epiphany 3 Year C

Nehemiah 8: 1-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 12: 12-31
Luke 4: 14-21

The Spirit saturates today’s readings. The Spirit is on Jesus in the Nazareth synagogue; the Spirit is the foundation of Paul’s theology of the Church as a body in 1 Corinthians; we are meant to read the presence and activity of the Spirit both in the return from exile and in the reading and interpretation of the Law in Nehemiah; and of course, Law and Spirit properly belong together in Psalm 19.

But the question raised by the readings is what sort of work the Spirit does. Put differently, it’s a question about God. What sort of God is God? What does salvation mean? What are God’s plans and priorities? And the message of Luke’s gospel is that we cannot know the answer to these questions outside of Jesus. As much as Luke’s gospel is the story of Jesus, the purpose of his telling it is so that we understand who God is. Jesus, Luke tells us, reveals and revolutionises our understanding of God. Look at the way Luke interweaves Jesus as God’s Son, Jesus and God’s Spirit, and Jesus and Old Testament (I use the phrase deliberately in the context of Luke’s gospel) categories. We’re faced with the tension in the gospel between continuity and discontinuity: between the way in which Jesus fulfils the Old Covenant and is, at the same time, the bringer of something new that the old cannot adequately contain, explain or cope with.

The New Covenant of grace – fulfilment, not abolition
Psalm 19 is a hymn to the glory of God’s creation. Yet in vv7ff it flows naturally into a hymn of praise for the Law: the Law is perfect; its precepts “rejoice the heart”; it is “more desirable than gold – than lots of it!”, and “sweeter than honey and the delicious, sweet drippings of the honeycomb”. Now, does that sound like the typical Protestant/Christian sermon on the Law? Is that the typical “Luther’s-experience-relived-today” of the Law being this terrible burden that brings guilt and terror, which Jesus thankfully does away with?

My point is that it was Luther’s experience – but it was neither Luke’s nor Paul’s! To call the Old Testament (covenant) “old” is not to denigrate it; to contrast the new with the old is not to run a contrast between good and bad. For the Israelites, the Law, like creation, was proof of Yahweh’s grace and goodness. It was liberative – life-giving! It was something in which to delight and rejoice. It evoked wonder and awe at the grace of God –the unmerited mercy-love that Yahweh had shown out of nowhere other than the goodness of the divine heart!

That is why both Ezra and Nehemiah tell the people that the reading of the Law is an occasion for rejoicing, not weeping. It’s party-time! The Law is not there to condemn, but as a pledge that “the joy of the Lord is their strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). The very presence of the Law is grace. It is not supposed to condemn – even though it inevitably judges. But it is gracious because it expresses the character of Yahweh. It is Yahweh’s pledge of love for the people – despite who and how they are! Therefore, on this solemn occasion, the appropriate response of the people is to feast rather than weep.

Feasting. I’m not sure that we’re necessarily very good at unrestrained rejoicing! We either pig out or we “feast with a conscience” – a bit like Augustine having sex but trying to make sure he didn’t enjoy it! Have you noticed how much feasting goes on in CS Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles? He taught me something about “rejoicing in the Lord” through that. It illuminated the Corinthian correspondence, for example: clearly, the Corinthians were into feasting in a big way. And Paul, in the chapter before today’s passage (ie in 1 Corinthians 11) takes them to task (vv17ff). Note that his problem isn’t that they feasted- rather, it’s that they did so without paying attention to the fact that the Church was a Body and that some of the members (the poor members) were being overlooked, neglected and left out. That’s why the next chapter is an affirmation of the interconnectedness of the membership. In other words, it was the neglect, not the feasting that Paul found problematic!

I’ll return to that theme in a moment, because it has a direct connection with the gospel. The point I want to make here is that we don’t handle the tension between “old” and “new-in-Jesus” very well. Christian history has been littered with a shameful denigration of the “old” covenant that has gone hand-in-hand with anti-Semitism. It behoves us to have that in the forefront of our minds when we read Luke’s gospel, because Luke is the evangelist of the “new vs old” par excellence. The difference between Luke and many subsequent Christian readers of the gospel is that they do not notice his emphasis on continuity with the past. It isn’t that the “old” is worthless – or “worth less”! It is venerable and it is profoundly expressive of God’s grace. It is simply insufficient to the new task – that of understanding just how astonishingly and outrageously gracious God is! For that, we have to look at Jesus, and re-read the “old” as fulfilled and surpassed. There is a genuine newness; a genuine “something more”. But it adds to what we know of God; it does not take away or wipe out the “old”.

