St. John’s Lutheran Church
26 January 2025 + Lectionary 3c
Luke 4:14-21, [22-30]; Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19
Rev. Josh Evans
Words have power.
For the community returning from exile,
people of every gender and age, of every status and ability,
hearing the words of the Torah read by Ezra the priest
elicits a variety of responses.
This is not passive reading, but participatory worship:
The people stand to their feet and lift up their hands,
they raise their voices in assent – “Amen, amen!” – and they weep,
they bow down and worship.
These words have power.
“The law of the Lord is perfect,”
the psalmist declares,
“reviving the soul…
rejoicing the heart…
enlightening the eyes…
sweeter than honey…”
God’s words have power.
There is power in Jesus’ reading –
words not his own, but from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah,
words from his religious tradition.
These are Jesus’ first public words in the gospel of Luke –
his inaugural address, his mission statement, his manifesto –
spoken into an ordinary synagogue assembly –
a diverse assembly of Jews and also Gentiles, of women and men, of religious leaders and those considered “unclean,”
spoken under ordinary circumstances –
following the customary liturgy of the synagogue,
spoken by an ordinary hometown kid coming home again –
“Is this not Joseph’s son?”
Jesus chooses the words he reads carefully,
unrolling the scroll to the exact place he wants to read from,
and “perhaps [one commentary suggests] in a tone that emphasizes its application to him, inflecting the pronoun ‘me’” he begins to read:
“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 set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And then adds his own stunningly brief commentary:
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Mic. Drop.
As New Testament scholar Mitzi J. Smith describes:
“In Nazareth of Galilee, to a synagogue audience of men, women, leaders, noble folks, the poor, the diseased and possessed, the wealthy, freedpersons, masters, and enslaved, Jesus preaches an abolitionist message […] passionately, boldly, and with conviction, bringing the text to life.”
These words have power.
Their eyes “fixed on him” in amazement.
Maybe they heard words reminiscent of the Jubilee Year –
an ancient practice detailed in the book of Leviticus –
ushering in a time of freeing persons who were enslaved, the cancellation of debts, the redistribution of property, even the renewal of creation itself.
With echoes of Jubilee,
Jesus’ words announce good news,
which “comes first of all not to the free but to captives,
not to the comfortable but to the disadvantaged and downtrodden,
not to the strong but to the vulnerable.” (SALT)
With echoes of his mother’s song, earlier in Luke’s gospel,
Jesus’ words enact the good news of which Mary sings:
“God has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:52-53)
Maybe that’s why –
only a handful of verses later, in the very same scene –
when they realize the full meaning of his words,
that this is good news not contained to a singular “chosen” people but meant for all,
they try to hurl Jesus off a cliff.
Words have power.
And words also have consequences.
***
Maybe you also heard Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s own powerful words, from her homily preached this past Tuesday at a Service of Prayer for the Nation at the Washington National Cathedral.
In a time of deep division – on the morning after the inauguration, itself the culmination of a contentious presidential election – Bishop Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington since 2011, spanning over three different administrations in her own backyard, isn’t naive to our present reality, as she admits in her homily:
“Those of us gathered here in this Cathedral are not naive about the realities of politics. When power, wealth and competing interests are at stake; when views of what America should be are in conflict; when there are strong opinions across a spectrum of possibilities and starkly different understandings of what the right course of action is, there will be winners and losers when votes are cast or decisions made that set the course of public policy and the prioritization of resources.”
Into this reality, Bishop Budde’s prophetic and pastoral words go on to call us to unity, rooted in honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, honesty in both private conversation and public discourse, and humility…
…culminating in the soundbite heard ‘round the world – a “plea” for mercy and compassion at the end of her homily, directed not only to the president sitting in the front row, but also to anyone listening:
“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are transgender children who fear for their lives […] those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away [and] those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.”
Words have power.
And words also have consequences –
with some quick to denounce the bishop’s words,
to hurl her off the metaphorical cliff,
and one US representative even going so far as to draft a resolution to “condemn” her homily for “promoting political bias instead of advocating the full counsel of biblical teaching.”
Let me be perfectly clear:
Mercy and compassion are “biblical teaching.”
Seeking justice and advocating for the most vulnerable among us is biblical.
Speaking out against words and executive orders and policies that blatantly disregard the full humanity of our immigrant and LGBTQIA+ neighbors is biblical.
“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 set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
These words are gospel words,
pointing us to the good news of a God who came into human history
to stand in solidarity with the poor and the marginalized,
the vulnerable and the afraid, the cast-aside and the forgotten.
Because, in this reign of God, to paraphrase one historian,
there are no outcasts cast out far enough to make Jesus shun them.
Jubilee, with its primary focus on those who are most vulnerable, is ultimately good news for everyone, for the whole creation. Said another way, in the well-known words of the 19th century American Jewish author and activist Emma Lazarus, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”
Words have power.
Jesus’ inaugural words are nothing less than a reminder of who we are as church and why we are here, especially fitting today as we celebrate Reconciling in Christ Sunday, with welcoming and affirming congregations across this church, and recommit ourselves to the ongoing work of being an ever more inclusive church for all of God’s beloved children.
There is no doubt that the words of our welcome statement, reaffirmed unanimously by this congregation on October 15, 2023, are powerful and needed:
Trusting in the extravagant grace of God that sets us free, we affirm the sacred worth and dignity of our siblings in Christ – of all sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, racial and ethnic identities, ages, abilities, and socio-economic statuses.
We confess the church’s complicity in systems that harm God’s people, including homophobia and transphobia, sexism, racism and white supremacy, and ableism.
Together, as a community of Jesus followers, rooted in grace, we commit ourselves to the work of racial equity and anti-racism and to confronting and dismantling all systems of injustice and oppression in all we do and say.
In a church body that hasn’t always been a safe place for its LGBTQIA+ members, and in many places still isn’t, we need to say these words out loud.
We fly a rainbow flag out front – and that’s good and important – but no one sees that unless they come here, so that’s why we go to them and bear witness to God’s extravagant love at Capital Pride.
Words have power.
So does action.
“Prayer is not passive; it’s an act of hope,” Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton reminds us. “Prayer reminds us to ground ourselves in God’s promise. We pray for strength, to love unconditionally and to serve one another. As we lift up our petitions, we must also act—advocating for policies that affirm the dignity of every person and standing against actions that demean or exclude.”
In the face of words and actions that seek to harm our neighbors,
the church is called to speak words of liberation and justice,
to proclaim in word and deed God’s extravagant love for all.
The church is and must be a sanctuary – a safe place – for all,
gathered in the name of the One who calls each of us beloved,
and sent to put that love into action for the sake of those who are hurting and afraid.
The words we say,
and preach, and pray, and sing,
have power –
power to remind us of the belovedness that is irrevocably ours in the waters of baptism, and power to sweep us up – as church together – in the current of our baptismal covenant to continue to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
