Today we are continuing in our series of sermons on the Gospel according to Luke. Two weeks ago Pastor Dan told us about a number of themes that run through this Gospel -- just about all of which appear in today's passage:

• the importance of geography;
• Jesus in the Temple;
• ties to the Old Testament;
• uncanny timing and befuddled people;
• tension over Jesus' identity (a big one for today);
• lost and found

I encourage you to listen closely for these themes as I read today’s passage. (As has been the custom for the church down the ages, I invite you to stand as we read our scripture passage from the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 4, verses 14-30.)

The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!

What better news could there be than to hear that at long last the Messiah has come -- bringing good news for the poor, proclaiming release to the captives. What's remarkable about this passage is that the people heard the message, were amazed by it, but then in no time they turned away from it—they rejected Jesus.

How can it be so easy for God’s people (for us) to reject God’s grace? Is it because we are looking and waiting for a different kind of good news?

Let us pray...

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of your Word to us. We pray that you will open our hearts and that your Spirit will move within us to receive the message that you have for us, individually and together as a church family. May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing and acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

We heard about Jesus as a 12-year-old boy—whose parents thought they had lost him, only to find him in the Temple, in his Father’s house. Last Sunday, we heard about Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil—and how important that time was for Jesus' preparation for future ministry. He'd come away from the temptations stronger than ever, more secure in his identity, and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Today we focus on a huge day in Jesus' life—the beginning of his public ministry. And I think it's quite wonderful that we are looking at this passage today—on World Communion Sunday—because today when we join congregations all over the earth and come to the table to remember that it was because

God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life.

God so loved the world, but the world didn’t always love God. In Jesus, God came proclaiming good news. But as we see in today’s passage, people couldn’t get beyond their own image of who the messiah should be and what the messiah should do for them.

In our passage we find Jesus, having recently spent 40 days in the wilderness, where he fasted and overcame the devil's three temptations. Jesus, filled with the Spirit, has returned to his home region of Galilee. Amazing reports of his ministry have been coming in, and he's receiving praise from everyone.

So now he comes to Nazareth in his home synagogue. People know him. People know his parents. He picks up the scroll and reads from Isaiah 61:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
and he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor,
to proclaim release to the captives,
recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed
and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

He then rolls up the scroll, hands it back to the attendant and sits down. With everyone’s eyes on him, he begins the sermon,

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your sight.”

Yes, they heard him correctly. He said that the passage applies to him and his ministry. In essence he says that he is the messiah that Isaiah 61 has been referring to.

You can imagine the congregation's reaction. At first the people are amazed and speak well of him, but pretty quickly the attitudes turn into

"OK, so what about the part where you say that you’re going to defeat our enemies?"

It’s very interesting that Jesus stopped reading from Isaiah at the place he did. For Isaiah 61 continues on to talk about proclaiming the day of vengeance of our God. But Jesus doesn’t read that part. Instead of focusing on vengeance, he focuses on compassion, on mercy, on healing...

David Bosch, author of Transforming Mission (in my estimation one of the best books on missions out there) wrote an excellent chapter on Luke-Acts -- and it says of this Nazareth episode that at least three fundamental concerns of Luke are expressed here:

• the centrality of the poor in Jesus' ministry;
• the setting aside of vengeance; and
• the Gentile mission.

We don't have time this morning to examine all three of these concerns, so I'll focus primarily on the third—the Gentile mission—which directly relates to the congregation's reaction to Jesus' sermon.

They’re saying, “Yeah, that sounds good (verse 22 says they were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth), but what have you done for me lately?” It's what I call the "yeah, but..." syndrome. (For some it's become one word, "yabut.") Yeah, Jesus, you've done this and this and this amazing thing over in Galilee, but...what about me? What about my family, my people?

Something in us recognizes the truth of God's Word (and we are in awe and grateful), but then we let the competing force of self-centeredness, self-protection, pull us away from that awe, that worship, and we turn our eyes away from Jesus and onto our own belly buttons.

Scholars have struggled to understand why the crowd so quickly turned against Jesus in this particular incident. (This scene, by the way, is some major foreshadowing to Jesus' rejection in Jerusalem.) In just about all my studies, scholars pointed out that to understand the people's reaction it’s important to note that Jesus is speaking into a highly politicized environment.

The people of Nazareth are weary. They’re tired of being mistreated by cruel soldiers and greedy tax collectors. Their main hope is for a messiah who will free them from their current political situation. They dream of a king who will help them defeat their enemies -- so that they can be on top, calling the shots, secure... They certainly have lots of reasons for why not to trust their neighbors. The world's a scary place.

