The first reading for today was Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10.
The holy gospel according to Luke (4:14-21)
14Then
Jesus,
filled with the
power of the Spirit,
returned
to Galilee,
and
a report about him spread
through
all the surrounding country.
15He
began to teach in their synagogues
and
was praised by everyone. (glorified)
16When
he came to Nazareth,
where he had been
brought up,
he
went to the synagogue on the sabbath day,
as
was his custom.
He
stood up to read,
17and
the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.
He
unrolled the scroll
and
found the place where it was written:
18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because
the Lord has anointed me
to
bring good news to the poor. (beat
down)
The
Lord has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives
and recovery of
sight to the blind,
to
let the oppressed go free,
19to
proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20And
he rolled up the scroll,
gave
it back to the attendant,
and
sat down.
The
eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
21Then
he began to say to them,
“Today
this scripture has been fulfilled in
your hearing.”
The gospel of the Lord.
-----
About every 500 or so years, the Holy Spirit digs deep and
stirs up the church. It is a time
of great change as people once again dig into the Bible, discovering new and
different things about it as well as their faith. As Ezra and the leaders in Jerusalem do in our first
reading, these times of renewal bring new interpretations of the Bible, new
ways of examining and exploring our faith—our relationship with God in new
contexts and communities.
As we look at the state of the church and churches today, it
is not surprising that next year we will celebrate the 500th
anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. While stirrings of the Holy Spirit
began well before and continued long afterwards, the event we point to as the
beginning is Martin Luther posting his 95 theses at the church in Wittenberg.
Now in the life of congregations and individuals, there are
renewals and stirrings of the Holy Spirit with much more frequency than every
500 years, considering most congregations—especially on this continent—don’t or
haven’t lived that long, and people certainly don’t. The Holy Spirit stirs in smaller ways all the time, whether
it’s in different congregations coming to worship together, public and prophetic
witnesses to God’s love, or a commitment to feeding those without enough,
filling the backpacks, just to name a few.
The Holy Spirit is always at work and in our time it is at
work in new ways. The Protestant Reformation
of the 1500s was tied-in also with the European Enlightenment. It brought with it a shift in faith to
believing doctrine; answering
“what” questions—what do you believe, or think—about Jesus, God, the Holy
Spirit, the church, the Bible.
Through the gift of critical thinking, belief became more
about thoughts and ideas than the origin of the word. In Greek, the word for belief, πιστευω, means trust. So in the Reformation, and afterward,
trust in God has been shifting to become thoughts about God.
Since then, we have been exploring what we think with energy
and excitement and we as the church have been teaching people what to think
about God—which is part of why we have so many different denominations. We all want to have a set of beliefs
that everybody adheres to, that make us unique from Methodists, Episcopalians,
Catholics, or even just other Presbyterians and Lutherans.
But in recent years, we’ve also been realizing that it’s not
working the way it used to. The
cultural assumption that people will go to church, or at least come back when
they have families and children, is no longer a safe assumption. It’s not that people no longer care,
it’s that we’re looking for deeper meaning everywhere.
If we want a social club, we can find that in other
places. If we want meaning,
sometimes we look to the church and sometimes we don’t or we can’t find it
there. And sometimes we feel like
we don’t fit in, like our views and perspectives don’t match the rest of the
church or denomination.
The task for the church now is to follow in Ezra’s
footsteps, to heed Jesus’ call to deeper faith and renewal. The Holy Spirit is stirring up new
questions about faith and life.
It’s no longer a question of what you believe, but instead,
how does your belief—your trust in God—impact you, your life, and the
world? How do you live out your
faith? Where and how do you search
for deeper meaning? What is your
response to God’s love in your life
or to the pain and injustice in the world?
With all of the advances in science and technology, we are
still filled with questions about God and the universe. And communities of faith are beginning
to wonder and explore these questions together.
We wonder at a God whose Word speaks the whole cosmos into
being when we see pictures in space of stars exploding into life and planets
like ours orbiting other stars. We
wonder at a God whose Spirit comes to us not with easy answers, but with new
questions.
As much as I love deep theological conversations—and believe
me, I do—the sacraments, God’s means of grace: baptism and communion are about
life and action. Our baptism is a
call each of us receives from God to live into and in response to God’s love. Communion nourishes us in new life to
follow Jesus into the world.
Communion brings us all together—from all the struggles we face in
life—with the great cloud of witnesses, past and present, to become what we
receive. To become the body of
Christ in the world.
So
we gather each week, explorers, questioners, dreamers, doubters, and
followers. We gather seeking God,
seeking deeper meaning for our lives.
We gather, stirred by the Holy Spirit. And we hear Jesus’ words,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of
sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go
free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
The Spirit of the Lord is stirring things up. Jesus, God’s chosen, brings good news
to all who are beat down[1]
by life, who don’t fit in, don’t have a place in society. Jesus brings release, freedom for
captives, especially captives of war—an end to war; release from all that
oppresses, all that holds us bound in sin, from war and violence to spiritual,
emotional, and mental brokenness.
Jesus brings that freedom and release as the Holy Spirit stirs us up to
new life, new questions, new wonders and wanderings. How is the Holy Spirit stirring in you? How is the Holy Spirit stirring in us?
Amen.
[1] Much of the
interpretation and translation for Jesus’ words in the gospel, quoting and
paraphrasing Isaiah, come from: http://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2016/01/epiphany-3-luke-4-14-21.html
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