Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 25, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Last week we talked about miracles. I told you that Jesus was, among other things, a miracle worker; and I talked about how we can be miracle workers too. The question of who Jesus is, however, never goes away. Our answers are never exhaustive. There’s always more to learn. There’s always more in him that inspires us, comforts us, upsets us, and challenges us. The question of how we learn more about Jesus, who he is and what he calls us to do, will be with us for as long as we are Christians. Learning more about Jesus is, I hope, one of the reasons you come here week after week. For us Christians, he is absolutely central to our faith. He is our Redeemer. More than that, he is the primary way that we know both who God is and who God wants us to be. Learning always more about him is central to the Christian life.

One contemporary scholar whom I often quote, Marcus Borg, has suggested one helpful way of doing that and specifically of learning who the four writers of the canonical Gospels say Jesus is. Borg says that each of the four Gospels contains a scene at the opening of its account of Jesus’ public ministry in which Jesus gives what Borg calls his "inaugural address." It is in each case a brief statement in which Jesus says something that summarizes his identity and sets the scene for all that is to come in the rest of the Gospel. And the Gospel lesson that we just heard is the one Borg identifies as Jesus’ inaugural address in the Gospel of Luke.

Recall the scene: Jesus has just begun his public ministry. He has come from his time of temptation in the wilderness, the time of his own discernment of his identity and of his mission. He comes home, to Nazareth and goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath. They’d heard about how he was, in Luke’s words, "filled with the power of the Spirit," so they asked him to read the scripture and to teach. He read these words from 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. Luke 4:18-19

Now, I’ve never quite understood what that was supposed to mean. I think the reason I’ve never understood what it means is that I’ve always only listened to half of what the Isaiah passage says. I mean, I’m a good Social Gospel Christian liberal, right? So my ears glom onto phrases like "good news to the poor," "release to the captives," and "let the oppressed to free." I skip over the first part: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me...." Jesus, I think, is saying not that somehow in him poor have good news (although they do), or that in him somehow those who are in bondage are somehow free (although they are). I think he is saying that he is the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests, the one who has been anointed, that is, specially chosen and designated by God, to do these works of liberation. If Borg is right that Luke intends this passage to be a summary of Jesus’ mission, a statement of what he is all about, then what he is all about is liberation. Jesus purpose in life, then, was freedom, liberation, and good news to the poor.

One part of the Isaiah that Jesus read and said that he fulfills requires some explanation. That’s the last line: "to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor." That one’s a bit obscure. Scholars tell us that it refers to the Hebrew tradition of Jubilee. Actually, tradition is too strong a word. Israel, as far as we know, never actually practiced Jubilee. The reference is to a passage in Leviticus that says, among other things, that every fifty years all land should revert to the person who owned it fifty years earlier. In Jesus’ day, one of the principal causes of poverty and even of indentured servitude or slavery was that the peasants were rapidly losing their land to the wealthy. Jesus is saying that his mission includes proclaiming the will of God expressed in Scripture that they get their land back. He is proposing here nothing less than a revolutionary program of land redistribution. That last line, while the most obscure to us, was in its day the most revolutionary of them all.

Now, stop for a moment and consider what this passage does not say Jesus is about. He is not about saving your soul from hell. He is not about getting us to believe the right things so that we will go do heaven when we die. Don’t misunderstand: I believe that Jesus does save our souls. I am in no way denying that profound truth. I am saying that that is not primarily what Jesus understood his mission to be. Certainly the Jesus of Gospel of Luke does not understand his mission that way. (Actually, none of the Gospels understand his mission that way, but I don’t have time to go into all of that here today. Stay tuned.) This lesson tells us that we are to understand Jesus primarily as the liberator of the poor and the oppressed. He came to free all who are captives--whether we be literal captives in the sense of prisoners of some sort or captives of illness, addiction, or idolatry. Jesus is the great liberator, the great friend of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.

Now, if that’s all there were to it, we could say: Well, that’s nice. Here was this Spirit-filled man running around first century Galilee proclaiming good news to the poor, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and land redistribution for the peasants. But, after all, that was two thousand years ago. It really doesn’t have much to do with us. The problem is: That’s not all there is to it. We claim to be Jesus’ disciples. We claim to stand in the apostolic tradition that goes all the way back to the disciples at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit created the Christian Church. That Spirit is the Spirit that was upon Jesus and that anointed him to do those great acts of liberation. That Spirit is also upon us. If we are Jesus’ disciples, then his mission is also our mission. We are called to great acts of liberation in our own time.

Now, I’m not going to preach politics here this morning. How we go about bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom to the oppressed, and what Jubilee might look like in our day and age (Third World debt relief is one possibility), are important and complex issues that deserve our prayerful consideration and discernment. But I don’t have to go into all that today. The reason that I don’t have to is that here at Monroe Congregational UCC we are already doing at least one great act of liberation. We did it when we declared ourselves Open and Affirming.

Last week I told you all that we’re hiding our light under a bushel and that we can create a miracle here if we stop doing that. As they say: God works in mysterious ways God’s wonders to perform. Three days after I said that, this appeared--the January 21 issue of the Monroe Monitor. I imagine that by now most of you have seen it. It gives our church and our Open and Affirming stance more, and better, publicity than this church has had probably at any time in its history. When the reporter asked to interview me about PFLAG (which is how this story began), I had no idea the story she wrote would be so prominent. It never occurred to me that our ONA stance would make banner headlines; but that’s how it came out. The story has many inaccuracies in detail, but it’s thrust is generally correct. It tells this community who we are. As they say: You can’t buy publicity like that. I think we can expect that this story will be an important milestone in the renewal of our church.

Yet I know that it may be a concern to some of you. Because our ONA position has become so public, you may be challenged about it by friends or neighbors who know of your membership here. We all need to be prepared to respond to the questions that will come up. Those of you who attended the session we had last week on the Mel White videos got some preparation for doing that. If you come to the next sessions we have scheduled on February 15 and March 21, you’ll get some more. If you have concerns, or if you get questions you have difficulty answering, please come see me. I’ll be more than happy to work through answers with you. You can also refer anyone with questions directly to me. I’ll be glad to talk with them. The main point I want to make, however, is this: We got this publicity because we are being faithful. We got it, and it was right that we got it, precisely because we are, at least in our ONA work, faithfully carrying on Jesus work of liberation, his work of proclaiming freedom to the oppressed. Pride is of course a sin; but we can all take considerable satisfaction in the work we are doing. I thank all of you for your commitment to what is right. I honestly believe that Jesus is smiling down on us today. The Spirit is upon us in this work. Thanks be to God! Amen.