This sermon was not preached to anyone but I hope someday I get a chance to share at least some version of it with a live congregation, or at least a small group. I think it could make for some excellent conversations.
The lectionary texts for the third Sunday after Epiphany are:
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21
All kinds of hungry.
Hungry for food, hungry for companionship, hungry for connection or power or love. At the wedding in Cana, Jesus provided wine for all the people – even the latecomers who would normally have just received leftovers or nothing at all. Jesus did a lot of things like that! And at the chili cookoff fundraiser the congregation raised money to be used for the pastor’s discretionary fund. With that money she will be able to help people with all sorts of needs, all sorts of hungers.
But what does that have to do with each of us? What exactly is each of us called to do?
Well, if you have ever heard me talk before you know it won’t be long until I get around to Jesus. And to answer the question of what would Jesus do, it is super-helpful to know what Jesus actually did!
* Jesus made wine.
* Jesus raised the dead,
* Jesus healed people with mental and physical disabilities,
* Jesus hung around with his friends and taught them by being in relationship – by being together.
All those kinds of hunger, and Jesus just calmly went from place to place and fed all the kinds of hunger. He did not get in a dither or lose sleep over it. He stayed connected to God the Father through prayer, listened to the Holy Spirit blow around him. Jesus just did his thing (and made some serious enemies along the way.)
Take today’s text from Luke, for example. He walked into the synagogue, read prophecy from Isaiah, and declared himself the fulfillment of that prophecy! He said, in effect…
HERE I AM!
GOOD NEWS IS IN THE HOUSE!
What would you say if Jesus walked into your most sacred place and said that?
I think I would kind of freak out.
I would freak out because it is very hard to be around people who, like Jesus, know who he was and what he could (and would) do.
Are you gifted with that same self-knowledge? Who are you? What can (and will) you do?
Are you an ear?
An eye?
A heart?
Feet?
Hands?
Jesus came to offer good news to the poor, the captive, the blind and oppressed. He came to be that good news and spread it around as a real person living a real life.
Who will receive good news from you? Who will hear from you that THIS is the year of the Lord’s favor?
That is a big and important question. It is a big and important task! It is SUCH a big and important task that even Jesus did not take it on alone.
At the wedding at Cana, Mary was right there with Jesus – encouraging him to act, lending her maternal authority so that the servants would do what Jesus said. Those servants brought the water. The steward is the one who proclaimed the wine good.
There is no reason to think that God HAS to… but Jesus, God Incarnate, worked in community. We do not have the option that God has, though. Jesus worked in community because he could. We have to work in community because we have no hope of having lasting impact any other way.
So who is your community?
* Do you feel a tug to volunteer to read for blind people? Does that just seem like a really nifty thing to do?
* Or is your call taking you to be the leader of a nonprofit agency, or a congregation, or a social justice group?
* Or maybe your passion is to work behind the scenes – carrying out the garbage or cleaning bathrooms, sweeping up the remains of the celebration.
* Or is your calling to speak the truth – even if your voice shakes?
Now I’m going to ask you to make a secret confession to yourself. As I listed those opportunities for serving did you rank them? Did you think that you had no desire to take out the garbage, because you are better than that? Or did you kind of wish you could be happy sweeping up but you always seem to be the one speaking truth in a shaking voice?
Now that you are thinking secret thoughts, I’m going to ask you to do a thought experiment with me. Think of a time when someone said or did something that meant a LOT to you. Maybe it was a time when you were feeling poor, or captive, or blind or oppressed in some way or another. Or a time when you were just really sad and frustrated, and someone helped you out of that dark funky place.
Got it?
Who was that person? The person who shared their vision when you were blind to something important, the person who unlocked your prison when something was holding you captive, who offered you the resources in which you were most impoverished, the one who walked you out of a time of oppression into freedom?
Or for you Harry Potter fans, who gave you a sock when you were Dobby the House Elf?
Was it someone rich and powerful? Let’s see a show of hands… How many of you received good news in your dark time from someone with a lot of power, or who is well-known or famous? Come on – raise your hands.
Now how many received good news in those hard times from a person who was present, but is not rich or powerful or on TV or particularly well-known?
I wish we could have a conversation about that right now – about who has shared good news with you, and how they shared it, and why it was good. Maybe you can talk with each other about that on the way home. But for now… we will let the fact that in our personal lives, the rich and powerful are often not the ones who bring us powerfully good news.
Of course, we need leaders (the rich and powerful) who will use their power judiciously in making policies and leading different organizations in our lives. For example, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Brett Kavanaugh and their colleagues do affect our lives in a relatively small number of ways – even if those ways are big and far-reaching.
But if I take the cumulative effect of children and the joy they bring to my life, it has a much greater effect on my life. If I think of the aggravation that my brother gave me just when we were children it far outweighs the aggravation of most of the policies that are passed by government.
When my mother died, it was not elected officials who gave me comfort, it was my aunt who brought me good news of some of the many ways my mother loved me that helped me come to terms with my grief and loss. My aunt - who lives out in the country and has almost never left Texas – has consistently brought me love and comfort and delight and good news, no matter where in the world I have been.
We see the same thing throughout the Bible, and especially in the life of Jesus. In those stories, the rich and powerful rarely came off well. Jesus consistently shared good news with the people who had the least reason culturally to expect any good news at all.
I believe that in sharing the good news Jesus was planting seeds, and the compost-like life of the less-than-rich-or-powerful was just the environment for those seeds to grow. And here we are! 2000 years later, and still tending that good news, sharing it, reseeding with each successive generation by paying attention to the lives of the younger (or older!) than us and sharing whatever good news we can muster.
Jesus lived a life that looked like poverty in some ways. He hung out with some Very Annoying and Problematic People like tax collectors and loud mouths and thieves and prostitutes. He loved so many of the wrong people, and loved them so much, that the reigning powers felt their only option was to kill him.
But!!
Jesus came back from the dead, Resurrected in glory, because that much love could not be held back. If even once Jesus had chosen human power structures over the people before him who wanted and needed love, who were poor and oppressed, blind and lame and bleeding and captive, the Resurrection could not have happened. But it did! And it happened that we might be freed from worry. We can be who we were created to be.
Jesus knew who he was created to be, and in doing so showed up what it means to be truly, completely, deeply human. It is to be in community, to care for those who cannot care for themselves, to love unflinchingly and be present with and for one another.
In the same way, we will know we are being whom we were created to be when we show up to feed the hungers of the people who appear before us. When you show up to alleviate the poverty of mind, body, and spirit in those near you. To offer the good news to people you love, or people you do not know and love but who end up in your life – even the Very Annoying and Problematic ones.
And in doing what you can, in those small interactions, you will be enough. You ARE enough. Even if being who you are created to be often feels like it is too easy, or too much fun, and you might feel guilty for not doing the impossibly hard things you do not need to worry! Jesus did all the impossibly hard things that you cannot, and as a result, we can be bringers of good news to the blind and captive, the poor and oppressed in every moment of every day of our lives.
Go forth and be the good news.
Amen.
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