C, The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany - Luke 6:16:35–38a "Jesus on Judgement"

Luke 6:35–38a (ESV) But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”

Here at the centre of Jesus’ word on loving one’s neighbour is a succinct statement, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”

This directive by Jesus is for one not to judge and condemn and therefore one will not be judged or condemned.  

What happens when we are judged?  It all depends on the judgement. 

When we’re wrongly judged positively, when we’re guilty, we tend to keep our mouths shut agreeing with the judgement.  When someone says, “You’re a good bloke or a good lady.” Usually, one doesn’t cause a stink about being wronged.  Rather one quietly breathes a sigh of relief thinking,  “Gosh, I’m glad they didn’t see my true colours!”   

But when judge negatively, rather than being quiet, the heckles go up, and we voice a protest, despite being innocent or guilty of the allegation.

But as we’ve heard, Jesus encompasses his words on judgement and condemnation with mercy and forgiveness.  However, to be merciful and to be forgiving, one is required to make a judgement.

What is going on here? 

Today in the readings we hear about Joseph being revealed to his brothers after they had sold him into slavery and deceived their father into believing he was dead.  

Joseph was the least amongst his brothers, but highly exalted by Jacob his father.  The judgement made by his brothers; we would all agree was horrendous to say the least.  Yet when Joseph became second to pharaoh, although it was testing on his brothers, his judgement was ultimately encapsulated with mercy and forgiveness.

This is Joseph’s judgement: “And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.” (Genesis 45:5, 7-8 ESV)

So, it seems there is judgement and then there is judgement.  Jesus says to a crowd at the temple, “If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” (John 7:23–24 ESV)

So how do you and I judge with right judgement?  How does one make just judgements, but at the same time, are made with infused mercy and forgiveness? 

Last week we heard Jesus speak blessings and woes to the people on the plain.  The Gospel reading today is a continuation of Jesus’ sermon on the plain.  It’s quite similar to the sermon on the mount recorded in Matthew’s Gospel.  In it, Jesus’ parallels being merciful with your enemies with being perfect or whole saying, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48 ESV) This is a repetition of what God said through Moses, “For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.” (Leviticus 11:44a ESV)

Our judgement is called to be in accord with our Heavenly Father’s judgement.  His judgement is complete, perfect, holy, and impartial.  So, is Jesus setting an impossible task for us?

Our human brain is made up of two halves.  Both halves control the other half. The right half generally works on feelings, creativity, and intuition.  The left works is rational, logical, analytical, and is mathematical and factual.  However, the frontal lobe which is on both side of the brain is the largest part of the brain and it makes judgements both rational and emotional. 

We know for certain when Jesus says, “to not judge”, he’s not calling us to have a frontal lobotomy.  Judgement sometimes requires us to make rational decisions based on logical and factual information.  But then sometimes judgements need to be emotive, based on the intuitive and creative part of the mind.     

It seems we are still in a judgement jam!   

Paul makes a clear judgement about the resurrection to the folk in Corinth.  He works on both half of the hearer’s brain, emotively calling one who asks, “what kind of a body is raised”, as a “fool”, as one who is curved in on their own emotions!  But then he works on the other half of the brain,  the logical half, by painting the picture in the mind of the hearer about the reality of a seed which dies to produce life.  Beginning as a germ inside the husk or body, planted in the soil, just as people are buried in the grave.

But it’s what he says next regarding the resurrection, from where we can glean an understanding on how one might love their enemies, and make merciful, impartial, and just judgements, in the sight our Father in heaven.

He says about the body, “It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.” (1 Corinthians 15:43–46 ESV)

Rather than dissecting the brain from left and right, or lobotomising the frontal lobe, Paul points to the natural and the spiritual.  Paul is speaking of the natural as the flesh or human spirit as opposed to those who have the mind of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  This is a key theme Paul picks up back at the start of his letter to the Corinthians.

He says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 2:14–16 ESV)

Judgement with right judgement comes as a result of us being judged at the cross and in our baptism as guilty natural people.  However, this judgement is executed upon us as mercy, forgiveness, and resurrection from death, to be God’s spiritual people.

By our appearances we still appear as enemies of God, when we sin.  Therefore, our judgement or condemnation takes into consideration the tension of our acquittal and freedom, despite still being natural people this side of the resurrection.  You and I are one hundred percent natural people, created from dust with the breath of God, but returning to dust as a result of our corruption. 

