Jesus: Jubilee for All

Sermon preached by the Reverend Greg Batson

January 25, 2004

Scripture:  Luke 4: 14-30

Preaching sermons is a tricky task.  Sometimes it just clicks.  First you get a really good scripture for the day. Then you find just the right balance of humor, real-world experiences, visual images, and stories to convey your main message.  You deliver it in an inspiring way that fills the people’s hearts and lifts their spirits.  And if you can do all of that in twenty...no, wait…. fifteen minutes or less, then you can feel good about your preaching that Sunday.

Of course, there is another side to consider.  You can also upset a lot of people with what you say from the pulpit.  Sometimes you read the scripture for Sunday and realize that the good news sounds like not-so-good news. The message will be hard to hear.  Then it’s hard to find illustrations and stories that fit.  Yet no matter how much you want to avoid it, the prophetic message of God beckons to be proclaimed.  So you preach the sermon and prepare yourself for the criticisms, or silence, to come. 

Today’s scripture from Luke contains both of these aspects for Jesus.  He has just returned from the desert to begin his public ministry in his hometown of Nazareth.  Jesus is a good, pious Jew, and he is attending his own synagogue on the Sabbath.  He is asked to read the selected scripture for the day, which happens to be from the prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to being 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.[1]

 Then Jesus sits down, everybody looks at him in silence, and then he says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21)

 Holy cow, Jesus had hit a homerun.  The congregation loved it!  It was the best sermon they had ever heard!  There are three main reasons, for their joyous reaction, I think.  First, Jesus is the hometown boy, Mary and Joseph’s son.  He has surprised everybody with his eloquence and insight.  This is a promising start for the young, if slightly eccentric minister.   If he continued like this, maybe he would be appointed to a “big steeple” synagogue in Jerusalem!

Second, the congregation loved the scripture.  When Isaiah first wrote these words over 500 years earlier, the Jews were returning to Jerusalem from their exile in Babylon.  It was their good news:  the release of the captives, the oppressed being set free. And when Jesus “proclaims the year of Lord’s favor,” they immediately know that he is talking about Jubilee.  The concept of Jubilee is found in the Torah in Leviticus 25.  It occurs every 50^th year, and in that year, all lands were returned to their ancestral owners and all slaves were set free.[2]  If the lands had been sold or placed in debt, the Hebrew Scriptures provided specific regulations on how they could be redeemed.  The Jubilee year wiped the slate clean for everyone.  It was a reminder that the land and all that it produced ultimately belonged to God, not individuals.

 So when Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” the people were ecstatic.  The preacher had just told them that a new Jubilee, God’s kingdom on earth, had begun.  Maybe now they could break the oppressive yoke that the Romans had place upon them.  They could return to their ancestral homelands and begin their lives again without fear.  This was truly good news for all the Jews of Israel.

Oh, and I said there were three reasons everybody loved this sermon.  The third is that it was the shortest sermon they had ever heard, only one sentence long.  I am sure that everybody loved that!

But, alas, if only Jesus had stopped while he was ahead!  He could have easily sung the final hymn, said the benediction, and shook the hands of his joyous, happy congregants as they departed.  But the story is not finished, for Jesus had actually just begun his sermon. 

The title of his sermon could be “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”’  In his sermon, Jesus uses two stories about the prophets Elijah and Elisha.  In the first story (1 Kings 17:18-24), a severe drought and famine has gripped the land for 3½ years.  Elijah is alone in the wilderness without food or water.  God tells Elijah to go to a poor widow who lives in the city of Zarephath.  It is important to know where Zarephath is located.  Zarephath is small town north of Israel on the coast of Phoenicia (now Lebanon).  In this story, the widow gives what little food she and her son have to Elijah, who then miraculously replenishes the grain and oil.  Elijah is saved, and later returns the favor when he resurrects the widow’s son from the dead. 

The second story that Jesus refers to (2 Kings 5:1-19) involves Elijah’s successor, Elisha, and his healing of Naaman, the top commander of the army in Syria.  Naaman is afflicted with a serous skin disease that no one in Syria can seem to cure.  In desperation, Naaman listens to the advice from a young girl from Israel who had been captured during one of his many battles. She says he should go to Israel and find the prophet Elisha; he could heal him.  So Naaman finally finds Elisha  (who won’t even come out of his tent to greet him), who tells him to go wash in the Jordan River seven times to be healed. Reluctantly Naaman does and behold, his flesh is made new.  In thanksgiving for his healing, Naaman promises to worship the God of Israel from now on.

