Sermon Based on : Luke 4. 14-21; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12. 12-31a
Preached on: After Epiphany-3 -27.01.19
From the last word of our Gospel that is hearing I am reminded of a joke which I would like to share with you this morning..once a pastor preached a very good sermon and at the end of his sermon he gave an alter call and a man came forward and asked, Pastor would you please pray for my HEARING,
He put his one hand on his head and another hand on his Ear…and prayed earnestly and when prayer was ended.. He said can you HEAR NOW….and the man said very politely… Pastor my HEARING is in the court next Thursday.
Pray:-
I think every church-going person has an opinion about how long a sermon should be. I remember, People say to me as they walk out of the church at the end of the service, “I could have listened to you a lot longer this morning” I take that as a compliment, of course. But, I also recall that many people are so honest and they say, “That was too long sermon!”
Of course, a message from God’s Word is what we are here to hear. How long should the message be? Martin Luther’s advice to preachers was this: “Stand up, speak out, and sit down.” Well, that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But be aware that one of his Christmas Day sermons is 27 pages long.
Last week’s text narrated Jesus’ first public act in the Gospel of John.
Now back to the Gospel of Luke for the text for the third Sunday after Epiphany: Jesus’ first public act in the Gospel of Luke, which is not an act but a sermon.
So how long should a sermon be? How about eight or nine words?
Well, we are going to see an eight or nine word sermon this morning. I’m not going to preach an eight word sermon, oh no, but I’m going to tell you about this sermon.. It’s a sermon Jesus preached in a synagogue in Nazareth where He was the guest preacher for the day.
Luke is careful to relate that Jesus went home and that he regularly worshipped in the synagogue. He was a faithful Jew, not someone who darkened the doors of the synagogue only at Passover or on some special occasions. Jesus stood up to read. Someone gave him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, but Jesus chose the passage. Unfortunately for Luke, there is no single passage with those words in it, but rather it is a compilation of the Servant Song from Isaiah 58:6 and 61:1&2. Perhaps Jesus conflated the two readings himself. In any case, the good news is read.
Verse- 21 says, “Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ In most of the translations it says;
“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” (21). Count’em–eight or nine words. It seems like The Shortest Sermon Ever Preached. But it’s long on fulfillment, and it’s filled with love, compassion and forgiveness. Jesus’ life, ministry, and purpose in a nutshell.
And this is what He read: (18, 19) “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..”
Those words from Isaiah and Jesus’ comment on them are the first recorded words of Jesus’ public ministry, according to Luke’s Gospel. As I said earlier, the words Jesus read from Isaiah are not an exact quotation of Isaiah. Jesus has intentionally and purposefully chosen and arranged particular portions of Isaiah’s text to create a specific message. This message is often described as his inaugural address or His Nazareth Manifesto and the mission statement of Jesus. Jesus is outlining his ministry. He is describing the character of his ministry. He is establishing his priorities and the direction of his work. He is casting his vision for the reordering of relationships – good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free, declaring Lord’s favor.
From here on out everything Jesus does will be grounded in a message of good news, release, sight, freedom, and divine favor. His message is revealed in healing the sick, casting out demons, forgiving sins, feeding the hungry, raising the dead. His sermon stands at the center of and is the content of his crucifixion and resurrection.
At the heart of Jesus’ sermon today is an unspoken and yet ever present question: Where does it hurt?
That’s the question that drives and directs Jesus’ life and ministry. As Jesus will later say, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Luke 5:31). Where does it hurt?
When we look at the world, read the news, reflect on our own life and it’s not hard to see that there are stories of pain and hurt, and sometimes they are our personal stories. How much we need Jesus and His new message, What is entirely new is his claim that “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Here’s what Jesus was saying: I am the completion; I am the fulfillment of God’s plan to save you. Everything Moses wrote in his books, everything David wrote in the psalms, everything the prophets promised in their preaching and prophesies—all of it pointed to Me. I am the Seed of the woman, I am the Son of David; I am the Suffering Servant. I am the One God anointed. Jesus was claiming to be the One that God had promised…not just one of many that God was promising to send, but THE ONLY ONE.
Jesus’ sermon is large and all encompassing. No one gets left out. Jesus does not put conditions or qualifiers in His message. The divine favor knows no boundaries and has no favorites.
Jesus’ message is not determined or influenced by who is good or bad, or an insider or outsider. It doesn’t seem to matter to Jesus who you are, what you have done or left undone. It’s really pretty simple. Are you poor? Good news to you. Are you a captive? Release for you. Are you blind? Sight to you. Are you oppressed? Go in freedom. Divine favor is not given to the poor, the captive, the blind, or the oppressed because they are good or righteous but because God is good and righteous.
So let me ask you this. How does the message or manifesto of Jesus compare with your own? How does it compare with our life’s message. Good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free, declaring God’s favor. If that’s the message of Jesus and we claim to be His disciples, followers, lovers of Jesus, doesn’t it need to be our message?
What if we adopted Jesus’ manifesto or His mission statement as our own? What if we began our thinking and conversations by asking, “Where does it hurt?” What if we let that question establish our priorities and guide our decisions?
Today’s reading from the First Corinthians is another important passage about how the Body of Christ, the Church, is to live out the mission statement of Jesus. As we strive to keep faithful to those words he read and lived, we can pay attention to points that St. Paul insists upon in that passage. I will refer briefly to three of them.
Number One. All members of the Church have gifts for ministry.
Number Two. The members of the Church have different gifts for ministry; we are not clones of each other.
Number Three. The different gifts come to life in the context of the whole. Jesus read the old words from Isaiah and claimed them for his own. We can do the same. You can repeat after me, silently in your hearts…
“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..” “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen