SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR

CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

ON THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

24 JANUARY 2010

“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  (Luke 4:21)

              There are probably three good reasons why the congregation in the synagogue at Nazareth warmed up to Jesus when he preached his first sermon there.  The first had to do with who he was.  The people took pride in Jesus because he had grown up in that community.  It was an example of “home boy makes good.”  I remember the first time I preached in St. Philip’s, Brooklyn, the parish in which I had grown up.  My text was “Who do men say that I am?” and I don’t think that my sermon was particularly inspired.  But no matter.  I was looked upon that day not as Harold the newly-ordained priest, but as someone who had been an altar boy there, as Muriel’s son or the nephew of Hilda who sang in the choir.  The congregation, which actually included my first grade teacher, was proud because I had grown up in their midst.  So when the people in Nazareth said, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph the carpenter?” they were claiming Jesus as one of their own.

              The second reason for the people’s delight was what we might call Jesus’ deportment (a word we don’t hear very often anymore --- I guess parents don’t talk about it to their children any more, and it shows!)  Jesus read the Scriptures with a sense of authority, and we can imagine, in flawless Hebrew.  Hebrew, of course, was the liturgical language, with which only rabbis and the most learned of the community were familiar; the everyday language of the Jewish community was Aramaic.  Jesus was every inch a rabbi.

              But the people were most impressed by Jesus’ sermon itself.  His homiletic offering, it should be noted, was a little lopsided.  Normally a preacher cites a short verse as text, and then launches into a comparatively lengthy but hopefully edifying and inspiring development of the meaning of that text.  Jesus, however, cites a rather large chunk of the 61st chapter of Isaiah, and then delivers a one-sentence sermon in plain Aramaic --- so that everybody could understand perfectly: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Note, by the way, that Jesus, according to the liturgical practice of the synagogue, stands to read the words of the prophet, showing a respect for Scripture much as we show when the Gospel is proclaimed, but when it’s time for the sermon, he assumes the posture of authority; he sits – kind of like the pope delivering a pronouncement ex cathedra.  (Maybe we’ll try seated sermons here at Calvary, and see how they go over!) But back to his sermon: In these few words, Jesus is saying, “The portion of Scripture you have just heard is about me!”  Jesus was claiming to be God’s agent of salvation, the fulfillment of the Messianic promise.  Obviously the people got more from that sermon than they bargained for!  This is why we read in the very next verse, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” 

              So Jesus comes home, wows the crowd, and they sing his praises.  And from there, encouraged by their adulation, he goes about the Galilean countryside healing the sick, performing miracles, and ushering in the Kingdom.  End of story.   Well, not quite.  The story continues.  In next week’s Gospel, the story is picked up where we leave it off today, and, we might say, takes a turn for the worse.  But next week, because we are celebrating Sam Shoemaker’s feast day, the normal lessons will be suppressed, and we won’t hear the continuation of this story.  But not to worry; I’ll fill you in.

              St. Luke tells us that Jesus had more to say: He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'"  Then Jesus added: "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.”  Then, after citing a few examples with which the people would be familiar, Luke comments: “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”

              What happened?  Why did the crowd, and not any old crowd, but the people of his home parish, turn on him?  What accounted for their fickle behavior, behavior which Jesus would no doubt think of later, when the Palm Sunday crowd strew palms in his way and the Good Friday crowd (same people) shouted “Crucify him!”  The problem is that the examples that Jesus gave were examples of two of Israel’s prophets who ministered to Gentiles at a time when the people of Israel were in need.  The Nazarenes were upset because Jesus challenged --- indeed repudiated their belief that the Messiah had come to minister to their needs only.  They were astounded, perhaps, that Jesus declared himself the Messiah --- but that was not the problem.  The problem is that they would not have the Messiah all to themselves.  They would have to share him with the despised and unworthy Gentiles, and maybe even play second-fiddle to them.  Besides, thought the synagogue folk, their people had suffered under persecution at the hands of some of those Gentiles, especially the Romans, and here comes Jesus saying that he had come to save these people, too.

              If we understand the Nazarenes’ reaction, we have a head-start on understanding the whole New Testament, because this theme returns again and again.  Jesus is constantly challenging the assumptions of those who believe that their pedigree or lineage entitles them to Jesus’ special favor, but he tells them again and again, “The last shall be first and the first last.”  Remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard [Mt. 20:1-16]?  The workers who signed on at the crack of dawn were put out big time because those who started working just before sunset got the same pay as they did.  Grasping the gist of this lesson prepares us for more than understanding the New Testament; it prepares us for the Christian life.  It means we can better understand the pronouncement of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, who said “The Church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of people not its members.” Or we can better understand the wisdom of a somewhat lesser known theologian, Martha Willis, a member of my former parish, St. Monica’s, Washington, who said this when someone raised the question of the “unfairness” of death-bed penitents getting into heaven along with those who had been faithful Christians all their lives.  Martha said that the death-bed penitent had never known the joy of being a Christian!

              The next time you hold a Bible in your hands, open it to the Gospel of Matthew, the first book of the New Testament; and then look at how many more pages are on your left than on your right.  The Hebrew Scriptures are probably five times as voluminous as the New Testament.  I say this to ask the question of why, out of all the prophets, major and minor, the Torah, the books of history, did Jesus choose this portion of Isaiah to be not only the text of his first sermon, but the blueprint for his ministry?  I think it is because he saw himself as coming to minister to the least, the lost and the last of society, to ensure that everybody has a place at the Table, or in the words of a great spiritual, “Plenty good room, plenty good room, plenty good room in the Master’s kingdom.”

              But the poor to whom Jesus is proclaiming the Gospel are both those who are financially destitute as well as the poor in spirit.  The captives whom Jesus is called to release are not just those behind bars, but those who have become captive to those forces that have taken over their selves, their souls, their bodies. The blind whose sight Jesus promises to restore are not only those with damage to their optical nerves, but those incapable to seeing their neighbors’ needs, or their duty to help them.

              Walter Decoster Dennis, late bishop suffragan of New York, is probably best remembered today as the distinguished chair of the commission on constitution and canons and as the author of the Dennis Canon on church property, which has figured so prominently in what I have called “the recent unpleasantness” in The Episcopal Church.  But I remember Walter as a friend and mentor, a great preacher, a man with a passion for justice. I learned much sitting at his feet, or more accurately in the wing chair in his living room on the close of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  In a sermon on Jesus’ inaugural address at Nazareth, Bishop Dennis called Jesus’ words a “summons…bounded up with the afflicted, the suffering, the underprivileged, the prisoners, the disinherited, those who are spiritually, economically and socially captive.”

              Reminding us that The Episcopal Church can be trendy, “tossed to and fro with every blast of doctrine,” he declared that the essence of the Gospel is summed up in these words of Isaiah, and then he added “That will be the Gospel after all the theologians have completed their scholarly tasks; that will be the Gospel when all of the new fads including the new-age religions are spent; that will be the Gospel when every inter-faith dialogue has drawn up it final resolution; that will be the Gospel when everyone in and out of the church has had their Myers-Briggs test; that will be the Gospel when every task force, committee and commission has accomplished its objectives and when every axe has been ground; and that will be the Gospel when all have completed our marches --- many to different drummers.”

              Today’s Gospel reminds us not only of Jesus’ job description but the job description of all of us who profess and call ourselves Christians.

              Let us pray:

                            Set our feet on lofty places; gird our lives that they may be

                            Armored with all Christ-like graces, in the fight to set men free.

                            Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, that we fail not man nor thee.  AMEN.

                                                                                                                                                      Hymnal 1940, 524.