Now the stories themselves are not upsetting.  What could be wrong with God miraculously providing food for the hungry or healing someone who is seriously ill?  But it is what Jesus says about these stories that turns his listeners against him.  Jesus tells them that there were many widows in Israel who could have fed Elijah, but God chose a widow who lived in Phoenicia. Jesus also says there were many lepers in Israel that Elisha could have healed, but God chose the top general of the Syrian army, an avowed enemy of Israel. You see, it’s the outsiders, the Gentiles, the non-Jews, that God saves in these stories.  The Jubilee of God’s Kingdom that Jesus had proclaimed earlier is not just for the good folks in the synagogue, but it is for all the other people of the world.[3]

How did that message play to those who heard Jesus’ sermon?  Not good.  Instead of handshakes and smiles in the narthex following the service, a riot ensued.  The congregation became an angry mob, so angry that they almost killed their hometown hero for his scandalous words.

Why were they so mad?  Well, let me give you an example.  Another way of saying what Jesus preached would be that the salvation God promises you and me, as Christians, is also available to all the non-Christians of the world. Our God is not just for us.  Our God is the One God of the Universe.  That means that God acts on behalf of not only church members, but also for all the un-churched outside our walls.  Yet we have a deep and long tradition in our faith that says Jesus Christ is the only means of salvation.  How do we reconcile those two different concepts?

I believe that how we interact with different faith traditions is one of the most pressing questions that we now face.  We have moved way beyond whether Roman Catholics and Presbyterians and Lutherans and Episcopalians and Methodists can work and pray together.  In this diverse, post-9/11 world, we must now work and pray together as Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and any other faith tradition you can think of.   The one question our youth asks when we begin confirmation class each year is, “What about my friends who follow other faiths?  How do we interact with them?”  The reality of our world is forcing us to change the way we think about God and different religions.  Christians do not have an exclusive claim on God’s love; God has the freedom to choose whomever God wishes.[4] 

So the next question is: “Does this make being a Christian meaningless?”  My answer to that question is “No.”  While Christianity might not be the only way to find God, it is the way that I have chosen.  The good news of Jesus Christ is what makes sense for me.  It is the story of God working through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit that saves me.  That is a message I am willing to share with anyone, anywhere, and I am unashamed to do so.  And if another person has not found their relationship with God, then I am called to offer them my witness and story as a Christian. At the same time, I hear Jesus warning me in this story not to think that I have found the only way to God.

Children often give voice to some the greatest doubts and questions that we have about God. One of my wife’s good friends from New York City recently e-mailed some notes that children wrote to their pastors.  Here are some of their concerns about other people.  Arnold, age 8 from Nashville, writes: “Dear Pastor, I know God loves everybody but God never met my sister.”  And Stephen, age 8 from Chicago, writes: “I would like to go to heaven someday because I know my brother won’t be there.”  And Carla, age 10 from Kansas, asks: “Are there any devils on earth? I think there may be one in my class.”

All of these comments are about how God deals with others who we don’t think are deserving of God’s attention.  The children are expressing what many adults think but don’t say:  “Shouldn’t we be given preference over the others, God?” Deep down, it just seems fair that if you invest all this time and energy into your faith, you should be first in line for the kingdom of heaven.  Yet Jesus is telling us that God is much bigger than that.  Our God is able to embrace everyone, to love everyone fully, to radically transcend our human limitations.

So what does it take to be part of God’s Jubilee?  The common thread that I find in the scripture this morning is that love and mercy crosses all boundaries.  The widow gives up everything she has to feed Elijah.  The mighty Naaman is willing to humble himself before God to be healed based on the advice of a poor, slave girl.  When we are willing to move outside of our own self-centeredness to seek the good in others, to help others in need, then we enter into a true relationship with God.  It is that kind of love that heals the blind and releases the captives and sets the oppressed free.  Then the scripture really is fulfilled, when we activate God’s love by sharing it with others.

In my recent trip to New York City, I met again with 59 of other Christian ministers from across the country for a time of growth and renewal.  Part of the program included a Bible study of the Hebrew Scriptures, which was led by Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City.  It just so happened that we were studying a story about Elijah after he had just preached his greatest sermon ever.  Elijah had converted thousands to the God of Israel when he defeated the followers of Baal on Mt. Carmel.  Yet now he was fugitive, running for his life from Ahab and Jezebel.  He was alone and depressed.  “What more can I do”, he asks God?  Then Elijah finds God on Mt. Sinai…not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire…but in the still, small voice within him.

The Rabbi reminded us that God is not found in our words, no matter how great the sermon, but in our smallest actions.  God is in the holding of someone’s hand when they are sick or in grief.  God is in our listening to a child as they share a story from their day at school. God is in helping a stranger on the street in one fleeting moment.  That is where we find God.  Sharing acts of love and kindness with one another in our daily lives is what God wants from us.

So Jesus began his ministry in his hometown, not with hugs and handshakes, but with threats and scorn.  Of course, his ministry ended in the Jerusalem in the same way.  Yet his words were filled with so much truth that they have a similar impact upon us today - different time, different place, different circumstances, but the same God who loves everyone.  May we love each other in the same way.   Amen.