Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
January 24, 2016
Scripture: Luke 4:14-21
This is, perhaps, one of the most potent and power-filled texts in all of scripture. It’s hard to choose; there’s lots of good stuff, but this is one of those where-the-rubber-hits-the–road scriptures, a pull-no-punches, here’s-what-it’s-all-about text. In these few verses, Jesus’ purpose is laid out. It’s a job description for the messiah, and, by extension, for the Church his followers founded.
On the day in question, Jesus went to the synagogue, where men take turns reading from the sacred scrolls. On this particular Sabbath, Jesus stepped up to the dais and asked for the Isaiah scroll. He unrolled it and scanned the text, until he found the lines he wanted. Then he read: “God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God 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.”
When Jesus chose those verses, they were already associated with the coming of the Righteous Teacher, the Anointed One. So when Jesus said, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” He was telling the crowd, “I’m the one.”
“I’m the one you have been waiting for, and this is what I’m going to do. I am going to hang out with poor people; they will be at the front of the line, the first to get my attention. I am going to set prisoners free. I’m going to proclaim liberty to the oppressed (which, of course, implies going head to head their oppressors). I’m going to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
That last bit may need unpacking. The year of the Lord’s Favor was the Jubilee year, a year during which economic disparities were all put right. Every 50 years, according the book of Leviticus, God required that slaves be released, land returned and all debts forgiven. Also, the land was left fallow for a year, so that it could recover and become fertile again. Once every 50 years, God said, balance shall be restored to our relationships with each other and with the earth. THIS is the year of the Lord’s favor.
So, according to these verses, Jesus came to reshuffle the card deck: to stand with those at the outskirts of society, to shatter the chains of those who have been kept down, to elevate the oppressed. His credentials for this kind of work were first-rate.
Remember that Jesus was, himself, a poor Jew, living under the tyrannical rule of the Roman Empire. He grew up witness to all kinds of injustice. Once, a revolutionary named Judas launched a rebellion against the empire in Sepphoris, of Galilee. In retribution, Roman soldiers burned down the entire city. In his seminal book, Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman wonders whether Jesus and his father might have been among the carpenters who were hired to help rebuild that city, located just down the road from their hometown of Nazareth.[1]
The point is, Jesus knew what suffering looked like, and poverty, and abuse of power. Also, he inherited a faith tradition that favored those who are most vulnerable – the widow, the orphan, the foreigner – a faith tradition that made the astonishing claim that God cares about their welfare, even favors them. We forget that, sometimes. Howard Thurman again: “it cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed – this, despite the gospel.”[2]
Christianity started out as a protest movement organized by a ragtag band of pacifists striving to embody an egalitarian way of life in direct opposition to the empire. Followers of the Jesus movement wanted to share their bread and their wealth. But over time, something happened: Christianity became respectable. The friction between the church and those who held political and economic power diminished, until (in many places) it evaporated altogether. We became dependent on the wealth of patrons who expected to have a pew in the front row, and on governments who gave our churches a kind of social legitimacy. The words of the Bible were spiritualized until they lost their edge: we preachers talked about being set free in heaven, and being poor in spirit. OR the Bible was used to keep people in their place: Slaves obey your masters. Women remain silent. Subdue the earth. Condemn the sinner.
Have you heard the story about Howard Thurman’s grandmother? She refused to read Paul’s letters, although she was a devout Christian. One summer when Howard Thurman was home from college, he asked her why. “Because,” she explained, “The slave masters always preached on that text about slaves obeying their masters. I promised my Maker that if I ever learned to read and if freedom ever came, I would not read that part of the Bible.”[3]
Back in that synagogue, Jesus said he’d come to bring good news to the poor, liberate the oppressed, and set the captives free. How did we get from there to the present day, when our churches are so often segregated, and our rhetoric too often conciliatory? How did we turn Jesus’ job description on its head, until the poor are pitied by never elevated; and prisoners are treated unjustly, even inhumanely? When a tiny fraction of our country’s residents hold the majority of the wealth… and churches spend more time worrying about membership than confronting injustice? This, faithful sisters and brothers in Christ, is an urgent question, perhaps the most urgent question: Whatever happened to that messianic job description?
I began by saying that there’s a connection between Jesus’ purpose and our own, that his job description is also ours. So I’ve been wondering this week: If we were to undertake a performance review of the Christian Church (the whole church), if we were to compare what we do to what is written in these verses, how would we do? Would God congratulate us and give us a raise? Or…not?
The results of such a review would surely be mixed. There’s no doubt that communities of faith have played powerful and prophetic roles in the dismantling of unjust systems. I grew up in the wake of the Civil rights movement, believing the church to be an agent for social change. It was the church that spurred us to march against Jim Crow, boycott grapes to protect migrant workers, and divest from companies to put an end to Apartheid. This, I believed, was where the rubber hits the road: where human suffering encounters unrelenting systems of power and privilege. The Church belongs at that intersection. It is our home address.
However, there are still too many occasions on which we resist that particular vision of the church as too ‘political.’
Maybe you have heard it said that one should never mix religion and politics? If by this we mean, a church should not promote a candidate for elected office, I wholeheartedly agree. But the word ‘politics’ comes from the Greek, politikos, meaning of or relating to the citizens. Broadly speaking, politics is concerned with the common life of the community. In the words of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, “politics is the study and practice of the distribution of power and resources within a given community.”[4] That is exactly what Jesus was concerned with: the distribution of power and resources. How is power wielded and who has been left out? And what does it mean to build God’s beloved community, in which the resources are shared by all?
If that was Jesus’ concern, then it must also be ours. If we believe ourselves to be followers of Jesus, if we are to call ourselves disciples of Christ, then we must ask: how are WE called to serve the body politic? If Jesus said, “I will free the captives,” then we need to ask, “What of our prison system?” If Jesus said, “I will preach good news to the poor,” then we must ask, “What of the economic discrepancies in this country?” If Jesus said, “I have come to liberate the oppressed,” then we must ask, “How are we called to stand with those who have suffered the vagaries of racism, classism, homophobia, zenophobia, islamophobia…?” If Jesus has proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor, than surely we must ask, “How is God calling us to restore balance to our relationships with each other and with God’s whole precious earth?”
Yes, these are political questions. They are urgent questions. They are faithful questions. Church: It doesn’t get much clearer than this. Here, in one spirit-packed passage, the work to which we are called is laid out.
The core question, the one we might ask ourselves during an annual performance review, is not, “how are we doing as a church?” but “As a church, what are we doing for God?”[5] Here’s the Good News: Jesus came equipped with the power of the Holy Spirit, that same spirit that alighted on his shoulder as he rose up out of the chilly Jordan river on the day he was baptized; that same spirit that chased him into the wilderness to be tempted. The power of that spirit is not a power to be wielded like a weapon, not intended to strike fear into the hearts of the populace. On the contrary, it is a power of love and grace, poured out on all of us, that we might share it with each other.
People of God: the Power of the Spirit is upon us, because we have been anointed to bring good news to the poor. Christ has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Are we ready? Then let’s make it so.
Scripture
Luke 4:14-21 – New Revised Standard Version
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. 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 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, 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.”
[1] Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman, p. 18.
[2] Ibid. p. 31.
[3] Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman, p. 31
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics
[5] Feasting, Volume C1, Robert Brearly, Pastoral Perspective, p. 286.