Yet, what was begun at the cross and is transmitted to us in Holy Baptism continues in those who make right judgements of God, themselves, their neighbours, and their enemies, judging the sin with the goal of releasing the sinner.  God is freeing you through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

James tells us, “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2:12–13 ESV)

Therefore, those who receive the law of liberty or freedom are also one hundred percent God’s spiritual people.  God’s spiritual people judge with the intention to forgive and show mercy.

Because God the Father, Son, and Spirit are holy, we are called to be holy.  Because God is perfect, we are called to be perfect.  Because God is merciful, we are called to be merciful.

The law of liberty is such that you can judge with a right judgement.  As spiritual people God promises you’re covered by Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit, to be holy, because God is holy.  You’re continually perfected in your suffering, because Christ was shown to be perfected in his impartial suffering for all.  And you and I have the freedom to be merciful and forgiving, because our Heavenly Father is merciful and forgiving.  Amen. 

C, The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany - Luke 6:17-26 "Word of Comfort"

Jesus is proclaimed from the mountains to the plains.  The comfort of his proclamation is this: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25 ESV) He says these words to Martha whose brother Lazarus had died some days before.

For us who are being saved in these days of death, before us are blessings and curses.  In a nutshell we are told: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord.” And, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.” (Jeremiah 17:5&7 ESV)

Psalm One parallels these words of Jeremiah, speaking of the fruit of the blessed, and the wicked or cursed as being chaff, saying “the wicked will not stand in the judgement”! (Psalm 1:5 ESV)

The power of Jesus healed the diseases and touched the hearts of those with unclean spirits, at the “level place”.  What he then preaches is essentially the same he said at the sermon on the mount, recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. 

Matthews Gospel was originally intended to be a catechism for Jewish believers, who would have remembered the proclamation of blessings and curses commanded by Moses, for Joshua and the Israelites to speak the blessings from Mount Gerizim and the curses from Mount Ebal. (Please read Deuteronomy 11:26-29, 27:1-26, Joshua 8:30-35)  So, the Jewish hearers and readers who understood what God was doing through Moses and Joshua would have found great comfort in Matthew’s  Gospel account of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”.  

But at the sermon on the plain here in Luke’s Gospel there’s a wider audience as we’ve heard.  Disciples, Jews from Judea and Jerusalem, and Gentiles from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon hear Jesus proclaim not just the blessings of the sermon on the mount but also the woes or curses. 

Now in this level place, Jesus levels the playing field between the Jews who knew the Law.  The blessings and curses of God made known on the mountains of God, are now plainly set before Jews and Gentile.  Jesus flatly addresses all the discomforts and comforts to all humanity on level ground from the word of God for the first time.   The word of God has descended from the mountain and the Jews, to the plain for the Gentiles too!

Then, all those troubled by unclean spirits heard him, and those with diseases were healed by him.  But he lifts up his eyes to address his disciples.  These are the twelve disciples whom he had just set apart as apostles, together with many other disciples who followed him.  Also in his hearing are other Jews, but furthermore the Gentile Phoenicians from the coastal areas of Tyre and Sidon hear him too.

But with all these present, it’s to his disciples he says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.  Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!  Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.  But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.  Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.  Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” (Luke 6:20–26 ESV)

Are these comforting words?  How do you see those who were healed receiving these words?  As comfort or discomfort?  How do you think the disciples received them?  Jesus levels the playing field with his word of balance, his word of blessing and woe!

But it’s to you Jesus asks: Are you comforted by being poor, and discomforted by being rich?  Are you satisfied by being hungry, and discomforted by being full?  Are your tears comforting, and your laughter in these days of death discomforting?  Are you comforted by being hated, and treated as evil because you believe Jesus, and his word?  And are you discomforted by those who say nice things about you but hate Jesus’ word?

Are you blessed by your comforts this side of the resurrection, or blessed by the promised comforts coming after the resurrection?  Are you cursed and in despair by your comforts this side of the resurrection, or will you be cursed and in despair afterwards?

Jesus’ Word is the great levelling field!  In fact, Jesus himself is the great leveller!  He gives blessed balance to our existence calling out the comforts that need to be named as idols.  But he also shows us the true comfort we can have in him, despite knowing our existence, now, is broken. 

