Community Church Sermons
The Third Sunday after Epiphany – January 25, 2004
“The Messiah Challenge:
Luke 4:14-21
There is a story about a certain
man, very late in years, who was a devout Christian. More than anything, he
longed for the Lord to come again. He wanted so much to be reunited with his
wife Katherine who had died the year before. She had been the love of his life
for 60-something years. He was also
anxious to move beyond all the aches and pains of his own old age, and to be
young and strong again. And he wanted the world to be made right. Each day when
he sat alone at the kitchen table, dipping bread into his soup for lunch, he
would pray the Lord’s Prayer and linger over the part that says, “Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Then, he would
take his prayer journal and write in flowing letters, “Perhaps tomorrow!”
The man’s son, who loved him very much and came by the house to visit his dad every afternoon after work, would sometimes leaf through the pages of his dad’s journal. There, before his eyes, was the story of his father’s life – page after page of the day’s experiences contained in a stack of journals covering many years. Stories about his marriage…the birth of children…career experiences…his life as a Christian. And at the end of every day’s entry was written, in flowing letters, “Perhaps tomorrow!”
One afternoon in the late Autumn, the son came by his father’s house and immediately knew something was different. There was a kind of empty silence unlike anything he had ever heard before. And then he saw his dad, lying silently on the old sofa. It appeared as if he had died as he took his afternoon nap.
Well, the son took care of all the things you need to take care of in times like these – made all the phone calls, retrieved all the necessary paperwork, talked quietly with the people from the funeral home who came to get the body.
And then he was left alone in the old house, full of his parents’ humble treasures – the figurines, and furniture and fine things gathered over a lifetime…
…and, the journal on the kitchen table.
The son sat down, sweeping away the few crumbs of bread left from the last noontime meal his father had eaten. He opened the journal, page after page completed with his father’s handwritten hope: “Perhaps tomorrow!” The son smiled.
And then he turned to the last page. It was dated that very day.
Surprisingly, there was only one word written there, penned in his father’s beautiful handwritten scroll.
It simply said, “TODAY!”
One day, in the city of Nazareth, a group of people just like you and me went to church. Like us – and like the old man in the story – they were looking for the coming of God’s kingdom. – the day their lives, their nation, and their world would be made right – the day they’d be rescued from their frail humanity, set free from all the oppressive powers of the world, and gathered under the protective and life-giving presence of God Himself. To put it biblically, they were looking for God’s day of Jubilee – foreshadowed in history by the Torah’s call for a year of Jubilee every 50 years. In that year, all debts were to be forgiven, property returned to those who had to sell it out of poverty, the debtors prisons opened up, and the playing field of life leveled for everyone. It was a year for the practice of grace, forgiveness and redemption.
And now, these many years later and living under the Roman occupation, the citizens of Nazareth gathered every Sabbath to pray and to hear read the promise of God to bring them a new day of Jubilee. And they would leave the synagogue afterwards renewed in hope and thinking, “Perhaps tomorrow!”
But then, one Sabbath something amazing happened. A man named Jesus returned home to Nazareth where he had been raised, and he joined the crowd at church. As was the custom, he was invited to read the lection for the day, which happened to be a portion of Isaiah 61 that refers to this great Day of Jubilee:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to set free the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
It was a passage the people had heard many times over. It was one of their favorites because it spoke of the day the Lord’s Messiah would come and inaugurate the Day of Jubilee, the coming of God’s kingdom on earth. Oh, what a day it will be, that day when the Lord descends!
Perhaps tomorrow!
And then Jesus rolled up the scroll and gave it to the attendant. Then he sat down to teach. And this is what Jesus said:
“TODAY!”
TODAY!
Not tomorrow, out there in the future. Not yesterday, back there in the past.
But TODAY!
“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing!”
