Luke 4.14-21

Last Sunday we cancelled church due to weather. Therefore this is the sermon that would have been preached last week.

When I was in seminary we had a dear professor, a brilliant man, named John Weborg. It was funny because he was, and is, one of those amazingly brilliant but also humble persons whose every word and phrase was filled with wisdom. Dr. Weborg had suffered through, and nearly died of polio as a child and this affected him physically. He was nearing retirement age while I was at Seminary, but his body was much more frail than someone in their early sixties. Dr. Weborg had this spectacular office up in a corner of the Seminary building, filled with shelves and shelves of books with a window looking over the campus. When you walked into his office you felt that you were traveling to an old English college town, to Oxford, a couple hundred years ago. But he had to move his office down to the first floor so he didn’t have to deal with the stairs. My second or third year at Seminary, they put in a chair-lift in the building stairways mainly to help Dr. Weborg get to classrooms that were on the second floor. And then I remember him getting to the point where he needed to sit as he taught the class. He apologized to the class for this, for sitting in front of us as he taught us. Unfortunately, this is all that his body could do. But whether he stood or sat, his words continued to be full of great wisdom, words that you could just hang on to because of their depth.

I remember telling him, though, that he shouldn’t apologize for having to sit as he taught us. You see, in Jesus’ day that is what was done. When someone was going to read scripture they would stand, but if they were going to teach or discuss that scripture they would sit in front of the assembly. Therefore, Dr. Weborg was just going back to an older form of teaching, where he would sit down and we could all listen to what it is that he had to say.

Of course, we do it differently today, and I think we’ve got it figured out better than they did. I know that if I was able to sit down while I preached, you’d never be able to stop me from talking. But in today’s scripture we are told that Jesus got up and read scripture and then he sat down. As we listen to what it is that Jesus had to teach the assemblies in his day, let us listen with the intensity that the people of Nazareth had as they listened to him.

I. Hometown Boy

The different gospels focus on different parts of Jesus’ ministry. They weave around each other as they focus on different important events in Jesus’ ministry and as we read them we get a bigger picture about who Jesus was and what he was about. Matthew, Mark & Luke all talk about Jesus being baptized then going into the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by the devil. But then, when Jesus returns from his time in the desert they each pick up in different places, with Matthew and Mark both skipping ahead to Jesus traveling to Galilee and beginning to teach there. But Luke, Luke tells us that Jesus first returned to his hometown, to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and he preached in the synagogue there. Now Jesus had difficulty in Nazareth. People didn’t want to take him seriously. If you go past what we read this morning you discover that people really were upset by what they heard Jesus say. Why? Because they had known him since childhood and didn’t think much of him. He was an ordinary guy to them, with an ordinary life. He was Joseph’s son; just a carpenter. Why was he getting delusions of grandeur?

But we are let in on the truth. We are told that he had the power of the Spirit of God upon him and his words were more than human words, but holy words; and his teachings were telling the people the mind of God.

And so, the people in Jesus’ hometown gathered together on the Sabbath and they came together in the Synagogue to worship. And Jesus got up and took out a scroll, for their scripture wasn’t written in books like ours, but in long scrolls. He rolled the scroll to the right passage and he began to read. “The Spirit of the Lord is on 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 release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” After reading from the scroll, Jesus sat down. This seems odd to us today because we are used to a person who is speaking in front of a group standing. But, as I mentioned earlier, in Jesus’ day the common practice was to sit when you taught an assembly. And so, when Jesus sat down all the eyes in the assembly were on him. He was going to teach them and they wanted to know what it was that he was going to say.

And Jesus’ words were powerful. “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

II. Fulfilled

Jesus is claiming to be the answer to Isaiah’s promise. The scripture that Jesus quoted was the beginning of Isaiah 61, where God is promising to bring an end to the pain that God’s people feel. The people of Jesus’ day knew that the Day of the Lord would come and they knew that it would be a day where wrongs would be righted. Throughout the Old Testament prophets we see the Day of the Lord talked about and it is talked about in different ways in different places. Sometimes it is mentioned as something to fear. That’s how it is treated in Amos, for example. People should fear the Day of the Lord if they have taken advantage of others, they will be getting their comeuppance. But there are others who should look forward to the Day of the Lord. And who are these? They are the poor, the prisoner, the brokenhearted, the captives, those who mourn, the weak. And these are the people that Jesus seems to be claiming here to come for.