Your being was never meant to be dying.  Jesus teaches he is the way, the truth, and the life.  The Word of God reveals that human existence begins by being born only to be delivered into death, but through Jesus’ death and resurrection your being can continue forever with life!  Surely that is our comfort in this world of discomfort.

We have just sung: “Comfort, comfort all my people with the comfort of my Word. Speak it tender to my people: All your sins are taken away.”

Our sins are taken away!  That should be a comfort for us!  Why?  Because now we can focus on the true comforts of God’s kingdom.  However, using the forgiveness of sins to carry on in our own comforts that teach us to turn from God to selfishness, and the creation of our own kingdoms of idols to worship instead of God, is not what God intends for us. 

You and I are reminded of this in the woes with which Jesus balances the Jews and Gentiles at his sermon on the plain.  As God the Father did with the Jews at Mount Sinai and at Mount Ebal when they entered Canaan.  Jesus continues to balance us with the reality of blessings and woes today, as we’re moved over the mountains of our suffering and across the vast plains of temptation towards our resurrection, being led in the comfort of Jesus’ way, truth, and life.

Yet, we hear the true nature of our existence after Jeremiah tells us we are cursed by trusting ourselves, over against the blessing we receive in trusting God.  He says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”  (Jeremiah 17:9–10 ESV)

With our hearts being desperately sick, is there any comfort for us, is there any consolation from the blessings we hear and receive from Jesus and the Word of God?  Some might hear Jesus say, “…woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” (Luke 6:24 ESV)  And think, “My riches in this existence of suffering and death are the only consolation or comfort I can attain. I just can’t do what Jesus requires of me, even now that my sins are taken away.  Therefore, many are deceived into returning to the comforts of one’s self-seeking pleasures. 

Or, on hearing the blessings of being poor, hungry, weeping, and being hated, they’re too much to add to the suffering and death of our human existence!  So, there’s a temptation to reject these blessings as just nice sentiment.  But sentiment doesn’t have any eternal substance!  One quickly finds themself impatiently returning to pursue the passing pleasures of the heart, believing God’s word insufficient to console and comfort.

If Jesus was to just leave us with his word of comfort, for us to figure out his way, his truth, and his life, without any help, his word would end up being a discomfort to us.  But he doesn’t leave us to our own devices.  Jesus comforts us with a Comforter!

He has led us out of ourselves, and he continues to do so today.  Right from the Early Church era, after Saul became a believer, and became known as Paul, we hear, “…the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.”  (Acts 9:31 ESV)

In John fourteen Jesus tells us he has left us the Holy Spirit to be our Comforter; our Helper.  The Holy Spirit helps us in the comfort that, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 124:8 ESV)

Like Simeon who waited his whole life for the consolation of Israel in the birth of the Messiah, now that Jesus has come, has been crucified and has been raised from the dead, we too wait for the consolation of Christianity in the comforting promise of Jesus Christ’s second coming.  

The Holy Spirit comforts us in his work of faith building.  He does this, with ongoing forgiveness, to make us God’s holy people, with the work of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and his word and sacraments.

The Holy Spirit now wages war with the human self within each of us.  He seeks to hinder and stop the old human nature from resurrecting itself and re-creating its idols of comfort and recreation.  He’s sent to comfort and console, and to level us with God’s Word, so we’re easily led to Jesus Christ.   The Holy Spirit works within, so we believe and receive the comforts of Jesus’ Word. 

The Holy Spirit seeks to comfort you with the implanted word that Jesus is the resurrection, but he’s also the re-creation and recreation of life, right now!  That believing in him, although you die, you shall seek, and one day live in, the kingdom of God.  Amen. 

C, The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany - Isaiah 6:1-13 "How God's Holiness Works"

In the readings for today, the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, the reality of God’s holiness when met by humanity causes something to occur.  When one receives God’s holiness through the senses of sight, hearing, and touch something must happen in the exchange, in the transaction of  delivery and reception. 

Jesus’ holiness is transacted in a very physical way.  Teaching the people at the lake concludes with Jesus suggesting to Simon Peter to, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” (Luke 5:4 ESV)

Completely spent from working through the night and catching nothing, Peter voices his concern, yet he listens and follows Jesus’ call to set the net for a catch.   What happens?  Completely dumbfounded the disciples catch fish!  So many, the boat begins to sink.  Holiness meets nothing and it does something.  The nothingness in Peter hears and sees the holiness of Jesus to which he falls in submission before Jesus and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8 ESV)

Paul teaches the Corinthians how the transaction of holiness works through preaching and receiving so that the hearer can hold fast to the word which does the work.  This is the same word of God which caused no fish to become numerous fish.  The working word exposes the nothingness of our work without the workings of God’s word through his holiness. 