We know about that. We've all been hurt, stepped on in one way or another. And certainly the news we get from the media feeds our fears as most of what we see, hear and read is about the awful tragedies in our cities and around the world. It's very understandable that parents want nothing more than to protect their children.

It’s so easy for us to only have eyes for ourselves—our family, our little community—for what we think is in our best interests. It’s hard for us to let go of our wounds... our fears, our distrust... our preconceived ideas about others based on their background… In a nutshell, it's hard to trust—to trust God and his claims of sovereignty.

And so too often, instead of hearing and really receiving Jesus’ great news of release to the captives and recovery of sight for the blind, we look to find good news/our salvation in successful careers, in a spouse who will meet our needs, in children who make good grades, in friends who will fill the loneliness... Of course none of these things are bad in and of themselves, but often in doing this we find ourselves forming a community of people around us (a church community, for example) with whom we are comfortable—and by whom we are not threatened in any way.

So when Jesus comes along and says that he is going to focus on the needs of the poor, the blind, the oppressed, the people, we say, "Yeah, that sounds good, but... aren't you going to deliver us from the hard stuff we're going through?"

In our passage, the people were upset because Jesus was going to minister to the Gentiles (those people). But Jesus says no, I’m not here just for you. I’m not going to take you away from the hard stuff. I’m here to expand your world, to broaden your concept of who will be citizens in my kingdom. My kingdom is about offering healing to the poor, release to the captives. It’s about welcoming those who are oppressed and stigmatized.

Oh my goodness, there are so many stigmas in our world. And today I believe the one that is most harmful—which is contributing to the deaths of millions and millions of people—is the one attached to HIV and AIDS.

Last week I heard Rev. Christo Greyling, a pastor from South Africa speak several times. Christo is World Vision's advisor for HIV/AIDS and church relations in Africa. He talks a lot about trying to overcome the stigma in the church towards AIDS -- which is in many people's view the biggest battle for the church to be confronting as about five people die from AIDS every minute.

What makes Christo's story so powerful is that he himself is HIV positive. (He's hemophiliac and got the virus from blood which came from the U.S.) He said his Gethsemane was the night before he let his congregation know that he's HIV positive. The fear of judgment, of not being accepted—even in his own church—was almost unbearable. But when they learned, they were accepting—which he thinks was because didn't get it from sexual encounter—he was "innocent."

As you can imagine, he has very strong feelings about how people quickly judge what makes people innocent and what makes people guilty.

Now he works with pastors to help them talk more openly about the disease—about how it can be prevented and how to minister to those who are suffering from AIDS.

He tells the story of a church in Cape Town whose pastor realized one day that he was doing more funerals than baptisms. But no one in the church was talking about why people were dying. They were too afraid of rejection. The pastor talked and preached about how to prevent AIDS and how to care for those suffering from the disease. Finally one day an older woman asked for prayer for her son who was dying of AIDS. That one prayer request opened the flood gates and people started streaming in. The church is growing like crazy because there is acceptance there of those who had formerly been ostracized by society and by the church.

One of the big challenges for the Church today is to search our souls and see if there are ways (even if not intentionally) that we are keeping too much to ourselves. Who are "those people" in our lives?

• And are we keeping "those people" at a distance -- because it takes too much energy to move out of our own comfort zone/community, too much energy to reach out to those who come from a different tradition or a different economic or faith or even (heaven forbid) a different political background?
• Where are we setting the boundaries in our lives (in terms of how far we'll reach out)?
• What are the hard places/boundaries for you to think about crossing?

I’ve noticed that here in the Northwest for some -- at least one person here (whose name starts with Jeff)—it's Texas. (We all have our growing edges.) If we’re really honest, we can come up with a list of people and places we’d rather not be near. Thank God that Jesus reached out to the Gentiles! Thank God that God loved us enough to send his Son to pull us out of our sin.

Part of the problem is that a lot of times we don’t even realize that we are the captives. We don’t realize what we’re being held captive to. For me, I’ve found that it has often taken spending time out of my own community to realize some deep-rooted areas of sin in my life, to see how limited my understanding of God has been, and to experience the gifts of Christ’s good news and the freedom he offers.

I’m so incredibly thankful that when I was in college I was encouraged to attend the Urbana missions conference (Christmas '84). At that conference I heard over and over the importance of cross cultural experience. So in the summer of 1987 I headed to a small town in Mississippi to volunteer with The Mendenhall Ministries. All I knew was that I wanted to work with kids and that the speakers at Urbana said I needed to spend time in cross cultural settings.

That summer was amazingly eye-opening and exciting and exhausting. For the first time in my life (I was about to be a senior in college), I realized that the country club where I had spent so many of my summer days growing up—didn’t have any people of color as members—or any women as members, I later learned.

