Sunday, January 23, 2022

Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-30

Don’t be grieved, for the joy of Yahweh is your strength.

I don’t know which is better, living in this modern age when we truly know how big and vast the heavens truly are, or living before the telescope and only imagining what is happening in the sphere above the earth. For them there was constancy in the stars, but mysteries also. The comets and the planets that move visibly to the human eye acted as signs or omens. This may seem superstitious to us, but it was one way of explaining what they could not explain. Perhaps that is why it is better to live today. We know what it is and what is happening, we do not have to rely on our imaginations or superstition to understand. Unfortunately, our scientific minds have lost the sense of mystery and awe because we know that a comet is only a comet and not a sign of impending joy or disaster.

We see God’s hand in His creation, and it speaks to us of His glory, but the stars and planets and animals cannot speak. The creation praises God but we cannot learn of God’s will through them; we can see God’s magnificence but not know His mind. So, we need something more. We need words to learn how to live in relationship with our Creator. The trees bud and the flowers blossom at the right time, but they do not have a spirit that can choose to please God. Only men and women have the ability to know Him and choose to follow or reject His will.

The psalmist sang from the two points of view: the awesome praise of God’s creation and the words that make it possible for us to follow Him. The second half of this psalm talks of God’s Law, the Word which is not spoken by the creation but only by the Creator. It is perfect, it is right, and it is true. We can certainly glorify God with praise like the rest of creation, but we have been given something greater. We have been given the opportunity to live a life that glorifies God by our actions and our words.

Unfortunately, we are imperfect. We fail. We do not follow God’s Law perfectly. So, we turn to God for help. It is by God’s word that we can approach the throne of grace with the request found in verse 14, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, Yahweh, my rock, and my redeemer.”

A person on a discussion group asked how to speak to a person they invited to worship who does not feel they are worthy of attending church. “I can’t fit in; I would feel like a fraud.” This is based on one real discussion, but the questioner is not the first to face this attitude from someone they invited to church. I invited a neighbor once and she answered with a long list of excuses. “I’m not good enough,” is a common answer. “I need to get right with God first,” is another. My friend even talked about her inability to tithe, and when I told her that there were no financial expectations, she answered that she couldn’t attend a church that didn’t require a tithe. She was just making excuses because she did not want to go to church.

Those who reject invitations to go to church do not understand the purpose of it all. It is cliché to say, but they see the Church as a country club for those worthy of membership, but we know that we are sinners seeking a merciful Savior who has promised us forgiveness. We go to hear the Gospel message over and over again because we know that we continue to fail to live up to God’s Law despite His grace. We need to hear the words of forgiveness constantly, to be absolved of our sin repeatedly, to experience His presence to know His peace in the midst of our messed-up lives.

We often get it backwards. We hear the promises of God but think that we have to get things right with our lives before He can fulfill those promises. Too many people wait to go to church to hear about God’s forgiveness until they feel worthy. They refuse to receive God’s grace because they think they have to earn it. So, they try to obey the law, making it a burden. They believe that once they get it all right, then they can stand in His presence and hear His promises. The words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts are imperfect, but the more we gather with God’s people, the closer we are to knowing the God of our salvation.

God makes Himself known to His people in so many ways. He manifested Himself as a burning bush to Moses and as a still, small whisper as He did to Elijah on the mountain. However, it is as difficult to really know God’s will in those miraculous signs and unexplainable phenomenon as it is by the creation. The greatest manifestation is when God makes Himself known to reasoning and rational human beings in words and the Word.

The Law had been given to Moses at Mount Sinai and they had lost touch with what it meant to them as a people. This is why God gave then into the hands of the Babylonians: to discipline them and to make them whole and new. They needed to see life outside of God’s grace to understand how to live within His grace. God did not do this as a form of punishment, but as a way to bring His people home. All along He intended for them to be renewed and gathered as one people again, manifesting His mercy and grace to the world.