What a powerful thought to add to the challenges we are thinking about these days in our sermon series, “If Jesus Is The Messiah, Then…”
And I’d just fill in today’s blank with these simple words: “If Jesus really is the Messiah, then…we must receive and live in God’s TODAY! “
Now, some of us live in the past. I can tell you that, for me personally, the past has an increasingly strong suction-like effect. I think, as you get older, the past pulls at you. Not long ago, I was driving up to one of hospitals listening to Oldies on the radio, and they started playing “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter.” Remember that song? Herman’s Hermits! It was Number 17 on the Top 100 list of 1965. Well, as it played, that song took me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me back to a certain afternoon long ago. I was hanging out with my best friend Dennis Astrella at his house, listening to the latest hits on WORC – 1310 on the AM dial - when one of those life-changing experiences occurred. Four doors down from Dennis’ house, a new family pulled into the driveway of their new home. As they got out of the wood-grain paneled station wagon, we noticed a man, a woman….and a girl! And she was about our age! So Dennis and I – overdosing on testosterone - ran inside his house, got a pair of binoculars, hauled a ladder out of the garage, climbed up onto the roof – to the very top – and there, like spies peeking over the peak, we ZOOMED IN!
Well, Dennis could hardly breathe! He was instantly smitten! And in the silence of that hallowed moment, we heard playing on the radio below: “Mrs. Brown you’ve got a lovely daughter….”
Of course, the family wasn’t named Brown, and we didn’t know the daughter’s name. So we just called her, “Chick-Chick.” Later, we found out her name was Marilyn. And here’s an interesting sidebar. Dennis and Marilyn have now been married for over 30 years!
Do you ever have that experience – of being sucked back into the past? I think it’s a gift God gives us as we get older. One of the jobs of the elders of the tribe, you know, is to be the keeper of the memories. And memories are beautiful gifts. But we can’t ever go back and live in them again.
Some people wish they could go back to the earlier days of faith. How often we hear churches claim that they are trying to be “a New Testament church”, or that they are “going back to the Fundamentals”. Sometimes, I truly wish they could “give me that old time religion, that old time religion. It was good enough for grandpa, and its good enough for me.” And some of us long for the days of simple, child-like faith when it was easy to believe and there were many more answers than there were questions. Now, life has come along with all its realities and faith has changed for most of us. Maybe you’ve even lost your faith along the way. But as much as we might want to, we can’t ever really go back.
Then, of course, some of us live for the future. Kids often do, anxious for the day they’ll get a driver’s license, or be old enough to stay out late, or be able to go through life without mom and dad being like a ball and chain around their ankle. Remember when you were a kid and you just couldn’t wait for the next birthday? The next milestone? The next passage? The future always seemed to come so slowly!
Then you turn 50 and think, “Whoa!!! Slow down!”
You know, many of us live in the future with respect to our faith. We long for the day when God will be closer to us, and us to God. We look forward to the time when God’s justice will lift the poor and oppressed. We wish we could be better disciples - not as selfish, not as judgmental, not as sinful. Though I hesitate to use it as an illustration, have you noticed the time orientation of the Prayer of St. Francis, which we use as a prayer of dedication at the end of our services?
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…”
Oh, sometime in the future, someplace down the road, somewhere over the rainbow, help me to become something that I’m not today!
I pray that prayer a lot! Do you?
But faith is not about living in either the past or the future. This wonderful manifestation of God’s love that we call Christianity invites us to a far more radical way of living that is not about reaching for yesterday, and not about stretching for tomorrow. It is about living life TODAY!
“Today, the Day of Jubilee has come!” Jesus
declares. “There is good news for the poor, freedom for prisoners, recovery
of sight for the blind, liberty for the oppressed…it is the year of the Lord’s
favor! Not YESTERDAY…not TOMORROW….but NOW… TODAY!”
So if Jesus really is the Messiah, then you and I are living in a wonderful time! We are living in the time of God’s favor. It is a day of grace, forgiveness and redemption!
Now, if this is true, it can have a revolutionary effect upon your life! Let me share three quick ways.
First, it means that the life of faith is not about human sin, so much as it is about God’s merciful love!
When my friend Kim first showed up at church, she was a true human mess! She’d been raised in an abusive home, struck out on her own as a young girl, gotten swallowed up in the world of alcohol and drugs, and made a terrible mess of her life. One of the families in our church invited Kim to come with them to church, and reluctantly, Kim agreed. She later told me she probably never would have accepted the invitation if she hadn’t been stoned.
