Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 26, 2025
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6.-10+Psalm 19+1 Corinthians 12:12-31a+Luke 4:14-21
Given that this was inauguration week here in the United States, I've been thinking about inaugurations of the past, the ones I was around for and the ones I was not. I have read through a few inaugural addresses, some better than others, a tradition that began with George Washington in 1789 and has continued ever since, even though it is not mentioned in the Constitution. If you ask any serious student of U.S. History to name the best, most soaring inaugural addresses, I imagine you would find some consensus that the one at the top of that list was delivered by Abraham Lincoln at his second inauguration in 1865, just 41 days before his assassination. In fewer than 700 words, he gave us an image, a vision, for a country beyond Civil War:
With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. [1]
A close second might be the inspiring rhetoric of John F. Kennedy's in 1961:
Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need--not as a call to battle, though embattled we are-- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"-- a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself...And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. [2]
I'm here, though, to talk about a different kind of inaugural address, although I think manifesto might be a more apt description, the one we just heard from the 4th chapter of Luke. Jesus has returned from the forty days in the desert and has begun his ministry around Galilee, teaching and generally getting favorable reviews.
Then he comes to his hometown.
Reading and teaching from scripture were a regular part of synagogue life, and Jesus, accustomed as he was to going to the synagogue on the sabbath, took an active part. Apparently, this is the first time he had done so on his home turf. The people crowding into the synagogue were surely aware of him and his reputation, even if they were doubtful that this homegrown man was worth all the fuss. Jesus opens the Isaiah scroll. It doesn't say he actually read from it, and since what Luke has recorded for us comes from two different places (61:2 and 58:6), maybe Jesus was just riffing on the scriptures, taking the parts he needed in order to make clear who he was.
"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)
That's it. This is who I am and what I am about. This scripture has been fulfilled. It's even shorter than Abraham Lincoln's!
I don't want to stop where our lectionary stops, though. Next week, we'll be observing The Presentation so won't hear what happens next, and it's this next part that helps bring this message home for us, here and now. But first, imagine that you are sitting in this place and hear these words coming out of Jesus's mouth and you are thinking, "Right on, you tell 'em, Jesus. We are sick and tired of being sick and tired, and we deserve liberation and freedom. The year of Jubilee is here!"
But Jesus doesn't stop there. Here's what comes next:
All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. (4:22-29)
Ah, yes, it was all fun and games until Jesus makes it clear that the liberation and freedom aren't just for them. He cites the examples of Elijah going to Zarephath in Sidon and Elisha who healed Naaman the Syrian. What? He's going to offer all of this to those people? And they were so enraged that they wanted to kill him then and there.
That's what happens when you try to limit the expansiveness of God, thinking it's just for you and people like you. It comes as a shock to think that others are beneficiaries, too, and these Nazarenes did not like it one little bit.
There are plenty of Christians who also want this liberation to be about them and those they deem worthy of such release. Liberal or conservative, we hold onto such notions at our peril. Surely Jesus doesn't love those people? Well, yes, he does.
Hear what Paul wrote in the first letter to the people in Corinth. You can't say to the insignificant ones "I don't need you." The "important" body part can't function without the so-called "lesser" parts being taken care of so that they function well.
On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. (1 Corinthians 12:22-26)
And if you are wondering, Paul is not talking about fingers and toes, here. He is talking about the body of Christ. That's us. And there is not one that is above the other in that body. There are not degrees of belovedness, even if we would like to think so and keep some folks at a remove from the truly beloved. Jesus does not play at that game.
When Luke uses the word "release" or "set free," as he does here quoting from Isaiah, he generally uses it to refer to sin, to be released or set free from the bondage of sin. It is, as Andrew McGowan notes, relational. He writes
To be forgiven is not so much to avoid punishment, but to be liberated. Much modern thinking of sin and forgiveness assumes something quite different, a sort of taint perhaps, or internal flaw; this (so typical of our modern individualism) trivializes sin, and also tends to lose the power of this connection between material and spiritual things. Jesus’ manifesto is not then a “spiritual” version of the Jubilee, but a radicalized, universal version. [3]
The Jubilee, the time when debts are cancelled on people and land, may have happened every 50 years as in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but Jesus is saying that it is here. It is fulfilled. And it is fulfilled for you sitting here and for all those out there, whether in Galilee or Syria, Guatemala or Congo, Quebec or Ukraine. This is the year of the Lord's favor for all of the beloved.
As an inaugural address, I'd say this one ranks up there with the best.
[1] https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm
[2] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-john-f-kennedys-inaugural-address