"Spirit and Word"    Judy Skaggs, UPC

Luke 4:14-21

Intro:

We are in the lectionary year when most of the Gospel lessons will be from Luke. His Gospel begins with birth stories, first of John the Baptist and then of Jesus. He gives us the stories of the dedication of Jesus in the temple and of the boy Jesus at age 12 when he stayed in Jerusalem after Passover and was in the temple questioning the scholars there.

Luke then introduces the ministry of John the Baptist, and tells us that Jesus came to be baptized by John in the River Jordan. And then Jesus went out into the wilderness and was tempted by the devil. Our passage this morning follows Jesus’ temptations.

Let us listen for how the Spirit might be speaking to us today. Read Luke 4.

When I was in seminary, I did a short hospital internship at St David’s Hospital. At the beginning of each day, we interns met with our supervisors and were given an area or floor of the hospital where we would make visits that day. I can still remember standing at the door of the first patient I was to visit. I know that I prayed, and although I did not use these specific words, I think these words that Jesus choose from the prophet Isaiah were close to what I asked.

Lord, let your Spirit be upon me so that I can bring your good news to this patient. Help me to proclaim release and recovery. Give me the words I need to let them know that you are with them….or something along those lines.

And I continued to say those prayers before I would visit with someone through the days and weeks I worked at the hospital. And sometimes, surprisingly, after I visited someone, I could say with Jesus – today, this was fulfilled – because I really felt like God’s Spirit had been there and somehow I did find the words that were needed.

The same thing could be said about preaching. For week after week, we preachers step into the pulpit, look down at our notes, take a deep breath, and off we go with a sermon. And that is what you expect, right? We are expecting a sermon, but what if we get something more? What if God’s Spirit really does come upon us?

It was an ordinary Sabbath when Jesus came to the synagogue in Nazareth, his hometown. He had been there many times. The people were all there sitting on wooden benches. In that day, there were no professional rabbis. The service was simple – some prayers, some scripture read and then commented on, and a collection taken for the poor.

It was quite natural for them to ask Jesus to read and then comment on the scripture. He had been teaching and preaching around the countryside and everyone spoke well of him. They handed him the scroll of Isaiah. They expected a simple sermon. But they got much more.

A sermon can give you something to think about, something to make you feel good or even challenge you a bit. You can take it or leave it. You can agree or disagree. But God’s Spirit and God’s Word cannot be ignored. A Word from God can disrupt our life, it can change everything.

Jesus read the ancient words of the prophet – 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, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He rolled up the scroll, handed it to the attendant and sat down, because sitting down was what teachers in the synagogue did. And then he said, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” It may have been the shortest teaching the crowd had ever heard, and perhaps the most startling.

For, these liberating words of God came from the lips of the One who was not only the vessel of these words, but was the Word itself, the Word made flesh. On that day in the synagogue, Jesus came among them as the sacred, mysterious story of God embodied in fullness for all to hear.

With those few words, Jesus told them who he was and what he would do. He would bring good news to the poor like the hungry crowds on the hillside whom he fed with bread and fish. He would release those held captive by demons and paralysis, or even by greed and prejudice. Jesus brought sight to the blind, sometimes literally, but he also opened the eyes of everyone he taught to look at God and God’s world in a new and different light.

Jesus brought freedom to those trapped by sin and disgrace. He proclaimed the great Jubilee which according to Leviticus 25 was when debts were forgiven and slaves were freed. Jesus proclaimed God’s forgiveness and God’s kingdom. Today – this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing!

And what Jesus began that day, we who are the body of Christ, are to continue. We are baptized into the same Spirit. We are given the same Word. So it is up to each of us to pray that we might bring good news and release and recovery to each person we encounter.

We might ask - how do we, like the Christ we want to follow, give flesh to these words? How do we become bearers of these words that are so radical and so challenging in this broken and hurting world? Answers are not easy.

And yet, here we are, with these words – these words of Isaiah, these words of Christ – confronting us, calling us, enlivening us, taking flesh in us, that we may also claim –

Today, these words are being fulfilled in our hearing. Amen