Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
17th January 2021
Luke 4.14-30
Listen to the sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/jesus_inaugural_speech
I can’t actually remember my first sermon, but I can clearly remember the first time I was asked to lead a Bible study, in my mid-teens, for the youth group at my church. I couldn’t believe the youth leader trusted me enough to allow me to do this! My first sermon was probably a similarly nervous presentation, given as part of my discernment process for Baptist Ministry in my early 20s. But what I do know is that, firstly no written record of it now remains; and secondly no-one tried to kill me afterwards.
Jesus, on the other hand, at the beginning of his public ministry, decisively put the cat amongst the proverbial pigeons, with the congregation turning on him at the end of his sermon, and trying to throw him off a cliff! And you might be forgiven for asking, having just heard the passage, what was it he said that controversial enough for people to want to kill him???
I mean, what’s so problematic about helping the poor, releasing the imprisoned, healing the sick, and declaring the dawning of a new age of God’s?
Unless, of course, you’re a newly elected president of the United States of America! In which case using your inaugural address to speak of a new deal for the poor, sweeping prison reform, widening access to healthcare, and proclaiming a new era of God’s blessing for your country, might just be the most controversial things you could say in 2021, at least to a certain demographic of your audience.
I will be keeping an eye on Joe Biden’s inaugural address this week with interest, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these topics are exactly what he chooses to speak on. In our world, as in the first century, issues of poverty and disempowerment, law and order, health and wellbeing, and the transformation of society, are still at the top of the agenda for most politicians.
And so we might ask ourselves, today, how are we going to hear and respond to Jesus’ inaugural sermon in Nazareth, as he set the vision for his ministry, and charted his course into the future? How is this going to challenge us, in our time and context?
"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 favour."
Of course, this passage that Jesus quotes from Isaiah isn’t the sermon itself, it’s just the text that he preaches his sermon on, and in actual fact Jesus does something here that preachers are usually taught not to do (but which we all do anyway). He stops reading before it gets to the difficult bit. You may remember this passage from Isaiah, as we had it as our reading a few weeks ago in the run up to Christmas: Listen to the passage as it is originally found in Isaiah.
Isaiah 61.1-2
The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.
The people listening to Jesus in the synagogue would have known this text well, and they would have known that, according to Isaiah, the proclamation of the year of the Lord was accompanied by a proclamation of God’s vengeance on God’s enemies. They would have been used to hearing this passage as an affirmation of their special, privileged status as God’s chosen people, alongside God’s repudiation and condemnation of those who were their traditional enemies.
In short, they would have been used to hearing this passage as an ‘us and them’ proof-text; where we are God’s chosen, and they are God’s rejected
And yet Jesus stops before the end of the sentence, deliberately and strategically undermining the usual way in which this text was heard.
And, without knowing what Joe Biden will say in his Inauguration Speech this week, I am fairly sure that he won’t be saying ‘Build the wall’, or ‘Lock her up’. I pray that he will refrain from any language of ‘us’ and ‘them’, because such language always leads to the fracturing of humanity and stokes the flames of violence.
But those who are addicted to being right, at the expense of other people’s wrongness; those whose identity is built on being ‘in’ at the expense of other people being ‘out’; don’t take well, either in the first or the twenty-first centuries, to being denied their moment of self-righteous judgment. After all, the logic runs, if ‘they’ aren’t ‘out’, then how can we know that ‘we’ are truly ‘in’?
Well, Jesus subverts that logic. He fails to proclaim the word of judgment. And that’s just what he doesn’t say. What comes next rams the point home in no uncertain terms. He provokes a response.
By omitting the judgment on God’s enemies, Jesus has implied that God’s blessings, the forgiveness, liberation, and healing of God’s favour, are no longer restricted to one chosen nation. Those who were used to hearing this as being about them, and them alone, are suddenly challenged to hear it as being about others too. And as with anyone whose privilege is challenged, the raising up of others can feel like a threat. The removal of oppression from some can feel to others like a removal of privilege.
The proverb ‘Doctor cure yourself’ is a challenge to Jesus to stop focussing on proclaiming healing for others, and to return instead to bringing God’s blessings to himself and those like him. They challenge him to stop focussing on them, over there, and instead to turn his attention to his home town, to his family, his friends, his community, his tribe.
But Jesus’ repudiation of the call to tribalism, and his insistent refocussing of his message on those who are not yet privileged with God’s blessing, is deeply problematic for those in the congregation in the synagogue in Nazareth. They had come expecting their hometown-boy to preach a storming message of comfort and optimism, a kind of ‘Make Nazareth Great Again’ message. But what they got was a challenge to look beyond themselves, and see that God’s intent and interest is far wider than their narrow circle.
To make the point still further, Jesus recalls two Old Testament prophets, Elijah and Elisha, both of whom took God’s blessing to the needy of other countries, despite the fact that there were still those in need of care back home in Israel.
If you remember, last autumn the British Chancellor announced that the International Aid Budget would be reduced from 0.7% of gross national income, to 0.5%, with effect from 2021, releasing 4 billion pounds of overseas aid to be spent in the UK instead, on recovering from the pandemic.[1]
Well, ‘the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, 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’.
And, ‘There were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian’.
And doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, that ‘charity begins at home’…
But Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom is very clear: charity does not begin at home, and the best doctors do not, in fact, focus first on their own wellbeing, as those who have caught COVID and died treating others over the last year have demonstrated.
Jesus’ call is to a new way of living, that challenges to the core those ideologies of protectionism, nationalism, and xenophobia.
And if we are to proclaim this message in our world, we can expect a response. The congregation tried to kill Jesus for his proclamation of God’s blessing that cut across barriers, and transcended their precious narratives of us and them. Jesus inspired hope, but what followed was conflict. Jesus signalled a new direction, offering a vision of a better, more equal future for humanity, but the forces of tribalism wouldn’t give up without a fight.
And in the face of such conflict, whether on the other side of the Atlantic or here on our doorstep, the call to Jesus’ vision becomes all the more important.
So let us not be timid in the Christ-inspired challenge that we bring in his name, to a world still addicted to division and partition. We will challenge the narratives of exclusion, and call society to attend to the other, to the poor, to the disabled, to those we shut off from ourselves, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
[1]
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/changes-to-the-uks-aid-budget-in-the-spending-review
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