The scripture that Jesus is quoting says that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him and therefore those who need help are going to have their wrongs made right. Now there are a couple things this does for us today. First, it reminds us something that the Bible is continually reminding us, something that I feel I am continually pointing out, and that is that Jesus, that God, doesn’t like to meet our expectations. Out of all the expectations that the people of Jesus’ day had for a Messiah, caring for the poor was pretty low on their list. No, they were much more interested in what the Messiah, what Jesus could do for them. And they were much more interested in what he would do for them politically. What do I mean by that? That they wanted the Messiah to come in and rule over them and vanquish the Roman soldiers, the Roman rulers, from their land. But in identifying with this scripture, Jesus is instead focusing not on the political desires of the people of Israel, instead he is focusing on something more real. Jesus says that he is going to bring comfort to those who need it. In other places through the gospels Jesus says similar, somewhat crazy things. He tells the people around him that the well don’t need a doctor, it is the sick who do. Therefore he is here not for the righteous but for the sinners. The Pharisees could not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, not necessarily because he didn’t conquer Rome, but because he hung out with sinners. We often look down at them for this, but their reasoning makes sense. If God came to this earth today wouldn’t we expect him to hang out with us here at church? Wouldn’t we expect him to spend his time with those of us who have been faithful and doing our best to follow his path in our daily lives? But Jesus didn’t do this, instead he went out to the troublemakers and spent his time with them.

At another point in the gospels, John the Baptist sends some of his followers to ask Jesus if he is the Messiah. Even John the Baptist, the one who is preparing the way for him, is confused about this issue. Jesus’ response is thus: “The blind are able to see, the hungry are being fed, the lame are walking, so, what do you think? Am I the Messiah?” Jesus sees himself connected to this prophecy in Isaiah. He believes that the Spirit of the Lord is calling him to help the helpless.

III. Helping the Helpless

And that brings us to the second thing that this scripture tells us today: that when the Spirit of the Lord comes, that Spirit is about helping those who are unable to take care of themselves. Last Sunday we talked about how the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Lord, gives different gifts to different people. We looked at 1 Corinthians 12 where we see that the Holy Spirit has different things planned for each of us to do and we cannot spend all our time focused on how much better we are at things than those around us or how we are lacking gifts or skills that we wish we had. Instead we are called to use the gifts that we have to help those around us, to show God’s love to those around us. We can go a step further and remind ourselves that as Christ’s church we are a body and we are all called to work together and share our gifts and pick up where those around us are lacking.

But today’s scripture truly reminds us what it is that these gifts we get from the Spirit are for. They are to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, and to release the oppressed.

You see, as the church, as the Body of Christ, we are anointed with the same Spirit that Jesus was and we are called to reach out in the same way that he did. We all have different ways we do this, we all have different gifts that God has given us for this, but in whatever way we do it, we need to be sure that we are doing what God has called us to do, through his Holy Spirit, following in the footsteps of our Savior, Jesus. Amen.

I Corinthans 12:1-11 "Many Gifts"

In high school I went to a concert by a Christian singer named Carman. I discovered later that he is what people in music refer to as a poser. He would jump from style to style and do music that “the kids these days” were into, be it rock, hip hop, rap, so that he could present the gospel. Basically, for him, music wasn’t about the art but rather it was about the opportunity for evangelism. This is something that I have grown away from as I grew older but at the time I’ve got to say that I was totally and completely into his music.

The concert was also pretty great. It was powerful music, the message he gave in the middle was an important one… I thought I was going to a concert and instead we got church. It was good stuff. Then, a couple months later, I went with my youth group to a camp and we were talking with another youth group at the camp. The other youth group had gone to see Carman also. I started gushing about how awesome the concert was. And they said that it was good, but they had people sitting in front of them who started arguing with them about whether they were saved or not. The people in front of them told them that because they didn’t speak in tongues, they weren’t actually saved. Since that time, I have heard this argument given multiple times by various people. And since that time I have turned to today’s scripture to answer that claim. “Now to each on the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.”

