Fulfilled in your hearing

It is not about my feelings or opinions, but as much as my fallible human nature can make it, this is to be speaking the word of God again for this particular day.

How is it that I dare to stand in this place and presume to speak for God?

Because the church has called me and said we think you are the one equipped by the Spirit with this paradigmatic responsibility for us.

Now go and figure it out, and do it.

There are many difficult things about being at seminary, and one of the most intimidating was the practice preaching sessions at this season of the year in the seminary chapel when hanging from the pulpit they would sometimes have an exceedingly long banner with this text in very large letters: “Woe to me if I preach not the Gospel”.

If one wasn't terrified before, that was enough to put anyone over the edge.

It is an awesome responsibility, anytime, anyplace, but especially there.

So Jesus goes to his hometown synagogue and is invited to preach.

The lesson is from Isaiah, and he is expected to work with that text.

He is not asked to share his feelings or relate personal experiences, but to open the scriptures to the people.

And so he does: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me, Jesus reads from Isaiah, to bring Good news to the oppressed....

And then his sermon gets right to the point: Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

They are not just old words, antique words, nice-sounding words from the past with no particular relevance.

Instead, they are words of power, words that matter, words that are happening right then as they are being spoken.

They are starting to accomplish what they announce.

In a primary sense, they are creative words.

It is one thing to say that God will move, act and save one day, someday.

It is quite another thing to say that God is doing so today, here, as you listen, that God is creative still.

Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

Now this will be heard in two different ways:

--those who fell secure in themselves will hear this as Bad News that God just may come and upset all of the current carefully constructed castles of self-preservation.

--but those who know just how vulnerable the situation really is will hear this as Good News that God is not leaving us to our own devices, but has a better plan than we could ever construct by ourselves.

I'm guessing that most of the time we're all mixed up about which way we hear it today.

If we were just coming together to hear nice Jesus stories that are safely in the past, it wouldn't matter so very much, but Jesus just won't stay in the past.

He has this way of speaking a word that becomes present yet again.

Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing....is the word to us as well as to the hometown crowd in Nazareth.

It is meant to be God's creative word among us today just as it was then.

It is meant to open closed doors, to bring life out of death, to stir hope out of despair.

But we're not sure if we want that, or want to trust that.

It is launching ourselves into the unknown; it is a matter of faith, of trusting in things not seen.

What does God have in mind for us to be doing, singly and in concert with other congregations?

We need to keep asking that question and looking for the answers, which may change quite a bit as the years go by.

This week in Morning Prayer one day we were reading the parable of the sower, and we noted that the sower scatters the seed in all directions.

Is this a wasteful practice, since some of the seed ends up on the road and some in thorn bushes and only some on fertile ground?

As we thought about it, we decided not, since God in his wisdom may discern soil where we see none, God may make compost of thorn bushes, or may even plow up a road!

Perhaps some remember the old PBS television show “Victory Garden”.

I didn't learn until years later that the lush and beautiful garden that we saw on TV was built on top of an abandoned asphalt parking lot.

If we can do something like that, what greater wonders can God do with hopelessly hard-hearted people?

Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

And do we have a part in that fulfillment?

Remember at Pentecost when the crowd demands an explanation for all the commotion, Peter explains by reference to the passage from the prophet Joel: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy....

Through most of our history with God, Holy Spirit induced talking (that is, preaching) has been limited to a few annoying truth-tellers, the prophets.

But when Messiah comes, God's Holy Spirit is poured out on all.

Young, old, everyone gets opportunity to speak up.

Everyone is a preacher in some measure.

Jesus' people tend to be big talkers, and they will talk with anyone, no matter what the government says.

That's why the Christian faith has been so hard to stamp out even under oppressive regimes.

It does not depend on only a few leaders, but upon the Spirit blowing widely where it will.

I read recently about persons in Iran seeing visions of Jesus and because of those visions, finding Christians who live precariously in that country and joining them in faith in the Lord Jesus.

This has been happening in that repressive nation in the past two years or so.

We might be skeptical, but remember that such a thing is very dangerous, because a conversion from Islam, if it becomes known to the wrong person, very often results in torture and death.

If it can happen there, in a place of such great danger as Iran, can it happen here in places of relative safety?

Can we be freed from the captivity to fears of ultimate things?

Can we look around and proclaim that the good that we see is indeed the gift of God, the year of the Lord's favor?

I read this week about a church service where someone thought it would be a nifty idea for a soloist to sing a pop song from 20 years ago “From a Distance”

The main line of this song, repeated over and over is that “God is watching over us, watching us, from a distance.”

The basic idea being that God keeps his eye on the world, but only from a safe distance, and indeed, life's problems would not seem nearly so bad if we looked at things from a distance, too.

But part-way through the song, someone could not stand it any longer, jumped up, and began to sing the same tune but with alternate text: “God came near to us, God came near to us, God came near to us....”

The second person was by far the better theologian.

The Good News is not about God standing aloof, but about his immanence, his coming close to us in order to change us from the inside out, and then to affect the whole world through us.

Jesus sends out his disciples to all the villages of Galilee to preach, and us in their footsteps; and yes, the scriptures are being fulfilled. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.