TODAY!
Epiphany 3c, Nehemiah 8:1-10; I Cors. 12:12 –31 a; Luke 4:14-21
Main thought – being joined to Christ, being members of his body, calls us to new life and service now.
Malady – it's about me/individual; it's about the future; it's only spiritual.
Over the last while I have had a number of young people inquire about their faith. What might it mean, what should it mean for them to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, a practicing member of a Christian community? These are questions that are important. One of the many reasons that the body of Christ has younger members is that so we don't get complacent. We must hear and live with the difficult questions.
How would you answer such a question?
Today's lessons give some shape to a response, at least the outer boundaries, boundaries which may not be hard and fast, boundaries that are in flux allowing for a variety of experiences. Nevertheless there is still some shape to these boundaries.
In the Nehemiah lesson the people have lost their way. In losing their way they have lost their sense of identity. It is like they are suffering from dementia. They no longer know who they are because they don't realize whose they are. They have been in exile in a far off country. Other values, other religious convictions have infiltrated their conscious way of being. So much of their being is muddied. Eventually they are able to come back home, back to the land that once had embodied a deep sense of the promise of God. But now it's nothing like they had imagined. The city walls have crumbled. The temple is in ruins. Their language has been forgotten. There are few if any music makers.
But then some of the old scrolls are found. The people gather in the city square to listen. The scrolls are read, interpreted, discussed in ways that the people can understand. My God, they begin to realize how God loves them, how God continues to choose them, to free them from so many things. Even now God is directing them. They begin to see how they have forgotten God. How often they have done things to others, to themselves that are contrary to God's direction and hope for their living. Looking around they see the consequences of their actions. The city is in ruins. So many lives have been broken. Each person seems to be fighting for alone, for themselves against everyone else. As the people hear and are encompassed by this reality they begin to weep.
But, those reading and those interpreting say, "Stop it". Stop crying. But they can't help themselves. The readers and interpreters beg them to see this: this day can be a new day because of God. God has brought them back to this place, this moment. God is opening a new future. Turn. Listen. See.
The people in the book of Nehemiah are our forefathers and foremothers in the faith. They were encouraged and learned again and again to hear God speaking to them through the stories of those who had gone before them. These stories shared their ancestors' experiences of God in the midst of their living and dying, their celebrating and mourning. To be followers of Jesus we need to hear these stories read, interpreted, and addressed to us so that we can know, rediscover, and be encountered by the living God who reminds us both of who we are, what we are doing and who we are called to be. This is not easy. But without these stories, our stories being told again and again, we suffer from dementia and lose our way.
If we dare hear the stories, be touched and moved by them, we will be caught up in the rituals they enact. At the center for those who are joined to Christ is His cross. That symbol has a central place in all our spaces of worship. This cross is not for decoration – or solely for admiration. Nor is it a piece of jewelry or a good luck charm. The cross points us at one and the same time to who we are – as well as to who God is. We are people of violence, of jealousy, of longing to be in control of at the very least our own lives, maybe even others. History tells us this. But many do not read history. Some readers of history refuse to admit the implications of history for our own lives, individually and collectively. But the cross shows us. We as human beings kill the one of God who wills to lead us beyond hatred, apathy, religious certainty wrapped in doctrines – to see our own need to turn around, to be open to God, to depend on God for love and forgiveness, first for ourselves, but then also for our way of living and relating with others and all of creation.
The cross is what joins us, reconciles us to God and to each other. The cross is what leads us collectively into and through suffering – not as the end – not even only as a means, but as part of life – leading to new life.
We are not alone. We are joined to Christ in his cross. We are not alone. In Christ we are joined to others – red and yellow, black and white, old and young, intellectually brilliant and challenged, musical geniuses and those who are capable of only monotones. In Christ we are joined to a body – His body in this world.
I love what Teresa of Avila says. She puts it something like this: Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out upon the world. Ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good. Ours are the hands with which he blesses his people now.
What a call! What a commission this is! How we so often fall short, because we forget who we are, we try to go it alone by refusing to depend on God and get trapped by our own anxieties, our own limitations.
To this, to us Christ comes. He comes to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth long ago. He comes to us this morning. He comes TODAY, not only in the past, not only in the future, but today. He states His call then and now. His call is something for His living but far from perfect body to aspire to now. We are part of His body, joined to him in baptism. Listen to him speak selecting parts of the prophet Isaiah:
"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."
We could argue – and many Christians have – about who the poor are, about what release to the captives means or even recovery of sight to the blind. Is this literal? Is it merely metaphor? But in doing that we may well miss out on our call. We are to be who we are and whose we are, members of the body of Christ now!
We are to live following Christ. We are to be open to His direction each day. I am convinced that He will show us individually and collectively who and what we are to care for, and even how to go about that. To be sure there are poor all around us: financially, emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes we are among them. To be sure there are many who are blind among us: blind to what matters, blind to the love of God, blind to freedom that they don't have to please others, that they don't have to have all of those things, that life isn't meant to be a race where one can never actually rest and enjoy. Our truth is that sometimes we are among them.
To be sure there are many who are oppressed. There are people who do not know that they are beautiful, even filled with wonder. They don't realize that they have unique gifts, that God cares about them, that God has incredible dreams for them. Sometimes we are among these oppressed ones.
But today is the time that Christ wills to make a difference. Today is the time that God wills to take each of us molding us to be a living part of that difference, individually and collectively. Jesus gives His all for us, for others, for the world.