Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Well, you will have to wait until next week

to find out how Jesus’ home congregation

reacted to the message he brought them.

I suspect most of us already know the story,

but if you don’t … well …

tune in next Sunday, same time, same channel!

At first, it seemed strange to me

that the story should get broken in half like that.

Kind of like leaving Cinderella at the ball,

before all the bad stuff happens …

But at another level it makes sense.

Because the message and the response are, ultimately,

two different things.

And whether people liked the message, or didn’t like it,

doesn’t have any bearing on whether the message is true or not.

So this week, we give our attention to the message itself.

What did Jesus say, to that familiar congregation, in his hometown

where people had known him since he was a little boy

playing in the sawdust in Joseph’s carpenter shop?

At one level, his new sermon is a very old message:

remember, he reads to them from "the scroll of the prophet Isaiah,"

which is stuff that happened 600-700 years earlier.

He’s giving them that old-time religion.

Where he gets their attention

is with what he says at the end,

almost as a footnote:

"Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

And regardless of whether Jesus thought

that Isaiah was referring to him personally and specifically …

the call is the same.

He has been given the task of preaching good news to the poor.

He is to proclaim release to the captives,

and recovery of sight to the blind.

He is to let the oppressed go free,

and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

whatever that means.

So far, so good.

We’ll come back to those in just a moment.

But notice, if you will,

what he says nothing about.

Here he is, teaching in the synagogue,

but he does not say, "I am here to teach you the Law."

He does not say,

"I am here to remind you of the stories

from our past, in Egypt, in the desert,

and in the glory days of King David.

There’s perfectly good justification for any of those messages

in the Hebrew scriptures.

But they are not the message Jesus chooses.

He chooses instead the message of the prophet:

a message which makes promises about the future

and therefore makes demands on him – and on us – in the present.

And those demands are …

to preach good news to the poor,

to proclaim release to the captives,

etc., etc.

His message is not,

"believe in me or you’re going to hell."

That may be the message that the church has proclaimed,

more often than not,

but it’s not what Jesus thought was important.

"Here’s what God is about," says Jesus to the Sabbath crowd:

"I’m not making this up, you know;

it says so right here in Isaiah.

God is about freeing the oppressed,

and telling good news to the people around us

who mostly only get to hear bad news.

And I can’t speak for the rest of you,

but I’m telling you today that

I’m going to be about seeing to it that this scripture gets fulfilled."

And, folks, basically, that is the message he has left us to preach,

and to teach, and to exhibit, and to live.

The church has often gotten this wrong.

Still does.

We’ve historically been much more concerned about

what people believe about Jesus

than whether they live like he said we should.

We spend more time worrying and gossiping about who sleeps with whom

than we do wondering why some of God’s children

have no place to sleep at all.

We flock to preachers who preach only good news to the rich,

and blame the poor for being lazy,

or single parents, or barely literate.

The majority of the church today, at least in the U.S.,

wouldn’t know "good news to the poor"

if it showed up on Sunday morning dressed in rags.

We’re not interested in proclaiming release to any captives;

we want to lock them up for even longer periods of time,

in the name of our own safety and security,

and "teaching them a lesson."

And congregations like this one,

which try hard to consider the interests of the poor,

even though we ourselves are not poor;

and that try to overcome the oppression that some of God’s children

have experienced in church and society … well …

Not a popular message, is it?

People don’t beat down the doors

to discipleship that is difficult

because it asks us to take seriously

the lives and the needs of people who are different from us.

And yet, this is our calling;

this is who we are, or at least, who we are supposed to be.

We, the church, are supposed to be the ones

who are to bring Jesus’ message forward,

into the present, and on into the future.

And this may be particularly important to remind ourselves about

as we prepare to bring a new group of church officers on board.

Especially when you’re serving on the session,

but when you’re a deacon as well,

it is, ironically, very easy to lose sight of this calling.

We can get so caught up in the details of "being church"

that we forget what the church is about in the first place.

Good news to the poor?

But we can barely pay the electric bill.

Release to the captives?

What if they break in and steal the TV … again?

Recovery of sight to the blind?

No time for that, but at least send the deacons to visit them.

Let the oppressed go free?

If only we had a few more volunteers.

I’m as guilty of this as anybody,

as the paid-administrative-person on the spot.

But it’s so important for all of us,

and especially those who lead,

to remember what it is that Jesus calls us to first and foremost:

It’s not about us,

It’s not about this congregation in particular,

or the church in general.

It’s not even about whether Christianity as we know it

endures, or fades away.

It’s about the message, the message that Isaiah recorded,

but that started even before him:

good news to those who most need to hear it.

freedom to those who have been beaten down.

sight to those who are trapped in darkness.

Everything else that we do,

whether it’s paying the light bill, or salaries, or contributions to other groups,

needs to be with those ends in mind.

Paul reminds us that, in pursuit of our common calling,

each of us has different, individual gifts

that get called into service.

While our ultimate goal is the same,

we go about it in different ways.

The hand is not responsible for the foot’s tasks,

and the ear doesn’t have to get involved in sight for the blind.

But each does have to do

what it is gifted to do.

So, for example, if the question is preaching good news to the poor,

some of may be those who actually stand up and preach.

Others of us may "preach" that message by giving money,

or volunteering our time at a homeless shelter, or a food pantry,

or helping out a friend who has fallen on hard times.

We might even preach it by making sure that our church is a place

where any person is welcome,

regardless of whether they come dressed

in clothes that they obviously slept in,

and whether or not they can put anything in the offering plate.

There is value to maintaining the church as an institution,

and to the work we put into maintaining it,

if we are doing it with those greater ends in sight.

Part of being a leader in God’s church – you elders and deacons –

part of your job is helping us to be faithful to our common calling.

Sometimes that is very difficult.

It’s easy to get bogged down in the details of budget line items,

maintenance needs, finding a volunteer,

preparing communion elements, remembering to buy coffee …

Those are easier …

they are smaller tasks, they are manageable,

they have a starting time and a stopping time,

we know we can do them.

But we dare not lose sight of

why he have a budget in the first place,

why we have a building that demands maintenance,

what it is that we need volunteers for, etc., etc.

It’s not about us.

It’s not about this church,

much as we love it.

It’s about "the year of the Lord’s favor,"

and where our own gifts and callings

feed into that common call.

Please understand, I’m not saying this is easy.

Viewed from a certain angle,

Jesus himself failed.

That is to say, he preached the message faithfully,

and gained a following for himself,

though it’s not always clear that those who followed him around

were clear about the message …

But he made powerful people very angry.

Because good news for the poor and freedom for the oppressed

were bad news to those who grew rich from oppressing the poor.

And Jesus was murdered

because he was faithful to his call.

Clearly, we are not Jesus.

God had expectations of him

that God surely doesn’t have of each of us.

And yet, our call is the same as his.

Our individual calls and gifts are different.

That is as it should be.

God is counting on us

to continue Christ’s work:

to speak his truth,

to show his compassion,

to be his hands and feet, eyes and ears,

as God has gifted us.

May we have the grace and the courage

to use our individual gifts

and to follow our individual call

in the service of God’s call to us all,

and, indeed, to all the world.

Amen.

© 2007 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)