Over the past few months, we have heard Old Testament stories about the promises of God to the exiles of Israel in Babylon. Over and over again God promised to be with them, that He would lead His people home, and that He would restore Jerusalem so that she would be a shining jewel in the world again. Now our text moves from the prophecies to the story of God’s people after exile.

Once the temple was rebuilt and the Israelites resettled (God’s promises fulfilled) Ezra gathered the people to hear the Law. They filled the square and stood for hours as the words in the book were read. Beginning early in the morning until midday, Ezra read while the Levites translated and interpreted the Word for the people. They were cut to the heart as it was read, they mourned the life away from God that they had been living.

That generation of Israelites had never heard God’s Word read publicly. They’d forgotten what had been written on the hearts of their forefathers. They did not know God’s will or His expectations for His people. They knew that they had suffered for their lack of faithfulness, and they were ready to be changed. They gathered to hear so that they would be the people God created them to be. They gathered to learn how to live in the covenant that God faithfully continued to keep with His people despite their failure. They were mesmerized by the reading because they knew it was the Word of the God who saved them.

The Israelites understood. The reading of God’s Word made them weep because they realized how lost they had been. They had been saved and restored to their home. Nehemiah, Ezra and the Levites spoke that word of grace into their life. “Today is holy to Yahweh your God. Don’t mourn, nor weep. Go your way. Eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared, for today is holy to our Lord. Don’t be grieved, for the joy of Yahweh is your strength.” The people wanted to mourn, but they told them to celebrate, for God was pleased with His people and blessed them.

The reading of the Law cuts us to the heart because we see that we are far from God and His intention for our lives, but we are not to mourn because of His word because it is a gift. We are to rejoice at what God has spoken to us, because in the Law always comes with a message of grace. He does not want to punish us; He gives us guidance to discipline and make us disciples. He cuts to our heart not to break it but to grasp it in His hand and make it His own. We might be sad when we realize what we have done wrong, but we can go forth in the knowledge that God is faithful to His promises and His promises are filled with grace.

God did not wait until the people were worthy of His Word. He fulfilled His promises of redemption and restoration before they repented. He answered their mourning with grace. “Do not cry over the past. You are forgiven and you are mine. Rejoice!” That is what He does for us. He calls us into His heart through baptism and offers the forgiveness that has been bought with the blood of His Son. We spend our lives listening to His Word, learning and growing in His grace. Sometimes we want to mourn as we realize the things we have done wrong. But God says “Rejoice” because the promises have been fulfilled. The joy of the LORD is our strength.

About a year had passed since Jesus changed the water into wine at Cana in Galilee. There were many people who were claiming to be the Messiah. The Jews were crying for freedom from the oppression of the Romans, and some of the messiahs were calling for the people to revolt. They thought salvation would come with the arrival of a new king, a king who would rule Israel like the golden age of David.

Word of Jesus’ power and authority had preceded Him to Nazareth. Word of His teaching was spreading all over the region. By the time He entered the synagogue in Nazareth, most of the people in that town had heard some story about Jesus. They had expectations, especially since Jesus was a local boy. His family and friends thought they deserved the proofs that they had heard Jesus could perform. If Jesus could do and say things with such amazing power and Spirit, what more could He do in His hometown? Jesus was invited into the synagogue to preach and teach. They wanted to hear and experience what had been rumored about this son of their own town.

Jesus was strong and ready to face the world that would not understand His purpose of His life and ministry. He had been tempted by the devil and faced the temptation with the Word of God. He refused to be led astray by the desires of the flesh: hunger, greed or fame. After His temptation Jesus was prepared to begin His ministry and to deal with the people’s expectations of Him. They would be tempted by the same desires He had in the wilderness. They wanted to be filled, to be satisfied, and to be recognized. Many would seek Jesus for the wrong reasons. They were looking for the fulfillment of their understanding of God’s promises and they would try to force God to fulfill His promises according to their expectations. Unfortunately, they missed out on the real message of God through Jesus Christ.