It was only a short while later that Kim committed her
life to Christ. I asked her how it happened, and this is what she said: “Since
the first day I came here, I’ve been treated like a person God accepts and
loves instead of as a person God can’t stand. All my life I’ve been told how
awful I am, but here, people make me feel beautiful and valued. If God is like
the people here, then I want God in my life.”
Every once in a while, I uncover a sermon from the early days of ministry that I haven’t managed to destroy. I don’t want there to be any records of all that! Like a lot of young ministers, I used to preach a lot about sin and how awful people are. I remember developing a sermon around the old cigarette ad that said, “You’ve come a long way, baby!” Repeating that mantra over and over again, I colorfully chronicled all the terrible failures of the human race, ending each verse with, “Oh, you’ve come a long way, baby!”
Strangely, it was a very popular sermon! One lady came out of church and said, “Marty, I didn’t know what sin was ‘till I heard YOU preach!” I’m only kidding. That’s a joke.
What people actually said was stuff like this. “That sermon is exactly what we need – some good old hellfire and brimstone! I wish my husband was here to hear that! He could‘ve used it!”
But the most common comment people made was this:“You really told it like it is!”
Well, maybe not. Nowadays, I think I misled people. You see, Jesus Christ is the one who tells it like it truly is, not the Marty Singley’s of this world. And what does Jesus say?
TODAY! Today is the day of God’s favor for humanity!
And for all the broken spirited Kim’s of this world, I pray for more preachers like Jesus and fewer like me because, if Kim had heard the “You’ve come a long ways, baby!” that day instead of the grace and mercy of Christ, she’d have been long gone. You see, the Gospel is not about human sin, but about divine grace, mercy and love offered freely to everyone!
Then, a second thing. This all means that the role of the Church is to provide an alternative community in the midst of a world that is blind to grace, mercy and love.
You know, all around us is the world of achievement, the world of striving, the world of always needing to measure up. And this world creates all sorts of divisions among people – the successes and the failures – the in-group and the out-group – the have’s and the have not’s – the righteous and the sinners.
I believe the greatest sin of the Church in our day is that we have incorporated that world into our own life and we seek to be the community of the successes, the in-people, the have’s, and the righteous.
But that’s not the way it is in God’s kingdom! Some of you may know that the rest of this Gospel story about Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth includes an attempt to kill him when he’s done preaching! Talk about a tough congregation – sort of like you guys!
Now why would anyone want to kill Jesus for what he said that day?
Well, did you hear? The Good News he comes to proclaim is not for the successes, the in-people, the have’s, and the righteous! The Good News is for the people who are left outside of that little church in Nazareth – the poor – the prisoners – the blind – the oppressed! These are the people who receive God’s favor!
Will we as a church dare listen to that claim? The most important people in our church are the people who are not in our church! And in order to reach those people with the Good News that Jesus brings, we have to stop acting like the rest of the world, and start acting like the community of God.
Total acceptance. Unconditional love. Unbounded mercy. Radical forgiveness.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “Gee, if we were to be an alternative community like that, we’d probably fall apart and fail!!”
And that brings me to the final point. You see, if all this that Jesus is saying is true, then the life of faith, and the life of the Church, are not about us.
They are about GOD!
It is GOD who sends the messenger. It is GOD who lifts the poor. It is GOD who frees the prisoners. It is GOD who heals the blind. It is GOD who releases the oppressed. And it is GOD who declares that TODAY IS THE DAY OF JUBILEE WHEN MY LOVE SWEEPS OVER THE LAND AND EMBRACES EVERY HUMAN CREATURE!
It is ALL about God!
The God of grace, and mercy, and healing, and love, and forgiveness so radical that no human sin can stand in its way!
If Jesus really is the Messiah, then it’s true, you know – faith is not about human sin but about God’s redeeming love – the role of the Church is to be a merciful alternative to the secular world of human division – and most important of all…
…if Jesus really is the Messiah, then God is more beautiful than we’ve ever imagined, and God will make it work!!
Would you open your life to Him? Will we let God work in our church?
Not yesterday. Not tomorrow.
TODAY!!!