Luke 4:14-21
“Freed”
January 23, 2022
Some of us do it on our phones.
Others gently turn the fragile pages of a copy that was handed down to them by a dear relative.
For some, they run their fingers with ease over the dots in patterns that together form words of beauty that can’t be seen but rather felt.
There are those young ones who first learn the story from a picture book or a puppet show or by kids and grownups dressed in sheets and Burger King crowns.
There are those of us who have the great luxury of having more than one to choose from or as an occupational hazard maybe 30 or so – I’m not naming names.
The Word comes to us in all different forms.
Some people have a preference for the regal and poetic language of the King James Version.
There are those who want to hear scripture in the language that sounds more like how we speak now as is found in The Message.
In whatever form, the Bible is meant to be the embodied Word.
When Jesus goes alone to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth as he is just beginning his ministry, he unrolls and opens the scroll of Isaiah and reads aloud what will turn out to be his own mission statement.
And next week we’ll learn of how the words of Jesus are received and what happened in the synagogue when the gathered don’t like what they’re hearing.
For now, Jesus offers the familiar words of Isaiah and keeps it simple by ending with “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke uses the idea of today or right now a lot.
The angels, proclaiming Jesus’ birth to the shepherds in the fields tries to calm their fears with the good news, “to you is born this day in the City of David a Savior…” while at the other end of Jesus’ life we hear the assurance of Jesus to one of those crucified by his side about being remembered with the words, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
There is an immediacy to the Word for Jesus and it is a reaction to the real needs of human beings.
Almost anything can be done with the Word, in the name of the Word or with a distortion of the Word.
Unlike our ancestors of the faith who up until less than a millennium ago were reliant upon one or two literate readers to bring them the Word in whatever form suited their best interests, we are intended, like Jesus, to take the Word to heart and figure out how we will live into it.
It has been said that a believer or person of faith is the only Bible that a lot of people will ever read.
What would a person unfamiliar with Scripture say it means knowing you or I?
Jesus here in the synagogue is describing what his purpose in life is.
He wants them to know that he is bringing freedom with him.
He is saying to anyone poor, or vulnerable, or forgotten that you matter in God’s eyes.
You have value and worth.
Jesus is unlocking and granting them a measure of freedom that they had been led to believe would never be theirs.
This is the year of the Lord’s favor.
It’s to be a time where all of the old debts are forgiven.
It’s time to share the abundance and get to the work of healing old wounds.
Jesus in these few words of Isaiah’s lays out what the Kingdom of God looks like.
In a few minutes we will settle in over soup and bread here and hopefully something yummy there in your homes and we are going to consider a budget and that budget will tell the story of how we are living out the Word – how we as the Federated Church of East Arlington are embodying Jesus’ message.
This Good News, this fulfillment of Isaiah’s take on God’s call and the immediacy and right now of it can certainly be seen here in our small town.
We know there are those with very specific needs that we can help meet – access to food, the opportunity for meaningful interactions, connecting people and services – sometimes the ones we can provide and other times being the link to agencies who have the resources and people who can change lives or at least ease the current stress of debt or lack of access.
How we use our words to embody the Word are being heard all the time.
Today, on this Annual Meeting Sunday we are in the business of figuring out how we will live out the dream of bringing good news to the poor, the captives, those who can’t see as well as those who are oppressed.
None of us has a crystal ball in which we can see the future or accurately guess what people will need 6 or 9 months from now.
Instead, if together, we commit to living the Word, today and every day, we will be in a better position to be the living Bible for the most vulnerable in our midst.
This whole idea of scripture being fulfilled in our hearing has the power to show that events happening in the present were a way of embodying and giving flesh to the Word that was written in the past.
Jesus is telling the folks there in that synagogue in Nazareth that the Word Isaiah shared is standing right before them.
Jesus here is living into the song that his mother Mary offered when she was carrying him within her.
Jesus wants them to know that God is all about “lifting up the lowly.”
Jesus is not the only one who fulfills scripture.
We, the Body of Christ, get to also.
We have the Word. Let us live the Word.
Amen.