Sunday 26th January 2025
Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19 Epiphany III 2025.
I Corinthians 12: 12-31a
St. Luke 4: 14-21
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” Luke 4: 18a
Today’s first reading probably seems quite strange or foreign to most of us. The context is this: We remember that the people of Israel had been unfaithful to the Lord their God, and things were a mess politically as well. Babylonians invaders conquered the land, and later forced most of the Jewish people to be scattered. It was a terrible time, because the Jewish people understood that God has promised the land near Jerusalem to them!… “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land,” cries the psalmist, during the Babylonian exile, in the sixth century before Jesus of Nazareth…
But that’s not the end of the story: Years later, the Jewish people were allowed to return to the province of Judea, and they rebuilt the city of Jerusalem, including a large wall for protection against invaders… It’s about this time that their leader, a man named Nehemiah, shares the Book of the Law to the people, giving them lots of instructions about how to live a life in faithful covenant with the Lord God…
So, this first reading today is about the people receiving the Law, which was thought to extend back to the leader Moses, who led the people from slavery in Egypt into freedom…
But we humans have a terrible habit of distorting the good gifts which God gives us!… This was true many years ago too. The gift of the Law, which was meant to be a guide and a blessing to the people, became interpreted in such a way that it became a burden; it became legalistic…
When God came among us in a new way through the Son among us, the Lord Jesus showed a very different way of being faithful to God – not by striving and struggling to follow the works of the Law as directed by the religious authorities of the time, but by encountering and responding to Jesus himself, his person and his message, right to the cross and the empty tomb… Jesus understood himself to be the fulfilment of all the ancient prophecies…
Today’s gospel reading is from Luke 4. As was the custom in the Jewish places of worship at the time, all the ancient scriptures were stored on long scrolls. Guests were permitted to read from the scrolls, and to comment on them, during services of worship… When Jesus Christ reads, though, his words are like dynamite! Jesus finds the passage from Isaiah 61 on one of the scrolls, and reads,
‘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 favour.’
What a marvellous message! The Lord Jesus is claiming that in he himself, in Jesus, God’s kingdom has finally arrived!… We are meant to be stunned and transformed… There is radical change in individual lives, and in society… The Spirit of the Lord is at work in a glorious new way: The poor receive some very welcome news – some kind of relief… So many people are in physical or psychological captivity, but they shall be utterly freed… The blind – the physically blind, the spiritually blind, or both – shall see with clear vision… The oppressed will be freed… The Lord is showing favour to his broken, downtrodden, oppressed people…
Now, this is certainly welcome-sounding news!… Sadly, Jesus’ words of liberation are thought to be a threat. The religious leaders are so offended by this proclamation, they try to put Jesus to death. Jesus escapes from their hands, but one day soon, they will get their wish, and put this troublesome wandering rabbi to death…
For much of Christian history, Jewish people have been looked down on… They have been thought to be somewhat blind, to have this loyalty to the Law of Moses… But that cartoon-portrayal dismissal of the Jewish faith does not reflect God, nor the content of the Bible itself… When St. Paul wrote the Letter to the Romans, for instance, that Christian congregation had both Jewish and Gentile Christians… Romans 3: 1:
Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much, in every way. For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Although everyone is a liar, let God be proved true.
Paul is grateful for God’s work among his people!… Paul writes more about the Law of Moses in Romans 7:
What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness… For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good (vv. 7-8, 11-12).
Christians are appropriately grateful to God work among the people of Israel long ago, for the Jewish roots of our own faith. At the same time, we can joyfully celebrate the saving work of Jesus Christ, the freedom we can enjoy from legalistic rules, and the transformations of individuals and societies by the Spirit of Jesus Christ…
Let’s note that I said, “the transformation of individuals and societies…” The person and work of Jesus Christ, and the introduction of his kingdom by the Holy Spirit, is like leaven which changes individual lives, but it is also intended to change the world around us… Living as Christians together as Christ’s Church, his Body, properly spills over and has a beautiful positive effect in the world around us…
God has given you and me each other – his Church – to be the Agent to transform the whole world; to make it more like heaven… (One future, glorious, Day, heaven and earth will be united as one…) If that sounds impossible, well, it is! – if we are relying on our own strength alone. But with the help of the Spirit of God, Christians together can do God’s work around us in amazing ways…
Both Individuals and societies ought to be transformed by Spirit-filled, faith-full Christians… Too often, I fear, we emphasize one at the expense of the other – even by some preachers!… If I have a critique of some theologically liberal Christians, it is that they proclaim the kingdom of God, but fail to preach adequately about repentance, conversion, discipleship and sanctification – which we all need to undertake… If I have a critique of some theologically conservative Christians, it is that they proclaim evangelism, conversion, and personal holiness, but fail to address how we are called to live out our faith in the world, so as to transform the world, with special attention given (as Jesus did) to the marginalized, and the deeply broken… My dear friends, we are called to surrender every corner of our lives to the lordship of Christ – every corner, to shine for the Lord…
Thanks be to God for his covenant with Abraham and Abraham’s descendants, the Covenant with a nation… Thanks to be God for the gift his Son, “born under the Law, to redeem those under the Law…” May we take these words of Isaiah 61 to heart, for they have been fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus. May we be changed as individuals, as the Church of God, as members of society, by the Spirit of Jesus, to shine beautifully for him; now and for ever.
Amen.