The Year of the Lord's Favor

The Year of the Lord’s Favor The Dover Church
January 27, 2013 –3rd  Sunday after Epiphany   Luke 4: 14-21

A pastor was sitting at his desk writing a sermon on providence when he heard something that sounded like an explosion. Soon he saw people running to and fro in a panic and discovered that a dam had burst, the river was flooding, and the people were being evacuated.
The pastor saw the water begin to rise in the street below. He had some difficulty suppressing his own rising sense of panic, but he said to himself, “Here I am preparing a sermon on providence and I am being given an occasion to practice what I preach. I shall not flee with the rest. I shall stay right here and trust in the providence of God to save me.”
By the time the water reached his window, a boat full of people came by. “Jump in, Pastor,” they shouted. “Ah no, my friends,” said the pastor confidently. “I trust in the providence of God to save me.”
The pastor did climb to the roof, however, and when the water got up there another boatload of people went by, urging the pastor to join them. Again he refused.
Then he climbed to the top of the belfry. When the water came up to his knees, an officer in a motorboat was sent to rescue him. “No thank you, officer,” said the pastor, with a calm smile. “I trust in God, you see. God will never let me down.”
When the pastor drowned and went to heaven, the first thing he did was complain to God. “I trusted you! Why did you do nothing to save me?”
“Well,” said God. “I did send three boats, you know.”
The people of Israel in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth were expecting someone, God’s Messiah, the person anointed by God to deliver them from everything that was not right. Just an hour’s walk over the hill from Nazareth was Sepphoris, the capital city of Galilee. Joseph, Jesus’ father, probably helped build it and Jesus may have helped. It may well have been the huge construction project of building a city from scratch that brought Joseph and Mary to Nazareth in the first place. The Nazarenes lived in the shadow of everything they were expecting the Messiah to deliver them from: the Roman occupiers and their legion stationed in Sepphoris; the political and cultural accommodation of their puppet king, Herod Antipas; the unjust taxation and economic system supporting Herod and the Romans which impoverished ordinary folks like the Nazarenes; the worship of idols and false gods at the pagan temple; the dilution of their identity by all of this; and all the individual and communal obstacles that kept them from living fully. The Messiah was going to save them and restore them to life lived in God's promises.
The Messiah was their ardent expectation for which they prayed, sang, and searched for evidence of in the Bible. And what happened when Jesus, a local boy, stood up in the synagogue, read the promises from Isaiah about the Messiah, and then said, "everything you just heard, everything you have been expecting all these years, everything you have hoped and prayed for, everything you raised me to hope and pray for, it's all happening, right now, and I am doing it"? What happened? They ran Jesus out of town. I guess he wasn't what they were expecting, like the pastor who wasn't expecting boats to save him from the flood.
I often wonder what you expect from your faith, what you expect to happen here, what you expect to happen in your lives because of what happens here, what you expect to happen in our community and world because of what happens here. Our leaders have been having fruitful conversations and planning sessions around hopes and dreams this past year which are beginning to bear fruit. It's great stuff, all of which Jesus would applaud. A welcoming community of faith and service: welcoming others, building community, serving our neighbors, excellence in children's and youth ministry, growing spiritually. I am on board 100% and doing everything I can to help this prosper, but I have the suspicion from time to time that we pooh pooh the possibility that really great things are within our capacity, that we think we lack the people, time and money to really pull it off, that that can't really happen here with us, that maybe we don't really want that to happen here with us because, while it's not perfect, at least we are comfortable with what we know, a lot like the Nazarenes that sabbath morning who came face to face with their expectations and rejected it in disbelief.
Listen again to the promises and how I see them playing out in our faith and fellowship, and through this congregation in our community and on out into the world.
Bringing good news to the poor. To show in word and deed to the poor that we are with them because God is with us with them. We have wet our feet in a few great mission ministries, Family Promise, KIVA, Haiti, A Place to Turn, and a couple of others, but the number of people involved is but a drop in our bucket. If our entire congregation started living into this with our time and treasure, together we could bring really good news. Others would see this really good news and the energy would feed on itself until the tide really started to turn. The Jesus model of church made Mission to everyone out there Job 1.
We probably don't think of ourselves, or try not to think of ourselves, as captives, oppressed, or blind, nor are we triumphalist Christians who think of our non-Christian neighbors as captives, oppressed or blind. We're open minded and we live a good life here in Dover. We succeed. Most of us are calling the shots in our lives. We're at the top of the pyramid. How can that be captivity, oppression or blindness? It's not, unless you think that our prosperity is all there is to life, in which case the promises of God point to something much more. People outside the church think that church is a bunch of hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo, fantasy land propped up by strange and incomprehensible myths and mindless rituals, not to mention our legendary cliquish ness, resistance to change or action, and our complement of oddball characters. I cringe every time "the minister" or "the church lady" character appears in any movie or TV show. That's what people think? After many years of the stereotype, I now conclude that yes, that's what people think. All too often, there's truth in those stereotypes.
But what if we were to start living the so much more, the peace, joy, faith, and trust which would free us from our captivity to our stress and anxiety? oppressed by obligations, excellence and success, overhead and bills, time, time, time? that would open our eyes to the brightness beyond the rush and blur of our days? That would see our prosperity as a springboard to spiritual possibility rather than the be all and end all? To be joyous and filled with peace, not stressed, anxious, or over scheduled, but content, confident in our faith and still doing well by the standards of the world? Imagine if we raised our children to value doing well in school, sports, music, and all the rest, and to value the state of their souls? That we were not captive to or oppressed by this life, that our eyes were open to something more? Imagine if people could see that this church was about learning to really live the so much more? Imagine the impact that would have in just in a five mile radius of this church?
Imagine living the year of the Lord's favor? The great sabbath when all debts were cancelled? When everyone was set free from past obligations and given a clean bill? A fresh start? A new lease on life? I know what you're thinking: that's a nice sermon today, but tomorrow I have to get up early again and power through another day of reality. But imagine if, by faith, we could live a qualitative shift, that got us up early tomorrow morning not seeing ourselves as Indiana Jones in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark running for our lives with no escape on either side from the huge boulder rolling down the cave, just about the crush us; or as Sisyphus of Greek myth who spends his life pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down every night. That we no longer had to power through our lives but would be empowered through your life?
I know that many of you may be thinking that there's no way any of us could pull that off on our own, life is too tough, competitive, expensive and complex. Yet there are millions of faithful people doing just that right now, because they aren't doing it by themselves. They have Jesus encouraging and empowering them to keep their eyes, heart, mind and strength moving towards the promises. They are living into their expectations. At another time, Jesus said, " ask, and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock, and the door will be opened to you." These promises were the answer, the destination, and the door he was referring to. This is what I expect, this what I am aiming for in my own life and this is what I came here as a servant of God's Messiah to help you aim for in your own lives and our life together as the church in this place.