I. Scorn

Sometimes we like to look down at other Christians who don’t do things the same as us. We like to look at them with pity or scorn and think about the fact that we are doing a better job of following Christ than they are. This can be dangerous. Now I have to admit, I remember being on the receiving end of this more often than on the giving end. But it is easy to notice when you are being scorned, it’s a bit harder to notice when you are looking down on those around you. In truth, though, this dangerous approach to the world, this approach of thinking that everybody should relate to God in the same way that you are, doesn’t usually show itself in such an obvious way. Rather people find themselves looking at other Christians who practice their faiths in different ways and thinking that if they knew better, they’d do Christianity more like you. I had a friend in high school who spoke in tongues. We talked about the speaking-in-tongues issue quite a bit. She bought into what scripture had to say in 1 Corinthians 12 about the different spiritual gifts. She believed that there were different spiritual gifts for different people, but when in came to speaking in tongues, she believed that anyone could, and should, have this gift. This was a gift, in her mind, that was available to anyone who asked for it, and not something that only some received. Therefore, in her mind, if someone didn’t speak in tongues, they weren’t living up to their full potential as a Christian.

This is an easy trap to fall into. I don’t agree with her about speaking in tongues, but I do about faith. There’s a certain threshold of faith that I believe someone should have. If they ask too many questions about the Gospel, if they are too cynical, then I sort of write them off as not being the Christian they should be. I sometimes find myself feeling the same way about biblical knowledge. I hear somebody say something that they think is biblical and truth from God that I know isn’t actually as clear in the Bible as they think it is and I tend to look down on them as lacking in their faith. And yet, here we have scripture that tells us that the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to different people and we cannot expect everybody to be exactly the same in the way that they worship God and the gifts that they exhibit as we are.

II. Envy

Sometimes we have the opposite happen, though. We look at others with different, “better” gifts than us, and we wonder why we cannot be like them. When I hear a musician really make glorious music, there is a part of me that finds myself jealous of them. When I see a beautiful work of art by an artist, I find myself wishing that I had the skills I see in them. It’s bad enough with hobbies that I have. It becomes even worse when we deal with my chosen field of ministry. I have mentioned before that I tend to listen to pastors and speakers with a critical ear. This comes, I believe, from my time in Seminary, where we picked apart each other’s sermons to offer constructive criticism. When I am listening to someone giving a sermon, I tend to be cataloguing what I think they’re doing right and what I think they’re doing wrong in their message. I also tend to be very critical of what they are saying and find myself looking closely at their message to see if it is in line with what the scripture says. Being my snooty self, I often find pastors on television to be wanting, not as much in their presentation but in their message.

But every now and then someone starts sharing a message that moves past my criticism and I find myself blown away by the truth that I am hearing and God enters my life through the message and begins to work his work to change me. It is an awesome thing when this happens and I truly wish it happened more often. But, at the same time, I find myself filled with envy when I do see it happen.

I must say that I don’t enjoy seeing the envy show itself in my life, but it happens. I feel that there might be something wrong with me because I am not showing the same giftedness that others show. I feel that maybe there is something lacking in my spiritual life because I am not able to communicate the Gospel in the same way that these people communicate the Gospel. I fear that I’m not the Christian I should be because I’m not up to a certain level in my spiritual gifts. I’m sharing this, not because I want people to come up to me and tell me I’m wrong but because I believe this is a common thought among people. We read of missionaries or prayer warriors who live up to a Christian life that we can hardly comprehend; we look at our pastors and our own spiritual leaders and wonder why it is that we cannot be more like them, and we feel that we must be missing something. Perhaps if we prayed more and asked with more conviction God would give us the same spiritual gifts that these people have.

Again, today’s scripture speaks against this inferiority complex that we each have in different ways. We are each given different gifts by God and therefore we should not expect to be as good as or the best at something. The Holy Spirit gives different gifts to different people as they are needed. And if you look at these different gifts, you’ll discover that God gives us different gifts so that we will learn to rely on each other and, thus, rely on him in our spiritual walks.

III. Same Spirit

So, today’s scripture tells us that we shouldn’t be filled with scorn for those who experience God differently than we do. It tells us that we shouldn’t be envious of those who experience God differently either. Instead it tells us that God, the Holy Spirit, interacts with each of us differently and gifts each of us differently. We are told that it is the same Spirit of God that teaches us that Jesus is Lord and that gives the gifts of the Spirit to us in unique and different ways. We are told not to stand around comparing our spiritual lives and our spiritual gifts with others. We’re not racing against each other, we’re not going to be judged against each other. God doesn’t have a percentage of people that are going to make it, he’s not grading on a curve. Rather God sends the Holy Spirit to meet the needs that we have individually and he sends the Spirit to help us work on our lives and grow in him at the rate and pace that he has planned for us. God isn’t comparing us to those around us, he’s comparing us to ourselves, calling for each of us to continue to grow in him and learn from him and follow him. And when our spiritual gifts do take into account those around us, it’s not to compare ourselves to them to see who’s better, rather it is to see how gifts can work together to help each other.