We often think of Jesus hanging out on hillsides, drawing people into His presence with His words and actions, but in this passage from Luke we see that He also went to “church” like the rest of them. He wasn’t just worshipping God in the meadows or forests; He was worshipping God in the company of other believers. He was welcomed not only as a visitor, but as part of the conversation. This may not have been the Jewish parallel of the Sunday morning worship; some experts suggest that this was more likely a time of Bible study when people gathered to hear the Word and discuss it. Literate visitors were given the chance to read and itinerant preachers were given the opportunity to speak.

Jesus did not establish His credibility with a sword but with the Word of God. He chose a passage from Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Isaiah was alluding to a year of Jubilee, a time of restoration and redemption. It was a time of transformation. The fiftieth year was called the Jubilee year and was a time when the slaves were set free, and all debts were counted as paid. At the Jubilee, everything was made new. Everyone was given a new beginning, another chance. In the reading, Jesus was not referring to a calendar year; He was pointing toward the day when God would set His people free from the bondage that keeps them from living as He has called and gifted them to live.

What were they expecting? Jesus reveals in this reading His purpose. He came to set people free, to bring healing and wholeness to their lives. He came to preach good tidings to the poor, to bring sight to the blind, and to heal the wounds of the people. He came “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He came to fulfill the promises of God as we hear in Isaiah. Jesus said, “Now is the time. Today is the day.”

Since Nazareth was among the lowest of all cities in Israel, this must have been good news. Perhaps they thought they would finally be filled, satisfied, and recognized. Having the Messiah as a native son would be good for their reputation. They might finally be recognized as a place of God’s blessings. They thought perhaps Nazareth would be the shining light, the place where God reveals His glory to the world. There in their synagogue they were hearing the fulfillment of scriptures. Would that day be the day their desires were fulfilled?

The Israelites were willing listeners because they had suffered the consequences of their unfaithfulness. They began a new, transformed life by gathering around his Word. Just as Jesus read the scriptures to the people gathered around Him, Ezra and Nehemiah read the scriptures to the people gathered in the square. They explained it to them so that the people would understand. They gave it to them in their own language. They made it relevant to their lives. Jesus revealed Himself as the Messiah, a gift even better than the miraculous signs He was doing elsewhere. Would the people of Nazareth hear and believe?

It must have been a remarkable moment for the people of Nazareth. After all, this Jesus was special, and He would bring acclaim to their sleepy little town. He would take care of their hungers, their hurts and their desires. They would no longer be the rejected and downcast of the cities but would rise above all the others. Nazareth was an unimportant town, but Jesus would make it important. Isn't it interesting how in the desert it was very easy for Jesus to reject the temptations thrown at Him by the devil? Jesus would face the same temptations but coming from those He loved. They would look to Jesus to prove Himself so they could believe. We will learn that God does not perform on demand.

This was good news for those who were tired of living in bondage under the Romans. Jesus was fulfilling the expectations they had about the Messiah: expectations of a man with power and authority, who healed and who brought change. They saw Jesus as the fulfillment of all their hopes. He would be the king for whom they had been waiting. It is not so surprising that the anointed king of God's kingdom would take care and provide for all the human needs of the people to whom He was sent. Preaching and healing would provide the proof they needed to know that God's hand was on the life and ministry of the One who claimed to be the Messiah.

God gave the Law to the Israelites so that they could live their best life, but over their history they forgot and turned from Him. Their knowledge of the Law was restored as they heard it read by Ezra. For those in Jesus’ day, the reading of God’s Word was a regular part of their lives. They went to the synagogue to hear the Law and the Prophets read and explained. Even so, Israel had again lost touch with the God of their forefathers; they had established their own understanding. They may have seemed to be devoted to their God, but they become self-righteous; they had begun to have expectations of God based on their understanding, not His Word.

