Giving--God's Reign of Justice 10/14/'12

The Reading— The Reading: Isaiah 61: 1-4 The Spirit of GOD, the Master, is on me because GOD anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, Announce freedom to all captives, pardon all prisoners. GOD sent me to announce the year of his grace—a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies—and to comfort all who mourn, tTo care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion, give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes, messages of joy instead of news of doom, a praising heart instead of a languid spirit. Rename them “Oaks of Righteousness” planted by GOD to display the divine glory. They’ll rebuild the old ruins, raise a new city out of the wreckage. They’ll start over on the ruined cities, take the rubble left behind and make it new. THE MIDDLE READING—Jan Richardson For all that enfolds us For each word of grace and every act of care; For those who offer refuge for each shelter given And for every welcoming space; For the healing of our souls for balm and rest For soothing and sleep; For vigils kept and for lights kept burning; blessed be! The Gospel Reading: Luke 4: 14-21 Jesus returned to Galilee powerful in the Spirit. News that he was back spread through the countryside. He taught in their meeting places to everyone’s acclaim and pleasure. He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written, God’s Spirit is on me; God has chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God’s year to act!” He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.” Giving--Participating in God’s reign of Justice 10-14-12 Holy and Just God, help us to hear your call to our hearts. Open our eyes, our ears, our minds and fill us with that which You know we should know and, then, grant us understanding. Grant us your peace in the midst of your call. We listen and yearn for more. Amen For some strange reason this week, I got to thinking about the fine art of debating. And regardless of your candidate of choice, I think it safe to say that all four of them would be the better off if they learned the fine art of packing a larger value into a smaller number of words. For some of us, all four candidates included, the longer we talk, the more likely we are to get ourselves into just a little trouble. Either you turn your audience or congregation off completely because of the length of time they have been sitting (kinda like the first time I was forced to sit through the movie “Lawrence of Arabia”—I mean, really, who makes a movie that long?) or you wind yourself up in the maze of your own words so far that even you can’t find your way out of what you are saying. So, we might all agree that “short is good” whether in politics or preaching and I will admit that the older I get the more I appreciate necessity of keeping the length of the message I am asked to remember short. Some think our Gospel passage represents what was Jesus’ finest hour—this sermon so short we barely have time to realize he is preaching. Some think Jesus gave his listeners way too much credit to even think they could understanding the great mysteries of which he spoke. Some think that all preachers should learn to preach in one sentence. And some just don’t know what to think at all. Most of the folks who heard Jesus in the flesh offer up this sermon probably fell into the later category. But through the magic of history, we are afforded the time to look thoroughly at this really, really short sermon “Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing” and see what it means to us in this time of year when we are thinking of giving and thanks-giving, and giving and receiving gifts. You really won’t understand the challenge that is given to the people in that synagogue and the people in this synagogue unless you understand what Isaiah is talking about in this brief passage. This command of God—called the year of Jubilee—was met with great resistance in Old Testament times and, as far as we know, never actually happened. Nevertheless, it is a command of God and it means, simply, that every 50 years everyone’s debts were to be forgiven. If you were in jail for debt you would be released. Any land that had been sold during the previous 50 years would be returned to the family who originally owned it. In other words, every 50 years the wealth was completely redistributed among all the people, those who were previously rich and those who were previously poor. Now, one would think that since this is a command from God, that the people would be happy to do it! But, the wealthy folks were not so keen on such an idea and, quite frankly, it simply never happened. But this is the state of economy, both physical and spiritual, that Jesus is calling us to when he reads from Isaiah, sits down, and says—this is the time that the scripture is fulfilled—I am here! Now there must have been a lot of folks who, after giving this brief sermon some thought, whoa, this man is going somewhere we’re not sure we want to go. Jesus calls us in a single instant to understand that he is, in fact, the Messiah. No playing the waiting game, no excuses for less than right relationships, no reason not to turn the world upside down. In the coming of the Messiah, the Year of Jubilee is inaugurated for all the years to come. It’s time for a new world order—a new way of relating to each other—a new way to celebrate the everlasting reign of God’s justice. Now the rest of this brief story goes like this: no one says much at the time, but, stay alert, because the next thing Luke records is that the crowd tries to lynch