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A Season for Seeking: Synagogue at Capernaum                                                           Timothy J. Kuenzli

Luke 4:14-21                                                                                                   Epiphany Lutheran Church

3 Epiphany C                                              24 January, 2010                                       Pickerington, Ohio

              Another pastor began his sermon on the text from Luke like this:

Choose your words carefully if you preach to the people back home. Those who knew you when remember things that make many messages seem odd. Prophetic moralizing, for example, would sound hypocritical coming from most folks in such circumstances.

In my case, P. T. Reppert would likely be out there in the congregation. P. T. once got an ugly black eye from a baseball bat I’d flung in anger across a playground. That pretty well knocks out the Sermon on the Mount as a possible text.

I spent whole summers with a group of guys, chopping cockleburs and button weeds in the cornfields and talking the way teenage boys talk when they’re off by themselves. Some of those "boys" would be in the congregation, so imagine the consequences should the day’s lessons include Ephesians 5, which says, "Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting. Fornication and all impurity must not even be named among you."  (Frederick Niedner, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2182)

                 I begin with another preacher’s confessions, since a significant portion of my own family worships here: they don’t need to know more of my checkered past than they already know!  But Jesus did just what we would never venture to do.  He stepped into the center of his home town synagogue, read from the prophet Isaiah, and said, “This is who I am and what I plan to do: this is God’s agenda.”  Jesus had the temerity to go home to those who had watched him grow up, perhaps change his diapers or watch him stumble through adolescence and tell them he had a clear bead on what God expected of him – and them. 

              My task this morning is threefold: first, to offer a suggestion as to what that message from Isaiah was all about in its original setting; second, to suggest what it might have meant to the people in Capernaum; and third to suggest what it might mean for us today.

              Jesus was given the scroll of Isaiah when he went into the synagogue on Saturday evening, given the respect due a visiting rabbi, and read a brief portion from a section that had been written 500 or so years earlier as encouragement and hope to the Jews who had returned from exile in Babylon and were facing a very bleak reality.  They had been away from Jerusalem for several generations.  I’ve wondered this week if what they found when they came home was something as broken and devastated as what it must be like in Port au Prince these days: non-existent infrastructure and an overwhelming task of starting over again.  Jesus read to the people in Nazareth words of hope intended for the desperate and despondent: “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.”  What great news this would have seemed to the people of Isaiah’s time, hearing that God would not abandon them in the task of rebuilding their lives.  God would see them through their despair and their struggle.

              These words would have been at least very nice words to the people of Capernaum in Jesus’ day, who were probably not quite so desperate, but were certainly on the lower end of the economic scale.     Jesus, in reading this brief passage from Isaiah 61, said that somehow, in him, a new time was beginning and that God’s agenda for God’s people is to pay attention to the poor and disenfranchised of the world.  Jesus understood his call from God was to address in particular the poor, oppressed, the outcast and unacceptable.  And he said, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Jesus was raising the idea of the “Jubilee Year” in Israel, a concept outlined in Leviticus but apparently never practiced.  It was that every 50th year, land that had been bought or sold would be returned to its original owner; debts would be cancelled, debtor slaves would be freed, even the land would rest – no plowing or planting for a whole year.  Jesus was very much in the mold of the prophets of old, unequivocally articulating God’s – and his – concern for the least valued and the least valuable of society.

              Such a message was probably fine for the folks in Capernaum to hear, though they surely must have wondered what Jesus was saying about the scripture being fulfilled right then and there.  (That’s the subject for next week’s sermon; how those hometown people really felt!)  But what is interesting in particular is what Jesus did not read and did not say when he rolled up the scroll and sat down to preach.

              See, the phrase right after “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” is: “and the day of vengeance of our God.”  That was the common understanding of the moment when God would appear in the presence of a new, anointed warrior-king: it would be time for enemies to be destroyed and paybacks to be issued.  But Jesus stopped reading in mid-verse.  He was very intentional about focusing on God’s concern for the poor rather than about any objective God might have of punishing adversaries.  We will hear, later on of course, Jesus say things like loving the enemy and praying for persecutors.

              And another thing to note about what Jesus didn’t read from Isaiah 61.  Much of what follows is the message that not only will enemies get the vengeance of God, but that God’s people will get compensated for their long years of exile and poverty.  “You’ll finally get what’s due you,” is the message of what follows.  But Jesus didn’t go there, either.  He read about good news for the poor and outcast and then said nothing about the self-interest often involved in organized religion.  We will hear, later on of course, Jesus say things over and over again about gratitude, generosity and service; he never says anything about a material payoff for getting on with God’s agenda. 

              So Jesus, from the very beginning of his ministry, wants neither part of judging and punishing, nor of self-seeking and self-interest.  Jesus has come out of the desert alive and aflame with the love of God.  That’s just all there is to it.  Such life and love will be poured out abundantly over those who need it the most.  What Jesus did with and through his life was perfectly consistent with the opening words of his first sermon. 

              The question then, is to ask if there is any suggestion here as to how we might hear these words as we listen in on Jesus’ sermon?  Do we take these words into our lives and our world simply as the comfort God intended for the Jews in the 6th century BC?  Hardly.  While there are times when comfort and encouragement are needed, we aren’t trying to rebuild our lives from scratch.  We aren’t at all like that first audience to which these words were addressed.  Nor are we much like Jesus’ audience in Capernaum.  We don’t live in an occupied land and the truth is that we live extremely privileged lives.  It would seem to me that we should pay attention to what Jesus didn’t read.  He didn’t suggest that God would send destruction on our enemies and he didn’t promise reward for being God’s people.  Jesus held then in the center of his life and attention – and I’m convinced intends us to hold now in the center of our life and attention – those who are the most needy among us.  What Jesus says to us today is that greed and self-interest are not God’s agenda.  It’s not all about us and we cannot live as though it is. 

              So how might we get for ourselves new, rich and full lives?  We can’t.  Seeking life will only lead to something less.  Offering life for the sake and love of God might, however, might lead to something more.  We are today and ever invited to risk such lives of offering.

A Season for Seeking: Synagogue at Capernaum                                                                            

Luke 4:14-21

3 Epiphany C   24 January, 2010

              I would invite you this week to struggle through the same journey that I struggled through last week!  Reading and understanding what God says to us in the Bible requires this sort of struggle, study and prayer:

              First, read the text from Luke that is our Gospel lesson noted above.  Jesus just came from his sojourn in the desert that followed his baptism by John.  He came to his hometown and read and preached in the synagogue.  That’s the setting of the narrative.  Read it, savor it, let it sink in.

              Second, go to Isaiah, chapters 60-62.  Understand that they were first addressed to those who were returning to Jerusalem after 3-4 generations exiled in Babylon.  Their ancestors had been carried off to a foreign land in military defeat and their beloved city and temple had been leveled.  Finally, they were coming home.  Read over the chapters carefully.  What are the several themes Isaiah says clearly?   Then go back to notice what portion of Isaiah 61 Jesus read.  Notice what he didn’t read.  What conclusions might you draw in Jesus’ choice of reading/not reading?

              Third, page through your knowledge of what Jesus most often talked about in Luke’s Gospel and those to whom Jesus was most attentive.  (Or page through Luke’s Gospel itself!)

              Finally – question of all Biblical study – what does it seem God might be saying to us today as we read in this time and place?