A couple years later, before I went to seminary, I went back to TMM for a year. During that year I attended one of John Perkins’ Christian Community Development Workshops. We learned about community development and ways to fight racism. At the end of the weekend John Perkins challenged us to deal with the racism in our own lives by confessing our sin of racism to our church.

So I went back to the Mendenhall Bible Church where I was worshiping that year. At their Sunday evening service when the opportunity came for people to come up front and share testimonies and prayer requests, I confessed that I had been supporting institutional racism and asked for their forgiveness.

Afterwards, Aimee Fletcher (daughter of the pastor, 12 or 13 years old...) came up to me and said,

“Lynne, you are my favorite racist!”

I think that's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me!

In Mendenhall I discovered a little bit more of what Jesus meant when he said that he came to proclaim good news to the poor. The people in Mendenhall—by their example—helped set me on the path to freedom from discrimination, freedom from perpetuating injustice by supporting systems that keep others down. I even learned to let go of some of my white (WASPy) rigidity and loosen up a bit as I sang in the gospel choir and tried to sing, clap and step side to side with the rhythm of the music (Aimee really got a kick out of watching me sing with the choir). I’m so thankful for that time, and I also recognize I will constantly need to work on those things because conversion is a continual process.

David Bosch nailed it when he said,

"Liberation from is liberation to, else it is not an expression of salvation. And liberation to always involves love to God and to neighbor."

And then he quotes (Schottref and Stegemar):

"Anyone who reduces the following of Jesus to an enterprise of the heart, the head, and private interpersonal relations restricts the following of Jesus and trivializes Jesus."

We certainly don't want to trivialize Jesus. So how do we work on this? I believe that first we need to recognize that we can't follow Jesus by our own power. Jesus was able to do what he did because he was filled with the Spirit. Jesus said,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me...”

It’s all about being led by the Spirit into mission. The Spirit is the catalyst. The Spirit is the guiding/driving force of mission. Mission happens as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit's work within us.

That’s why it’s important to have a repentant heart, and to go to God in confession often—so that our hearts are clean and the Spirit has room to move in us—to fill us and empower us to do God's work. We find true freedom and understand what the good news of the gospel really is as we live into what it means to follow Jesus’ example of proclaiming good news and freedom to the captives.

I want to conclude by leaving you with a picture of what I imagine will be something like what we will experience in heaven—when all of God's family is together, around his table.

This past summer when the team from our church was in Kenya, we spent a day walking through the Soweto slum, just on the outskirts of Nairobi. This is the community where the children we are sponsoring are from. I'd venture to say that this particular day was when we felt furthest from our own home. There were no coffee shops on every corner, nor clean streets lined with flower stores. There wasn't running water, nor much electricity. It was actually a pretty desperate scene and we had been warned not to wear any jewelry, so we were feeling a bit nervous about security.

So it came as a surprise to most if not all of us when we rounded a corner and found such incredible joy waiting for us. We had arrived at the Myatima Center. Myatima in Swahili means "orphan." A group of widows and widowers (due to AIDS) have come together to support each other and to take care of the orphans from the streets of the Soweto slum.

Here was a big group of mostly women -- singing and clapping and welcoming us to Myatima. They sang a song of welcome, took us by the hands and led us into their corrugated tin community center (which is also where they worship). They got us reserved white Presbyterians to get up and dance with them. There was such joy.

Then our group was asked to introduce ourselves, one-by-one. I'll never forget what Nancy Guppy said. She said, "Ever since we arrived in Kenya I've been trying to figure out why I came on this trip.” And then extending her arms out to the people of the Myatima Center, she said, “Now I know why."

Something inherent within us longs to connect with people from all over the world—in joy and in safety and love—to see Jesus in each other, to worship together. The good news is that Jesus has shown us the way. Yeah, it's not an easy way, but it's God's way—which means it's what's best for us—and for this world which He loves so much.

The good news is that we have the Holy Spirit to empower us, to transform us and renew our minds. So yeah, it will take sacrifice, but Jesus made a huge sacrifice for us. Jesus provided not only a path for peace and unity but the Holy Spirit to help us do things we never would've dreamed possible.

Jesus offers a deeper healing through repentance, forgiveness, and through coming together in God’s kingdom with his whole worldwide family. Will you receive this good news of salvation?

Let us pray...

Lord, we love you, and we are so very grateful for your mercy in our lives -- for your desire to rescue us from our poverty, our captivity and our oppression. Help us to recognize and embrace this freedom you offer—and then help us as individuals and as your church to follow your example of proclaiming your good news through all we say and do—that you would be known as Messiah to all peoples of the world. This we pray in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.