Jesus. So much, for the crowds’ appreciation of short sermons. Charles Spurgeon, reputed to be the greatest preacher of all time must have learned a lot from this story—they say his sermons were never shorter than 2 hours. We must not miss the challenge that Jesus is issuing to his unappreciative audience and the challenge we must answer now. Jesus’ very life is a challenge to us, every moment he spent healing, every sin he forgave, every time he slipped away to spend quiet time alone with God. Jesus, quoting Isaiah, lists four activities that, taken together, make up the core of the Good News: good news to the poor, freedom to prisoners, sight to the blind, and freedom from oppression. Now, I know that there are a lot of teachers in this room, retired, active, and those of you doing a marvelous ministry at Wildwood Elementary. Most of us would acknowledge that, as much as our students might have wanted us to, it is not a teacher’s job to make his or her students happy. No, the job of a teacher is to bring change into the lives of their students—to give them new ways of thinking and new ways to ask the questions that need asking because it is in the questions that we grow and flourish in our mental and emotional lives. It seems to me that, in faith circles, we may almost do the opposite—we focus on answering the questions when we haven’t even figured out what the questions are. Those of us in ministry focus on helping people feel good. Jesus shows us that this isn’t the task of preaching or teaching, for that matter. Jesus tells the truth—a truth that few people probably wanted to hear. The Jewish people were waiting for a King—a king who would, once and for all, restore them to their glory as the people of God. Jesus turned their expectations upside down in one short sentence in one brief story. Jesus, stood, read from the Word and then sat down and told the truth. We can, all of us struggle with the unwillingness to do the hard work of growing and changing. Have you ever seen the slow motion video of a seed turning into a sprout that has, literally, pushed aside pounds of dirt to make it through to the sunshine. Churches that are planted do the same hard work. But the reward for the hard work is participating in God’s Reign of Justice. Following Christ is hard work—it is not for the timid—it is not for those looking to take the easy road. The same is true for a church—it is true for this church. If we follow the mission that God has entrusted this church with, that is, to share God’s unconditional love, and to participate in Jesus’ invitation to all to the new covenant through grace, we will change. Change is hard and change is what Jesus brought to this world. We are called to be a different kind of people; I am called to be a different kind of pastor. And in this growing, we will struggle. The dirt through which we must struggle as we sprout and see the sunshine is heavy. We may each try to get through that dirt on our own, but together, we are stronger. As we “grace” ourselves through the changes ahead, we will grow together to meet the challenge that Jesus issues to all those who would follow him. There is a story about Conan O’Brien. You may remember several years ago that many ugly things happened and Conan was replaced with veteran talk show host, Jay Leno. It was an awful time for Conan and something that NBC probably wishes they had handled differently. During the final show, Conan, after giving thanks to NBC, for all that they had done for him and thanking his fans for their support, he said this: "And all I ask is one thing . . and this is . . I'm asking this particularly of young people that watch . . please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it's my least favorite quality. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen." His fans were touched and even those who thought him without talent had to admit that he had chosen the right thing to say. It calls to all of us. Cynicism is toxic—it causes us to doubt people that we trust and perhaps to trust those whom we should doubt. Jesus calls us to give up cynicism and bitterness. Jesus calls us to a higher path—a path focused on those we are challenged to serve. Think about where Jesus was in his heart as he risked it all and issued the challenge to the world—a challenge that the world was not ready to hear. He knew, through being centered and grounded in God’s Holy Spirit, that the time was right. He understood who he was—and all that it meant. He knew the challenge would not be popular, after all, those kinds of challenges never are, but he understood what he was sent to do on this earth. When we are full of the Holy Spirit, thoroughly grounded and centered in the knowledge that we are the children of God, we are called to answer and act upon this challenge for Christ’s church. We know who we are and to whom we belong. We know that we are not without the support of all the other children of God in this place and we are upheld by the grace of Jesus Christ every time we step out and welcome the poor into God’s kingdom, give sight to the blind, freedom to the imprisoned and quality of life to those oppressed by this world. And, so, as we know, so we go—forward in our ministries, leaving our cynicism behind and moving toward that vision that God has planted in this place, this Body of Christ called “Open Circle”. And, so, as we know, so we go! Blessed be the name of the Lord, Who is worthy to be praised and adored; So, we lift up holy hands in one accord— singing blessed be the name, Blessed be the name, blessed be the name of the Lord. Amen and amen.