The messianic manifesto
The sermon in Nazareth is Jesus’ first public appearance since his baptism. This is where he sets out his stall. And it’s where the first major surprise and upset takes place – for Jesus’ audience and for us, the readers. What is surprising is the contrast between what we’re expecting and what we actually get. What are we expecting? Judgement! John the Baptist, remember, has linked three things in Jesus: messiah, Holy Spirit, and judgement. Immediately after his announcement about the coming Messiah, Jesus is baptised, the Holy Spirit descends and the voice from heaven declares Jesus to be God’s Son (3: 21-22). No mistaking it, is there? Jesus is revealed as the main character. Something radically new is happening here. The Messiah is here – and he’s nothing less than the Son of God! And as the Son of God, he’s “full of the Holy Spirit”. Chapter 4 begins, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil” (4:1-2a). He emerges from that encounter strengthened. Luke begins the public ministry narrative: “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee …He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone” (4: 14a-15).

We can’t miss Luke’s point: Jesus is brimming with the Spirit! He’s making one heck of an impact – he’s the hottest news around in next to no time! What we perhaps do miss (because we’re jaded readers who know the story too well) is that Jesus’ audience in the Nazareth synagogue was expecting their Messiah to give them something very different from what they got! Luke’s set it – and us – up beautifully. Jesus + Messiah + Holy Spirit = radical judgement. Jesus is the super-prophet – the one who has come not only to announce but to enact God’s angry judgement!

And he starts well! He picks up the scroll and chooses Isaiah 61. It’s a good text for a prophet – your classic “good news and bad news”. Jesus reads out the first two verses, and sits down to teach. Luke says “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him”. Can’t you see it? Everyone waiting in hushed expectation, desperate to hear what he was about to say? Luke isn’t exaggerating here. The dramatic tension is there in the synagogue. It’s electric – and Jesus has yet to open his mouth. Why?

The answer is because of what Jesus has already said – or rather not said! He’s stopped at 61:2a. And the bit he’s left out is the line “… and the day of vengeance of our God”! Do you see? Jesus is supposed to be vengeance of God incarnate. Here he is, laying out his stall at the onset of his ministry – and it’s precisely the “vengeance” bit (the winnowing fork, threshing and burning) that he chooses to omit. No wonder they were waiting with bated breath. No wonder Luke goes on to say, “All of them were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth” (4:22). Prophets were not supposed to do that – especially a super-prophet, brimful with the Holy Spirit!

Right at the outset, Luke draws our attention to what is new in Jesus. His prophetic message stands in stark contrast to that of the Elijah-figure whom we have already met (John the Baptist). And the contrast is between judgement and grace. People hear words of grace – and find it amazing!
It goes rapidly downhill from here, of course – or, rather, uphill! By the end of the sermon, they take him up a hill to throw him off and kill him – prefiguring what is to come, and an indicator of how this grace is finally going to be received. But what we need to note is how new and astonishing this message of grace is.

The Jubilee proclamation
Let’s turn our attention to the manifesto itself. There’s widespread agreement among scholars that Jesus sees his ministry as the enactment of the Jubilee Year – the year of release. It’s been very fruitful – it was the foundation for the Jubilee Campaign to eradicate poverty at the end of the last millennium. It’s been central to liberationist exegesis and theology.
What’s easy to miss, though, is the way in which Jesus reinterprets the Jubilee and the place of the poor, just as he reinterprets “Messiah”. The astonishing thing about the Jubilee is that it includes the poor and dispossessed. They are genuinely – and importantly – part of it. Their participation in its benefits is fundamental to it being the Jubilee. The Jubilee is radically inclusive – indeed, there is evidence that it was never actually celebrated.

What Jesus does, however, is not just to include the poor, but to privilege them. Jesus does not only include them as Messiah: he is Messiah because he is the Messiah for the poor – the Liberator. He makes the poor and the marginalised the touchstone of his mission. His gospel is not just good news that includes the least (that would be good news in itself, but would make Jesus no more than one of the prophets): it is Good News for the least first. In Jesus’ kingdom – God’s kingdom – the last are first, rather than just somewhere in the queue.