There is a passage from John Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” that talks about how we come to know God. We often talk about seeing God in the world around us. God is visible in the natural world in ways that amaze us. We see Him in the sunset and the rainbow. We see Him in the face of a newborn baby and in the life-long love of our grandparents. We see Him in the fields of wildflowers and in the fierceness of a storm. However, Calvin warned that our understanding of God manifest in nature is in vain. See, in nature we see what we want to see. He writes that we need something more: we need the Bible, God’s Word, through which to truly see Him in His creation. We can’t rely on our own hearts; we must seek understanding of God as He has manifested Himself to us.

God is made manifest in the scriptures and in our Lord Jesus Christ. We gather around the Word and we gather around Jesus to experience God’s presence in our lives. Jesus brought the promises of God to fulfillment so that we can be all that He has created us to be. And the promises continue to be made manifest through the body of Christ, which is the Church. Every believer is part of that body. We have been created to be a part of the whole. We have been given our own gifts and purpose so that the Church together might continue the work Jesus began.

The Corinthian church was a difficult congregation. There were many things about the new Christian faith that they did not fully understand. The church was located in a major Greek city, a place where there were many temples to the gods. Unlike Nazareth, Corinth was an important world community, a place of crossroads where many nationalities came together. It was also a place of questionable morality, where worship of the gods, they wanted to be filled, satisfied, and recognized. The Corinthian church was plagued by questions of how to live in their world while also living according to the expectations of their new faith. They often failed, falling back into the ways of their past and fulfilling the desires of their flesh.

In today’s Epistle lesson Paul was addressing one of the questions of the Corinthian congregation. They had incredible gifts: powers that were not from themselves. Yet they were immature and unspiritual. They did not understand the things of God or the place they held in His kingdom. They did not understand that they had been called and gathered for a purpose and that the purpose was to continue Jesus’ work in this world. They needed guidance about the gifts they had been given and about the expectations of God for them.

Some Corinthians thought that they had special privilege. They thought they had higher gifts or that their gifts proved that they were more blessed by God. Paul reminds us that God has created a perfect machine, a body that works together, all parts being valuable parts of the whole. We are individuals in Christ, gifted in our own unique ways, but all are necessary to make manifest the grace and mercy of God in the world. Gathered around the Word, both the scriptures and Jesus, we see Him as He is and ourselves as we are. The good news is that God sees us through Jesus, and that’s why we can rejoice.

God’s Word has a way of cutting to our hearts, bringing out emotions that we may not even know are buried there. God’s Word convicts us. He causes us to see into the very depths of our souls. When we hear His Word with believing hearts, we realize how deeply we have grieved our Lord by our rebellion. We grieve with Him, knowing that there is no one but ourselves to blame for suffering the consequences of our sin. God’s Word of Law helps us realize that we are nothing, that we have nothing without Him. Then God’s Word of grace calls us to celebrate as we are joined in faith to His body and gifted to continue His work in the world.

God had a plan, a plan to restore His people and to redeem them. When the Israelites returned to Jerusalem, God helped them restore the city and the temple to its former glory. Then He called them together to hear His Word. Though the hearing caused them to mourn, they were reminded that it was a day to rejoice. The salvation of God came to the people, they were set free to live and love and share everything they have with the world.

The plan was fulfilled for the people of Nehemiah’s day, but God’s people did not remain faithful. They needed a more permanent solution, a Jubilee that would be forever. So, God sent His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to be the Savior of us all. Not everyone believed, they demanded proof. The same is true today. Many people claim to believe in God, but they want to believe in the god they have imagined. They refuse to see the God that has been revealed in the scriptures and in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The good news is that we are saved from ourselves. God has given us the faith to believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of all His promises. He was the Messiah for whom they waited even if they did not believe. Nothing He did would have changed that because they did not have faith. They saw the authority of His words and the miraculous actions, but the people of Nazareth were not quite so ready to hear God’s Word.

These scriptures call us to be like the returning exiles rather than the Nazarenes. We can become part of what He is doing in this world because of the faith He has given us. He has been revealed in the scriptures and in His Son, and now He is revealed through us, ordinary people in an ordinary world speaking the most extraordinary message ever given. We might mourn our failure, but the promise is as true for us as it was for all those in the past, transforming our grief into joy.