To put this another way, we need a resurrection in just the same way as Jesus was raised after he allowed himself to become nothing.  Jesus did nothing wrong, he did no wrong!  By putting aside, the power of his holiness, his humility allowed others the opportunity to crucify him.  Jesus received the cross and was delivered into death, to be made less than nothing, as it were, so we can believe and receive his holy work to be delivered from death.  We believe we receive the resurrection from nothing we do, because Jesus was made nothing like us to make us something with his holiness.

This is how God works holiness in us.  He does it completely without our work.  In fact, Jesus models this in the reverse.  In his holiness, he allows himself to be crucified; he does not kill himself!  Nor does Jesus bury himself!  He does not raise himself, nor does he cause himself to be seen.  No!  Although he is God and he had the power to do whatever he wanted, he put aside that power to be powerless, to be nothing. 

Rather it was humanity who crucified him.  And it was the Holy Spirit who led him through his ministry to his death, through it, and to his resurrection.  Even today the Holy Spirit continues to powerfully enact Jesus’ passivity and powerful meekness within us!  In our nothingness, God works his holiness within us, with the implanted word, the word of God.  This is God our Father’s mode of operation!  

The Old Testament reading from Isaiah chapter six shows us God’s modus operandi very clearly.  In the lectionary today there’s an option for the reading to end after verse eight, where Isaiah says, “Here I am! Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8 ESV)

There’s a temptation in this day and age to omit the option to include the seemingly negative words of God, that Isaiah is commanded to receive and deliver to Israel.  Doing so, however, may appease modern ears, but we need to hear it to learn how God works his holiness.  Without learning how God’s holiness works, there is the temptation to cheapen God’s work and dilute his holiness into unbelief and desecration. Or as Paul says, to receive the preached word only to believe in vain.

However, God does not want that for you!  Therefore, I invite you to look at and hear his word and notice how God’s works are consistent and impartial, so his holiness remains holy, and he rescues all who recognise they need God to work his holiness for our eternal recovery.  Alternatively, those who hear in vain will not receive it!  Those who look at the word with their own understanding, see it but know nothing of its work within, because holiness cannot be understood.   Rather, it can only be received and believed.  Therefore, in vanity no one can hang onto holiness.  Also not what God wants for you!

Isaiah seems like the central figure in this text, but he’s not!  He’s only the recipient and the deliverer.  In fact, Isaiah knows his nothingness before God, saying, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5 ESV)  Isaiah sees God’s glory and holiness and he knows he is not!  God’s holiness means he is lost to death!  His nothingness cannot stand before holiness.

Isaiah knows the words that have come from his lips, have condemned him in the sight of God.  What he has heard from the mouths of his fellow Israelites is no better.  What he has delivered and received in the past is polluted, and it condemns him in the sight of God’s holy presence.

Despite Isaiah’s and Israelites’ lips being defiled, notice however, that Isaiah six begins and ends with the holiness of God.   This is crucially important for us!

Picture the scene and hear as the seraphim proclaim God’s holiness and glory, but also see to where that holiness and glory leads. 

The foundations and threshold shook as they proclaimed to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3 ESV)

And where does this glory find its germination?  Not in Isaiah!  Not in the nation of Israel!  No after Israel’s destruction, after the nation has been made nothing through fire, a seed is revealed from the nothingness of a seemingly burnt dead stump.  “The holy seed is its stump.” (Isaiah 6:13 ESV)

This is how God works his holiness!  It’s how he worked in creation, creating from nothing, except his holy word.  It’s how he works with fallen humanity, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  It’s how he works with Israel and Isaiah.  It’s how he worked through his own Son Jesus Christ and continues to work with the body of Christ, his church on earth.  And it’s how he works his holiness with you and me.  God works his holiness with his Spirit of holiness, the Holy Spirit.  God, and his holiness, is the subject or centre of salvation, not the spirit of Isaiah, nor Israel or humanity.