This is what people found so offensive about Jesus. It wasn’t that he was egalitarian – rather like the minister who makes sure she visits all the people in her charge – but that he made the poor and marginalised his closest friends. So if you wanted Jesus, you had to take his friends as well! Jesus’ mission was to and for the unwanted and rejected – those beyond the pale. And to make it absolutely clear, he uses as a sermon illustration the widow at Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian as examples from the ministries of Elijah and Elisha (who are both important figures in Luke’s presentation of Jesus). The point is that they are outsiders. That’s a point not missed by his hearers in Nazareth, who start out amazed at his graciousness and end up trying to lynch him! Grace is fine for them – but not for the outsiders!

This incident is more than Jesus’ manifesto. It’s a vignette that encapsulates and anticipates his whole ministry. His mission and his priorities will eventually cost him his life. The religious people will balk at his passion for the poor. He will become an outsider, beyond the pale.

The difference between Jesus and the prophets on this subject is a bit like economic theory. How can everyone in society benefit? The conservative answer is trickle-down economics: make the rich richer, and the “overspill” will eventually trickle down to the very poorest. The liberal answer is about the greatest good of the greatest number: organise your economics for the benefit of the greatest number possible. Jesus’ answer is far more radical: include the least first – those who fall through every safety net in the system – and you’ve actually got a real chance of including everybody.

That’s grace, and that’s God. “God is Love” means that God’s concern is for the neediest first. That means that those of us who are less needy – and who are least used to having to stand aside for others – have to get in line behind the neediest. It’s a descending order of need: neediest first, least needy to the back of the line! It’s loving our neighbour as ourselves – which means not being prepared to accept less for our neighbour than we would for ourselves. It’s about doing to others as we’d like to be done to – putting neighbour before ourselves to ensure that, whatever happens, our neighbour doesn’t go without. It’s about losing our lives in order to save them – about abandoning a system of just deserts in favour of a system that privileges the neediest, and in so doing, sharing in God’s kingdom.

We are all one body (1 Corinthians 12: 12-31)
Paul’s way of saying this is to use the image of the body with its different members. It’s a good image. We understand just what he means when he talks about “inferior members”. His point, though, is that the interconnectedness of the body means that we instinctively preserve the “inferior members” more carefully for the sake of the whole body. And so he contrasts member-status and honour, rather than equating them: “God has so arranged the body, giving greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension in the body, but the members may have the same care for one another” (vv24-5).
His point here is about mutual indispensability. When it comes to our bodies, we know we cannot do without every bit of us – no matter how small, insignificant or apparently “dishonourable”. His remarks about “clothing the weaker members with more honour” are a typically Pauline ribald way of referring to genitals: we don’t display them, so we “clothe them with honour” (hide them!).

Remember, though, that this isn’t just a case of Paul sitting down to “write a theology of the body”! It’s a discussion that arises immediately from the way in which the Corinthians discriminated among themselves, reflecting non-Christian social patterns of ascribing unequal value to people. In other words, his image and discussion here reflects Jesus’ values as a contrast. Jesus would have done the opposite – therefore Communion is desecrated because it has become something other than the sacramental expression of the radical inclusiveness of Jesus’ message of the kingdom. The priorities that the Corinthians are living by are the very priorities that almost got Jesus lynched at Nazareth and eventually got him killed in Jerusalem!

Taking sides
Many Christians are offended at the notion of “taking sides” with the poor and oppressed. They suppose that the Christian way is to be neutral and disinterested – to see good and bad in both or all “sides”. The notion that we ought to “side” with the Palestinians in the present conflict, for instance, causes offence and worry.
The issue of sides, though is a key one when you’re talking about power relationships. Jesus is here at Nazareth. He’s talking about the ways in which people who have power abuse those who haven’t. He takes sides – he privileges the victims. “Blessed are you poor”, says Luke’s Jesus, “and woe to you rich!” We will encounter a Jesus who cuts across easy, liberal notions of even-handedness.

Yet that is not to say that the gospel is not for everyone! It’s about how it is Good News for rich and poor alike! Let me put it this way: for Jesus, the liberation of the oppressed and the eradication of poverty is ultimately Good News for all. It liberates the poor and oppressed from the things that make their lives a living hell. And, at the same time, it frees the rich and the oppressors from their own enslavement to wealth, privilege and power.

Christian unity is not just about people from different denominations being nice to each other and learning to value each other’s insights. It’s also about the eradication of divisions of race, class, income, gender, sexuality etc that divide the Christian communities and make a mockery of the unity we proclaim in Christ through the Spirit – and live out and celebrate at the Lord’s table.

Amen.