3 Epiphany

January 26, 2025

Today, following the 10:00 service, you’re invited to participate in a series titled “Radical Love.” Sponsored and organized by our Pride Committee, the series is intended to introduce us to new ways of thinking about LGBTQ+ inclusion, and new ways of thinking about the Christian faith in light of the experiences of our LGBTQ+ siblings in Christ.

This series has been long in the planning stage and it’s only coincidence that it is beginning now, when the LGBTQ+ community is feeling especially vulnerable and trans and non-binary people are facing new exclusions and restrictions. But for us at Grace to step boldly into these new challenges is a sign that our faith in God continues to challenge us to reach out to the vulnerable and marginalized and to try to build a community that in its embrace of diversity is a model to others of God’s all-inclusive love. 

Like the timing of our series, today’s gospel reading couldn’t be more fitting for the moment in which we find ourselves. During this year C of the three year lectionary cycle, our focus is on the Gospel of Luke. Although we have been reading from that gospel since the beginning of Advent in December, it may be helpful to have a reminder of some of its unique features and themes. First, it’s important to keep in mind that the gospel of Luke is the first half of a coherent narrative that includes the Book of Acts. They are connected thematically above all by the importance of geography. The gospel tells the story of the spread of the gospel from Galilee to Jerusalem to the world, ending the book of Acts in the center of the ancient Mediterranean world: Rome. 

There’s a second important thematic connection. Luke stresses the activity of the Holy Spirit. It came upon Jesus in his baptism; we see mention of it here in our gospel reading: “Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit…” When he dies on the cross, Jesus’s last words in Luke are “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” Then, the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples at Pentecost and they are carried by the power of the Spirit into all the world.

Among other unifying themes, there is one in today’s reading that bears mention. Luke is careful to show the continuity of the Jesus movement, and of John the Baptist with the Prophetic tradition of Israelite religion. He describes John in ways consistent with the great prophets of Elijah and Elisha, and here we see Jesus appealing to the authority of Isaiah as he begins his public ministry. It’s also important to note that Luke depicts Jesus as a faithful observant Jew: “he went to the synagogue on the sabbath, as was his custom.” 

So Jesus, the hometown boy made good, is invited to read from scripture. He combines two passages from Isaiah into a coherent message beginning “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release for the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Remarkable enough these words, what comes next is even more so. Jesus sits down and says, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The reading breaks off here but the text goes on to describe the changing response of Jesus’ listeners. At first, we’re told that they were amazed at his gracious words. Then they asked, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” In response, Jesus seems to goad them, citing the adage, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” and they turn on him. By the end of the story, they’re trying to kill him. 

It’s astonishing really that the mood changed so quickly. Was it because Jesus was making authority claims for himself and his powers that the crowd didn’t seem were warranted? Was that he was dissing his hometown, as many of us are wont to do?

In any case, Jesus’ rather free quotation from Isaiah is meant by Luke to convey what Jesus is about, what his ministry and preaching will entail. To put it into contemporary language—this is Jesus’ mission statement according to Luke. He makes this clear later in the gospel when the John the Baptizer, now in prison, has gotten word of Jesus’ activity. He sends two of his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he is the Messiah or if they are to wait for another. Jesus response to them, and to John is “Go tell John what you have seen, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the poor have good news preached to them.” 

I had reached this point in my sermon prep on Friday and was discerning where I might take it when I was interrupted by someone who had come to Grace seeking help. No, he wasn’t looking for rent money or gas. He wanted to arrange a funeral and spot in our columbarium for a friend for whom he was power of attorney. As we chatted, he explained that this friend wanted Grace to be his final resting place because of our reputation for welcome and because a dear friend of his was interred here.

As I’ve reflected on that conversation, I’ve been pondering the gossamer threads that connect us and create community, among the living, and among the living and the dead. Those bonds are fragile and easily severed as we are seeing in our nation today but it may be that our most urgent task right now is to nurture and strengthen them. As our immigrant neighbors cower in fear and transgender and nonbinary siblings face erasure it is incumbent upon us to show by our words and our deeds that our community embraces and welcomes all people.

We might take inspiration from Paul’s words in today’s epistle reading. They are often reduced to requests for volunteers: some are called to be ushers, some to be lectors, some to serve on the altar guild. But it’s much more than that. Paul was trying to create a community across religious and social distance, across the barriers of slave and free, Jew and Gentile. It’s worth pointing out that when he uses this formula here, he does not include gender as he does in the earlier letter to the Galatians; perhaps, as many scholars posit, that division was too deep for him to close.

In a way, the absence of the male/female binary in Paul’s formula here points to the difficulty of creating and maintaining community across difference. We all know that, of course. We find ourselves connecting with people very like ourselves, from our ethnic or racial identity, from our socio-economic class, from our neighborhoods, even from our age cohort. But Paul challenges to do more and to do better, to build those bonds of community and relationship with people unlike ourselves, to reach across the differences of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and more, even religion.

When we think about the community Paul envisions for the body of Christ, we must remember that it is not only focused on building those relationships internally. It should also be a witness to the wider community, a witness of God’s loving embrace of all humankind, whatever their race, gender, religion, or immigration status. 

And that witness should also be one of proclamation of the Good News of the year of the Lord’s favor—the coming of God’s reign. We should boldly preach that good news to the poor release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. May we have the courage to proclaim it, and the courage to embody that good news!