This is good news for us who having looked into the self, see and know we’re nothing without a resurrection from death.  That we’re in need of God’s holiness worked through his Holy Spirit, to tune the ear and sharpen the sight, so we receive Jesus who resurrects life within as the Holy Seed.

See how Isaiah’s lips are healed by the seraph who seared them with a hot coal!  One might think having one’s lips burnt would render Isaiah mute, and that’s right!  Isaiah could no longer speak with his own uncleanness to those who spoke to him with unclean lips.  So, what has happened here? 

We hear the seraph say, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” (Isaiah 6:7 ESV)  Not only did God switch off Isaiah speaking with his own sinful lips, his guilt from speaking, expressed through his woe, is also, literally switched off, so that his guilt is taken away.  And the atoning of his sin is literally covered and hidden, by the workings of God’s holiness.  Just as bitumen covers a rutted road, and a ransom recovers the lost, Isaiah’s guilt is turned off and his offensive unholiness is covered.

It's not about Isaiah, but about God’s work with his word making something out of someone as good as nothing.  If it was about Isaiah, how could he volunteer so willingly to take the message God wanted him to take?  Having spoken with unclean lips with those who knew him and spoke to him with unclean lips, how is it that he can proclaim God’s desolation to Israel?  And do it with seared lips?  Isaiah would’ve known he would’ve been received as a hypocrite, by a nation of unclean lips and dull hearts.

The Israelite’s hardness of heart is not licence for us to think we can go and do the same.  Rather, in seeing we are the same, already, the Holy Spirit works to prepare our dull human hearts to receive the good work of God’s holiness.

Therefore, allow the Holy Spirit to lead you!  So, like the psalmist, you bow down towards Jesus, our holy temple, and give thanks to our Father in heaven for his holy name, his steadfast love and his faithfulness, for he has exalted above all things his name and his word.  (Psalm 138:2 paraphrased)

Let us pray.  Heavenly Father, you are fulfilling your purpose in us. Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever as the Holy Spirit daily leads us.  For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, do not forsake the work of your hands. (Psalm 138:8 paraphrased) Amen.

C, The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany - Luke 4:28-30 Psalm 71:1-4 "The Cliff's Edge"

Luke 4:28–30 (ESV) When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.

Standing on the precipice, the cliff’s edge, many feelings can flow through the body.  A glorious sunrise or sunset can invigorate.  Looking down at the waves against the rocks can give one giddiness from vertigo, making one cautiously pull back from the edge.  The thought of going over the edge and falling into the rocks and waves of suffering and certain death gives one that funny feeling within that really isn’t that funny at all. 

As you look over the edge you might see things washed up on the rocks, jetsam and flotsam, piles of dead seaweed, rubbish or maybe you’ve come to see for yourself a ship that’s run aground in huge seas.

It also depends on the weather too.  Standing at the cliff’s edge might be quite pleasant on a balmy summer’s day.  But when the wind is howling in from the frigid zone and the sleet is stinging your face, on the edge is no place to be.  One wonders, “Why on earth am I trying to stand here at this place, at this time”.  As the wind pushes one leans into the wind to have a look over the edge. If there’s a wind sheer for a moment, a pause in being held back, it’s over the edge and down to death.  It makes one queasy in the gut just thinking about it.

Now picture being at the bottom of the cliff in big seas.  You’ve been tossed about in a boat without a rudder and run aground.  Huge waves have pounded your punt to pieces.  Disaster has dashed your dinghy.  Climbing the cliff will save you from the waves bashing you to bits.  But it’s wet and you're too weak with cold to see or climb a way up the impenetrable slippery cliff.

Two loves emerge from these pictures.  From our perceived position in life, one desires to be at the top of the precipice, or one loves they’re at the top.  Or, on the other hand, one doesn’t love that they’re at the bottom but rather desires to be at the top.

All, in Jesus’ hometown synagogue, spoke well of him while they saw themselves as privileged and favoured.  That was until Jesus made it plain to them that they were akin to the Israelites in the days of Elijah and Elisha, who didn’t receive the freedom from hunger as did the Sidonian widow from Zarephath, and didn’t receive the recovery from leprosy as did the leprous Syrian, Naaman.

