maybe he read to them the story of God’s faithfulness to
Abraham. Maybe he read the story of Moses leading the people safely through the
sea to escape from the Egyptians, or the story of their wilderness wandering and
grumbling, or maybe he read of the clear requirements God set down for the
people of the covenant to follow. He read for hours and he made it plain to
them. They took it straight to heart. They took it as a clear word from the
Lord. They stood there, and they cried.<BR><BR>When Jesus stood to read in the
synagogue in Nazareth, he brought a word from the Lord as well. He
read:<BR><BR><I>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. </I> <BR><BR>Then he rolled up the
scroll, handed it back, and sat down, because sitting down was what teachers did
in the synagogue. The gist of what he said to them was this: “Today all of this
has been fulfilled, right here, in Nazareth.” It was nice to think of the
prophet’s words coming to pass in some rosy, distant future. It was nice to
think about those giants of faith, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, or David, encountering
Almighty God. But suddenly, this word was about now; this word concerned them.
It was a word from the Lord.<BR><BR>With these few short verses from the
scripture, Jesus told them what he was about to do. When he said that the Spirit
of the Lord was upon him, it meant that Jesus’ agenda was God’s agenda too.
Jesus brought good news to many poor people like the hungry crowds on the
hillside whom he fed with bread and fish. He showed them that God wants everyone
to have enough to eat. This is the one of whom his mother sang, “He has brought
down the powerful from their thrones, he has lifted up the lowly; he has filled
the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”<BR><BR>Jesus brought
release to the captives. Some were held captive by demons of the mind. Others
were held captive to a mat by paralysis. Still others were captive to their own
greed for money like Zacchaeus. Jesus set them all free. Jesus brought sight to
the blind. Sometimes he did this literally as he did with the blind man by the
roadside. But he opened the eyes of everyone he taught to look at God in a new
and different light.<BR><BR>Jesus brought freedom to the oppressed like the
woman who was trapped in a life where people used and despised her and at the
same time labeled her the sinner, until she came to him and washed his feet with
her tears and wiped them with her hair and he lifted her to her feet again and
told her about love and grace.<BR><BR>Jesus proclaimed the year of the Lord’s
favor, the great Jubilee that took place every fifty years, when every debt was
forgiven, every piece of foreclosed land returned to its original owner, and
every slave was freed. The great Jubilee was a symbol of God’s forgiveness, a
taste of God’s reign. “Today,” he said, “this scripture has been fulfilled in
your hearing.”<BR><BR>What Jesus began, his disciples continued. All throughout
the gospel and the story of the early church, today is never allowed to become
“once, long ago,” or put off until someday. In centuries since we have not been
so faithful to God’s agenda. Yet, God promises that all of us who are baptized
into the church are baptized with the same Spirit that filled
Jesus.<BR><BR>Today, in churches everywhere, someone is reading scripture.
Someone is reading about God who breathed life into us, about a God who calls us
by name. Someone is reading about a God who brings life out of death, about a
God who claims us as God’s own people. Today this scripture is fulfilled in your
hearing. Today there is a word from the Lord. <BR><BR>Beth Lyon <BR>Glenside
United Church of Christ <BR><BR>(4 of the 68 plus preaching resources available
at <A target=_blank
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for this Sunday.)<BR><BR></FONT></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>