3rd Sunday after Epiphany

Sermon: 3rd Sunday after Epiphany, 1/26/2025

Text: Luke 4:14-21

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Beloved, just as Jesus stood in the synagogue and proclaimed the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Isaiah, which clearly marks where Jesus stood, our proclamation of the Gospel of this same Christ must lead us to take a stand in our own times. The current social and political climate is tense, to say the least, and what requires saying, must be said. I’m sure many of you have been witnessing the disturbing onslaught of executive orders from the current government, as well as the sermon of the Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde for the Inaugural Prayer service celebrated in the Washington National Cathedral. We are currently witnessing the conflict of two distinct proclamations. On the one hand, there is a proclamation of division, a proclamation that oftentimes gives wings to cruelty and is demonstrably anti-Christian and violates various precepts of human rights. And then there is the proclamation we heard from Bishop Budde, rooted in the social witness of the Gospel, in the basic practice of mercy and compassion for all people; for every face we see bears the image of God. Yet, even more could have been said, for the Gospel does not lack words to refer to God’s justice and desire for humanity. For the worth of undocumented and migrant people is not based on their economic contribution or their social utility, or even their proximity and belonging to our communities; the worth of LGBTQ folks is not based on those parameters either, of any human being for that matter. I reiterate: every human face bears the image of God. The dignity of every human being is a birthright. For God, there is no such thing as an illegal human being, and therefore for us neither. By the very nature of our existence, it is a sign of our belovedness which must be nurtured due to our penchant to ignore this inherent quality within each and every one of us. If we are proclaimers of the Gospel, this fact cannot be missing.

As Jesus affirmed the fulfillment of prophecy, I want to affirm to you, beloved, where does the church stand in a moment like this, so that we might speak with clarity and conviction. For times like these, define who we are as the Lord’s people. Let us read carefully what Jesus read from Isaiah at the synagogue: “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 set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That, beloved, is the Kingdom of God interrupting the power of the world. This is Jesus inaugurating His ministry, proclaiming to us the “executive orders” of God’s incoming Kingdom. The designs of inequality and oppression are broken and turned asunder. God’s reign lifts up those cast down. And so, this kingdom that Jesus proclaimed is not an immaterial and abstract concern, it is intimately involved with our suffering humanity, it is heavily concerned about how we use wealth, it is very concerned with how we treat those around us, for we are dealing with the Creator of all that exists. So this prophetic proclamation has a specific subject, it has a specific goal, and a future state of being it desires, namely: it pays special attention to the poor, it seeks their liberation and healing and by extension everybody else’s, and it desires a state of peace, reconciliation and collective flourishing. Meaning, sure enough that there is no society in this world that can possibly be the Kingdom of God, only God can bring that about. But we are glimpses of this future Kingdom, and therefore we testify in our present circumstances the incoming reality of Christ’s reign. So when a society persecutes the vulnerable, we as part of Christ’s body cannot be silent. When the a society does harm and diminishes the dignity of other God-beloved persons, we cannot remain silent. Let us be mindful, that we are reading this text, not only as a historical account, but as a Living Word that pierces our very conscience. Who are the poor in our midst? How does liberation and healing look like today? Is the moral arch bending towards peace, reconciliation and collective flourishing in the world today? These are important questions that God is posing to us in this time, beloved. These are

questions that seek to save us from distorting the vision of the Gospel that wants to come alive in our midst.

Beloved, we cannot forget who we are. We are united to Christ. We see the world through Christ. And that can bring us into conflict with the various projects the world conjures to tyrannize their neighbors. Recently I read an excerpt from the famed New Testament scholar NT Wright regarding the perception of Christians in the Roman Empire. In the 2nd century, back when Christians were a minority religion, Roman officials did not care or thought much about the ins and outs of Christian teachings, but they were familiar with what their Bishops were. Bishops were those tireless and annoying agitators pleading for the needs of the poor. But not just bishops, we as baptized children of God are all called to be agitators for the needs of the vulnerable, each in our own ways. It is our special calling of radical love of neighbor. Otherwise we forget ourselves if we don’t agitate. Bishop Budde is correct when in response to the long list of harmful orders being signed she said: “Is anybody going to say anything?” And we must be clear that yes, we have much to say. There is a reason why in church we repeat things over and over again, because that is how many times we need to be reminded of who we are, for the task is not easy. And the world will criticize, and we will be peddled with doubts about our Christian identity and resolve, but we cannot forget who we are. In the spirit of a saying of Dr. King, we are not consensus-leaders. We don’t take stock of the budget and policies of the nation and determine what is right and what is wrong. We don’t play political games or calculate the worth of human lives. We listen to God in Jesus Christ and see the God-given worth found in every human being, we listen to that proclamation in Isaiah, and the spirit of that fiery conscience of mercy and love, we say, because of the Gospel we have received: “it is not right that children are being torn from their parents, it is not right for people to be unhoused and workers not receive their fair wages, to threaten or enact war, to racially profile your neighbor, to dehumanize your fellow neighbors; it is not right that the death penalty is being reinstated, that

medical bills are going to rise in prices, that we would treat Creation so callously by destroying our environment for profit. As members of Christ’s body, are we embodying what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”? Are we thinking and acting and praying in tune with the vision of Jesus? There is no mystery here: only God inspired neighborly love. Are we cultivating this spirit within us, so that we might suffer and rejoice in solidarity with God’s poor? For in God’s world, we literally cannot exists without each other. As Paul exhorted: “The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” Every human being we meet has a purpose and a love that call them to flourish. We cannot exist in this state of suspicion and rejection, for we all belong to each other in Christ Jesus. God calls us not to see others like numbers on a page, rather to see the God-breathed being that they are. So let us agitate, let us proclaim boldly the Lord’s liberating movement, let us be beacons of hope and love in a time of hard-heartedness. May we not forget who we are, that in Christ: The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because he has anointed us to bring good news to the poor. He has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. May this scripture’s fulfillment empower us for the work ahead. Let us pray: