Choose Your Own Adventure: The Sermon that Makes Everyone Mad (MPLS)

Luke 4:14-30

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“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 let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

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.

Dear beloved of God, grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus who is the Christ. Amen.

Early this week I received an email from Pastor Dan Ruth, the executive director at Lutheran Partners in Global Ministry. LPGM has long been an important partner for Bethlehem, helping to provide access to quality education for girls and young women in many places around the world, like India, Guatemala and in the Central African Republic.

In the email, Dan detailed how there is a humanitarian crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR). Currently, more than half the country’s population is in desperate need of humanitarian assistance and protection due to violence, population displacement, surging food prices triggered by COVID-19’s impact, and declining agricultural production caused by floods.

Very quickly the outreach team and the Bethlehem Foundation made funds available to help. Each group is contributing $5,000 to help meet the need. Today, I am asking you to make an additional gift to go to support these efforts. I’m hoping that when we’re done Bethlehem will be able to send $15,000 to LPGM to help meet their goal of $40,000 by Friday.

These dollars will help provide food kits and basic necessities for 658 displaced people. These will be distributed by the social service arm of the Lutheran Church in the CAR. I’m so grateful and proud of how quickly the Bethlehem Foundation and the outreach team were able to respond. I am also fully confident that together we will be able to send at least $5,000 additional dollars to meet this critical need. Thank you. Bethlehem always shows up to meet these opportunities in extraordinarily generous ways.

And yet, it won’t be enough. It’s never enough. Because the need is so great. The disparities between those who have and those who don’t seem to be getting bigger. You will help to save these people from starvation and that’s amazing.

But it’s not even close to a year of jubilee. Jubilee is a seldom practiced but shockingly beautiful biblical notion of restoration and redistribution. It’s what Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel reading from Luke. When Jesus says that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, he’s proclaiming a year of jubilee. A year of beefed-up, tricked-out sabbath in which the slate is wiped clean

Jubilee shows up in the Book of Leviticus, Chapter 25. It was a practice that built on the weekly practice of sabbath rest. You would work six days a week, and on the seventh, you’d rest. You’d work the land for six years and on the seventh year, you’d let the land rest. Every 50 years, or after seven cycles of seven sabbath years, everything would be restored, debts would be forgiven, slaves would be released, land would be given back to the families that originally owned it. It was a clearing of the slate and leveling of the playing field, a restart.

That’s what Jesus is announcing in his first sermon at his home congregation. Jubilee. And people are here for it. They’re like cool cool, we know that concept we could use a little jubilee in our lives, a clean slate, a fresh start, a putting everything right.

But then things get messy and complicated and conflicted. Jesus says to the folks in his home congregation, it’s not for you. Or maybe it’s not first for you. Or it’s not only for you.  

What’s clear is that what Jesus is about here is not just for the in-crowd. It’s not just for the select few. It’s for the foreigners and the outsiders and the folks who don’t know that the promise of jubilee, of restoration, of redemption, exists. Jesus is out to liberate those who need it most, who haven’t heard it yet, or those who’ve been told it’s not for them.

Jesus’ people don’t like it. They get mad. Real mad. Like murderous rage kind of mad. They take Jesus to the edge of town and tried to hurl him off a cliff.

Jubilee is a release. A letting go. It’s setting people free from the things that hold them captive. Their debt. Systems of oppression. Structures that concentrate power in the hands of the few. The delusion that any of this really belongs to us.

Sometimes it’s a joyous release. Other times it’s a painful letting go. The rage bubbles up, the fear creeps in, our pride and jealousy and suspicion clings tightly to our hearts. The blood starts to boil and it stops our ears. We can’t hear the promise of release. We can only see the threat of someone taking what belongs to me.

This order of things works for many of us, it works really well for some of us. But what Jesus announces is a way of being, a way of living, a way of loving that works for everyone. And that’s really scary.

But it’s also incredibly beautiful and it’s possible in and through Jesus. Jesus has set us free, we’ve been released, we just have to live that way.

I am so grateful for the generosity of this congregation. The way we respond when a need arises. When our siblings in Christ are in a moment of crisis and they call out for help, whether it’s here in Minneapolis or halfway around the world you all respond. It’s good and beautiful and holy. But it’s not enough. 

In baptism we get drawn into God’s life of jubilee, we get to work toward the fullness of that reality together, each and every day.  

The president of the Lutheran Church in the Central African Republic wrote to share this. He said:

In the city of Baboua, the Theology and Biblical school shelters more than 300 people, and around Bouar three to four sites shelter almost 400 others in miserable conditions. And as Church we want to come to their aid. Unfortunately, our means are limited and we appeal to you.

I yearn for a day when our siblings in Christ don’t have to appeal to us to meet their most basic needs. Then the promises of Jesus will be fulfilled in their totality. That will be a day of jubilee. Until that day let us join our God is the work of letting go, releasing and celebrating the gift God has given us. Amen.