I believe that today’s scripture truly catches a center of what the Covenant Church is about. Let me explain. We, as a denomination, don’t want to claim that our reading of scripture is the only reading of scripture. We, as a denomination, are open to God’s leading different people in different ways as long as they are faithful to the essentials, that Jesus died for our sins and wants relationship with us. We, as a denomination, “covenant” together (that’s how we came up with our name) to allow our different spiritual gifts to work together to further God’s kingdom.

Not everybody is called to be a missionary. But some are able to support mission work in different ways than others. Not everybody is called to be a preacher, but some have other ways they can share the faith. What spiritual gifts has the Spirit given you? How are you using them? Don’t think that because you aren’t doing what someone else is doing that you don’t matter. We all matter to God, and God calls for each of us to use the gifts he has given us to the best of our ability. This is what it is to be a part of the Covenant. This is what it is to be a part of the church. This year let us as a church take the gifts of the Holy Spirit seriously and see what God can do through us. Amen.

Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 29:1-5a,10,11 "A New Year's Promise"

One spring when I was around twelve or so, our family took a week, during our spring break, to go sailing. This was pretty normal for us at the time, doing our sailing on my parents boat during the spring and fall, as my parents chartered the boat out for others to use during the summer. The problem with sailing in the Pacific Northwest in the spring and fall is that the weather changes quite drastically in a short amount of time. And sometimes, even when you are listening to the weather reports, you can be surprised by what it is that Mother Nature puts in your way.

We had left port and were heading out to one of my parents favorite stops. It was a somewhat breezy day, perfect sailing weather. Suddenly the weather picked up quite a bit. The wind went from twenty or so knot winds to forty or fifty knot winds; something our boat is just not made to be out in. We thought about turning around and heading back into port. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing the other direction and our motor would not push us fast enough to beat the wind and waves coming against us. So, we did what we could. We put our sails up partially and headed with the wind. Let me tell you, I’ve never seen that boat move that fast… we were heading over ten knots and the rollers of the wind were still going faster than us. We have a dingy; a little boat that we trail behind our sailboat so that when we anchor or tie up to a buoy, we could row ashore. The dingy was surfing down the waves and catching up to us and then it would slow down as we went up the next rolling wave. We ducked into a harbor on a private island that we were heading towards. My dad, through his time in the Coast Guard, knew the caretaker at the island and they allowed us to stay at their dock until the weather cleared.

It was, honestly, pretty exhilarating for me… not as much for my parents who understood the danger better than I did. You see, I trusted that my parents knew what they were doing. I trusted that I was in safe hands and at twelve years old you feel invincible, so the danger never really registered to me. But the exhilaration and joy I felt was not matched by my parents, nor was it matched by my sister. For them, this was a scary and dangerous trip that we took. They knew the danger and they realized that they were not in control as they would like to be. I knew that I was not in control, but I was sure that my parents were. But that’s the great thing about the sea, it helps you to realize that you are not in control, that the control belongs to another.

I. Dangerous Waters

For many people, the New Year is a time of contemplation. It is a time where we look back at what has gone before and we look forward to what is to come. That is why I think it is so worthwhile to look at Isaiah 43 at the beginning of the year. Isaiah 43 shares with us a promise that God made to his people; Israel… one that we can see applies to us as well. His promise is that he will be with us. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.”

Water was not the most pleasant thing in those days. Open water was dangerous. People feared it. They believed in great sea monsters, like the leviathan, that would destroy them in the deeps. The leviathan is mentioned a few places throughout the Bible and is presented as a creature so fierce that humans cannot stand against it. In another place in Isaiah, the leviathan is mentioned, in chapter 27, where we are told that God will destroy the leviathan. The leviathan often in scripture is being mentioned metaphorically. It isn’t that God is going to come down and hunt sea monsters. Rather, what Isaiah is promising is that everything that the leviathan represents will be put to an end by God. So, the question is what it is that the leviathan represented to the people of Isaiah’s day. The leviathan represented the ocean, the water that it ruled over. And that ocean, that water, represented chaos and destruction. And it wasn’t just the ocean that the people feared, the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, the two bodies of water that were in the land of Israel, were known for the great storms that came upon them. They were known to be extremely dangerous. Even the people who made their livings on the water knew the wisdom of fearing the water. They new the dangers of passing through the waters. Water represented chaos and it represented their own lack of control over their circumstances.