Saying the men of Nazareth who heard these things, were unimpressed, is an understatement.  They were furious.  The scriptures were fulfilled in their hearing.  The Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus, baptised in the Jordan by John, then led in the wilderness being tempted by Satan.  He proclaimed good news to the poor. He was there to proclaim freedom to these captives of Israel, to recover their sight, to set them free from oppression, and to proclaim the Lord’s favour or approval.

But they did not approve of Jesus’ proclamation, nor his approval of himself.  Nor did they accept they needed being looked upon as captives, blind, oppressed  and diseased.  So, their ease turned into dis-ease. They became blind with rage.  They were captivated by anger and took Jesus to the edge of town, to the edge of the precipice, to toss him over the edge.

However, they didn’t cast Jesus off the cliff.  Unlike a piece of waste, Jesus didn’t allow them to deliver him into the depths below.  Not long before this, Jesus wasn’t tempted by the devil to throw himself from the top of the temple, so there was no way his hometown folk were being allowed to cast him down either.  It was not his time!  That was to come at the cross when his own nation and humanity would lift him up and cast him down in death.

Humanity has a habit of dumping things we don’t want, down into the sea or over a cliff into a ravine.  If it’s out of sight it’s out of mind, ridding from sight the unsightly, so one doesn’t have to deal with it!  Today at least we flush our toilets rather than toss it out the window, down into the street, as they did in the Middle Ages.  Yet humanity still yearns to delete what it doesn’t desire.

The Nazoreans wanted to delete Jesus.  He has become as worthless to them as what they usually cast off the cliff.  Like a child chucking stones off a cliff or rolling rocks over the edge, they wanted to do the same to Jesus, the Rock of Salvation.

When Jesus confronts the idols in our lives, when the Holy Spirit opens the Word of God in our understanding, we are no different to the folk from Nazareth, we too want to cast Jesus aside and roll the Rock out of sight.  How often we seek to put parts of God’s Word out of sight that offends our perceived position at the top of the hill!

However, the reality is, as humans being human, no one gets to stand on the hill because of what  they’ve done or who they desire to be.  Just as a beautiful sunset descends into darkness, any human perception that one stands perfect in life, quickly disappears into the reality of a future without a resurrection from oneself, into the refuge of God’s protection.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone casting down their thoughts on those, they’ve perceived to be below them at the bottom of the cliff, I’d be a wealthy man.  But even more so, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve done or thought the same, I’d be doubly wealthy. 

But thank the Lord, you and I don’t get a dollar for conceitedly thinking this way.  By the grace of God, the Holy Spirit works faith within us with Jesus, the “Word made Flesh”.  You and I, like those in the Nazareth synagogue are invited to have our sight recovered, and the scripture fulfilled in our hearing.

as Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18–19 ESV)

This means, the Holy Spirit is upon Jesus, because God the Father has anointed Jesus, to proclaim good news to the poor.  That’s you, me, and all of humanity!  God sent Jesus to proclaim freedom to us in captivity, to recover our sight, and to free us from oppression. We’re in an all of life event being raised from the bottom of the cliff to the top.

In fact, every time you cast someone over the edge into your perceived sea of uselessness, realise as you cast them over the edge, you’ve bound yourself to them with the same rope of judgement.  So, when you cast them off the precipice into the depths, feel yourself falling off the cliff into a sea of sin and destruction too.

But the Spirit of the Lord is upon Jesus to also proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour!  And the favour was fulfilled at the cross, which at the lifting up of Jesus Christ in death, also lifts us up from our fatal falls from favour.  But it doesn’t end there at the cross!  Favour is fully fulfilled at Jesus’ resurrection!  When our Heavenly Father’s favour saw Jesus elevated in glory, since he bore no sin of his own but bore the sin of all, those who repentantly trust him are in a life event of rescue, resuscitation, and refuge.

While Jesus was one of us, he did not perceive himself at the top but allowed himself to be plunged into the depths of turbulent humanity, looking to God our Father who stands at the precipice of all holiness in heaven and on earth.  The words of Psalm seventy-one show the trust Jesus placed in our Father in heaven.

“In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame! In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me, and save me!  Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come; you have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.”   (Psalm 71:1–4 ESV)

You are being rescued by Jesus, the only rock of refuge!  You are being elevated by the cross from the depths of sin and death.  These words given to you, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, are words for your lips, because they’re words of God’s promised rescue, resuscitation, and refuge, as you wait for the fulfilment of God’s favour to be finally completed at your resurrection on the last day. Amen.