Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 24, 2010,

Solemn Mass, by the Reverend Stephen Gerth

Year C: Nehemiah 8:2-10; Psalm 113; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27; Luke 4:14-21

Since the beginning of the Church year I have been trying to make a new effort to get comfortable with Luke’s gospel. Among the reasons it’s easier for me to know John’s or Mark’s gospel is their discreteness. John is distinct from the other three in so many ways. Mark is the first, oldest of the four. Luke and Matthew both seem to have had Mark in front of them when they wrote and most scholars think the best explanation for other similarities was the existence of another text, that we no longer have, called “Q” – the first letter of a German word meaning “source.”[1]

I confess I have a hard time keeping it all straight in my head. For years it has seemed easier to think about gospel lessons more as biography than theology, even though biography is always secondary to proclamation in all of the gospels. And today’s gospel is a good example of that.

In Mark and Matthew, Jesus begins his ministry in Capernaum. But Luke begins Jesus ministry instead in Nazareth, although in the verses that immediately follow the passage we heard today, everyone knows Jesus has already been doing miracles in Capernaum. Luke’s concern is theology more than biography; Luke’s concern is always proclaiming Jesus Christ.[2]

In Mark, after Jesus’ baptism and John’s arrest, Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee by preaching, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the Good News.”[3] The story is the same in Matthew.[4] In Luke, Jesus does much more than a simple announcement of the kingdom of God (Mark’s phrase) or the kingdom of heaven (Matthew’s phrase). Mark and Matthew leave the impression that Jesus’ words were addressed to those he encountered. Back to today’s gospel, again, in Luke, biography always serves theology.

Even though Jesus has been active in ministry in Capernaum, Luke mentions it only in passing – perhaps because it was so well known that he had to mention it. What matters to him is Jesus beginning in the place where the Jewish people gather on the sabbath to hear the Scriptures and to pray. It matters that Jesus goes to a place where he is known but not really known. He takes one of the great prophecies from the Book of Isaiah and when he proclaims, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,”[5] one can hear John’s Jesus saying, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”[6]

With today’s gospel lesson, Luke is embarking on the journey to Jerusalem for Jesus and on the journey from Jerusalem of the newly, Spirit-constituted community that will begin to understand itself as the New Israel, God’s own people, and will begin in Antioch to call themselves Christian.

In Luke’s second book, The Acts of the Apostles, the apostles will be gathered in Jerusalem and the Holy Spirit will fall on them. Peter will explain its presence by quoting the prophet Joel, “God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh . . . and it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”[7]  Peter’s words echo too the words of Jesus, “If you then . . . know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”[8]

Across the New Testament, those who knew Jesus, who came to be called Christians, understood themselves as a Spirit-filled and Spirit-constituted people. I think it is fair to presume that our own experience of the holiness, the greatness, the mystery of God in our souls is not unlike what the first generation of Jesus’ followers knew. The words we use to talk about God are shaped by the history of Christianity – we speak easily of the Holy Trinity, of Sacraments, of an institutional church that was yet to develop. But the profound mystery of God, of being a part of a creation we human beings did not create, the reality of love, the mystery of death that all life faces, have not changed since one human being first touched another.

Each of our lives has a biography and a theology. And unlike the nature of the texts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, our biography is our theology. Again, the four gospels are manuscripts, texts, books, if you will. But you and I are people. The people who heard Jesus read in the synagogue could not imagine that God’s eternity, God’s Spirit, God’s reality, could enter and sustain their lives. 

Formally, we Christians believe that’s exactly what it does; we believe that’s exactly who we are, children of God. 

It’s useful to observe that at least since the late fourth century, the sense that the first several generations of Christians had that they were the Spirit-constituted people of God, a royal priesthood,[9] has receded in the consciousness of ordinary Christians.[10] I think it’s worth mentioning on this Sunday in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity that, as far as I know, we see this across all of the historic Christian denominations.

Eastern Christian traditions for centuries have built a wall around their altar tables to separate the people of God from the celebration of the Sacrament. The current bishop of Rome now requires anyone receiving Communion from him to be dressed a certain way, to kneel in front of him, to receive only the Bread and only on the tongue. In too many places even in our own Anglican tradition, the services are still mostly about the music and the clergy – and the people are there to watch and to listen.

Many of you know I am a student of Bowen Family Systems Theory. Every school of thought has its own catch phrases. One that is common among so-called Bowenians is, “Never mind your feelings; just do what you know is right.”

I hope that as we journey together in this parish this year through Luke we will have new sense and new courage as a community and as individuals to seek afresh what it means for us today in our time and place to be God’s children and to wonder what new work God’s Spirit is doing for us and may do through us if we believe, if we ask.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.