Let’s face it, when you are in a boat out on the water, you truly realize how much you are not in control. And it’s worse if you don’t have a boat. Currents and winds can change, the water can become something that can and will kill. I know there are people here who have been on the water in times of danger and have felt their true lack of control over their own lives.

And if you haven’t been at this point physically, I mean, truthfully, water isn’t the danger here in Iowa that it is in the Pacific Ocean, if you haven’t been at this point physically, I know that you have been at this point spiritually. There are times where you feel fully how much life is outside your own control.

II. Through the Fire

Isaiah 43 goes on and gives us another example, one different than the water. “When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” Fire, in many ways is the other extreme. Water, the floods, can sweep you away. Water can take you places you aren’t ready to go. You can drown in water. But fire does something much different. It burns you. Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever been burned. Again, I’m at this point talking physically, not metaphorically. In high school, a friend and I did some crazy things in our Chemistry class. He burned his eyebrows off the day of his senior pictures as some homemade gunpowder went up in his face… I swear I had nothing to do with that… really. Well, we were told that you could pour rubbing alcohol on your hand and light it on fire and it would burn up before it did any damage to your hand. I thought this was a pretty cool idea and convinced him to catch my hand on fire after we poured some rubbing alcohol on it from the burners we used in chemistry class. Now, just for those of you who might think this is a cool idea, like I did, it’s not. I ended up with 2^nd degree burns all over my hand. It seems that the chemistry teacher had run out of rubbing alcohol and was using something else in the burners. The point is, getting burned is not fun. It is quite painful. Walking through fire is not something I would recommend to anyone. And yet God tells us here in Isaiah that if we do walk through the fire, he will be with us.

Now, for most of us, this is a metaphorical statement. For most of us don’t walk through literal fire and need for God to protect us. Most of us do have different kinds of fires that we have to make it through. But there is a story in the Bible, in the book of Daniel, where three young men do walk through literal fire and as people look in at them in the fire the people see that they are not alone, that there is someone with them. And when they come out of the fire, it has not done anything to them.

If God could be with three Hebrew boys known as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah) in a literal furnace, he can be with you in whatever fire it is that you face.

III. God’s Promise

And so, we enter the New Year, not knowing what lies ahead. We hope for great things and we fear horrible things. But, mostly, we hold onto this great promise that God gives us: He will be with you. No matter what you face, bee it fire or flood, God will be with you. He will give you the strength you need to make it through. God is greater than the chaos of the sea. In Psalm 29, which we read earlier this morning, we see that God’s voice lies over the chaos of the waters. If water represents the absolute worst chaos, if it represents everything that we do not have control over; God sits enthroned over it. God has control over it. You can trust God to be with you in the mist of it. And if fire represents the pain and suffering that we all face at different times in our lives, God will bring you through it, he will be there with you in the fire and you will come through it.

But God’s promise continues in Isaiah 43. And I want to look at it in a slightly different way. It says, “For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead. Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you. I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life.”

Now I have to admit, this is talking in an Old Testament way and it is talking about Old Testament style ransoms. And it is saying that God cares for his people, Israel and will sacrifice the people around them for their own well-being. It almost seems like God is saying that he loves them more than the other people around them. This is a fair way to read this, you wouldn’t get any argument from any Old Testament scholars if you chose to read it this way. But I choose to read this verse in light of the whole story of God and God’s people. I choose to read this verse in light of the cross. God, because he loves his people, because he loves us, will give others in our place to be ransomed on our behalf. Who does God give on our behalf? Is it people who he loves less than us? No, it is his own Son that he gives on our behalf as ransom; his beloved, only begotten Son.

I think this understanding of this verse needs to be tied to God’s promise to be with us no matter what. God will be with us in the chaos. God will bring us through the pain and suffering. God was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace and he suffered great pain on our behalf upon the cross.

God’s promise isn’t that life is going to be roses. It isn’t that life is going to be peachy-keen. His promise is to be with us and be that rudder that we need when we are out of control. His promise is to suffer alongside of us and take that suffering that we cannot bear upon himself for our sake.

Take this promise from God. I will be with you. I love you. I will not abandon you. I am in control. Believe it, accept it, know it in your heart of hearts. It will bring you peace in this New Year. It will bring you strength. Amen.