Please Click Here For Online Worship Video
Long-winded preachers…have you ever been held hostage by a preacher who just won’t get to the point and goes on and on and on about stuff she or he thinks is relevant, funny, or game-changing. I have…and I’ve done it, too. Sorry. Sermon length is an interesting critter. If a minister is long and dull in the pulpit, then she better be good at visiting. If a minister is long but dynamic and engaging, that will be tolerated and surprisingly people will grow in faith and knowledge. In most of those churches that people are beating down the doors to go to, the sermons are typically 45 minutes or more and are called teaching rather that preaching. Then there’s the short sermon, if a minister lives by that rule of “If it can’t be said in eight minutes, it isn’t worth saying”, people will love that minister, but the congregation will over time fall into maintenance mode and subscribe to the version of the faith called “Christianity Lite”.
Well, a good compromise on sermon length that I’ve heard is “Have something to say and don’t take anymore that twenty minutes to say it.” There are very few people and fewer ministers who are gifted to be able to say what needs to be said in eight minutes. And on the other hand, there’s a whole lot of ministers who are just plain tired of the weekly deadline routine amongst the other overworked minister stuff and they’re just plodding on so to speak. But, if your minister has something to say and its engaging and informative and she can do it 20 minutes, keep her. You will learn something and grow.
And then there’s Jesus. What we have here in our reading this morning is probably the shortest sermon ever given. Jesus is in his hometown of Nazareth and they are eager to hear him and he gives them a six second ditty that says it all, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And they are amazed. They can’t believe it’s their hometown boy, Joseph’s son. But, if we were to take this passage without having heard the first three and a half chapters of Luke, we would just think this Jesus is deluded. We wouldn’t much get the point of it. So sorry, I’m going to need to sidetrack for a few minutes and bring us up to speed to ensure that we get the point.
Luke, unlike Matthew and Mark, doesn’t give his readers a good dose of Jesus’ preaching and the ministry he conducted in Galilee before coming to Nazareth. Matthew and Mark give us a few chapters of Jesus wandering about Galilee calling disciples and preaching the message that the Kingdom of God had drawn near and inviting people to come into it and live faithfully. And then all the while, Jesus proved the reality of the Kingdom by healing people, casting out demons, and going toe-to-toe with the religious leadership about their hypocrisy.
In Luke, Jesus’ sermon in his hometown of Nazareth is the first thing we hear from him as far as preaching goes. If we have read the first three and a half chapters, we would have heard him speak twice, and oddly enough, we wouldn’t have seen any miracle working either. Those two times he speaks tells us something about him. The first time is when he was twelve years old and he skipped out on his parents for three days while they were returning home from a feast in Jerusalem. They find him in the Temple and scold him a bit. He comes back at them with, “Why were you so desperately searching for me? Didn’t you know I would be in my Father’s house?” That thing about God being his father is pretty in our faces in Luke’s Gospel. More on that in just a second.
The second time we hear Jesus speak in Luke’s Gospel is when he rebuffs the devil and his temptations by simply quoting Scripture at him and being faithful to do what those Scriptures say. After fasting forty days he doesn’t magically turn stone into bread to feed himself. He lives not by bread alone but every word that comes from the mouth of God. He doesn’t seek power for himself by worshipping the devil, but worships and serves God alone. He doesn’t put God to the test by taking the unnecessary risk of jumping off the highest part of the temple knowing angels will catch him. He doesn’t have to prove himself to the devil and oddly, that is the temptation the devil is presenting him with. You see, the devil started his tempting with, “If you are the Son of God…”. Those temptations were all about whether Jesus will use his power and authority as Son of God to serve his own ends or to serve the will of his Father. There’s that Son of God thing again. Maybe will should go down that rabbit hole.
In Luke, we get the first inkling that Jesus is the Son of God when the angel Gabriel appears to Mother Mary and tells her that she will conceive and bear a son and he will be the Son of the Most High. Now, if you are a non-Jew Graeco-Roman type person back in the day hearing Luke’s Gospel read at a dinner party consisting of a group of people who call themselves “The Way” or “Christianos”, you would raise an eyebrow at that “Most High” thing because that was the way people would refer to the Greek god Zeus who was the chief among the Greek gods. But the angel soon makes clear that it’s the God of the Jews who is Most High and the child to be born will be from the line of the Jewish kings. So, you’re going to have to ponder that the God of the Jews is the true Most High and his Son born to Mary is the true ruler over the world just like an emperor. He’s bigger than the Emperor, this Jesus is.
Now get this, Son of God was also what that the Roman emperors deceptively claimed for themselves. They created a religion called the Imperial Cult where they claimed to be sons of Zeus and were gods either actually in the present or became one when they died. And so, they made people worship them in the temples that they built all over the empire in order to promote loyalty. And, we know something else about the Roman emperors. Without fail, they used their power as “sons of Zeus” to serve themselves. They succumbed to devil’s temptations and served him. Luke lets us know by the way Jesus rebuffs the devil that Jesus isn’t in it for his own power and glory like the emperors were.
Back to Mary and the angel, the angel goes on to tell Mary how it will be possible for Jesus to be born the Son of God. The Holy Spirit will come upon her and the power of the Most High will overshadow her, and she will conceive. Therefore, Jesus will be born from above and be born divine not just become a god when he dies. And then a few verses later, Mary sang a song praising God for how her boy will turn the world upside down as far as wealth and power go and all according to the promises God made to Abraham. To a person hearing Luke’s Gospel back then at that dinner party there is no question that this is the God of those pesky, rebellious Jews we’re talking about and this Son of God is foremost their king and he won’t serve himself like those emperors do. That’s good news.
There’s one more sidetrack we have to take before considering Jesus’ very short sermon and it’s about the Holy Spirit. The activity of the Holy Spirit in the first four chapters of Luke makes clear that God gets involved in the world on behalf of the those who have been beaten down by the powerful and does so by the Holy Spirit coming upon people and filling them and enabling them to speak and do the things of God. I’ll run the examples here. The Angel Gabriel tells the priest Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, that John will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born in order to turn people to the Lord and prepare the way of the coming Saviour, Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes upon Mary that Jesus, the Son of God, may be conceived. Filled with Holy Spirit, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth upon seeing Mary at her door recognizes that Mary is pregnant with her “Lord”, a title Jews reserved only for God. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Zechariah sings a song at the birth of John that spells out the saving ministry that Jesus will do for God’s people and how John will be the one who prepares the way for him. The Holy Spirit rested on the aged prophet Simeon and promised Simeon he would not die until he had seen the Saviour. Then when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple to be circumcised, the Holy Spirit guides Simeon to them and he sings a song saying that he can now die because his eyes have seen the one who is the means of God’s salvation for all peoples not just the Jews. Luke makes clear that God announces what he’s going to do and he does it through people by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Nothing salvific happens apart from the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
Well, all this Son of God and Holy Spirit talk comes together when Luke tells of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. It’s just a couple of sentences and you might miss it. Jesus gets baptized and while he’s praying heaven opens up and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descends upon him and God speaks, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Incidentally, that’s what a Roman emperor would say when he would adopt somebody as a son in order to be his successor. The Holy Spirit is on Jesus and Jesus is the Beloved Son of God with God’s full favour.
After that, Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. For Forty days and nights, Satan tempts him as we’ve already discussed. Jesus prevails. Jesus, the Holy Spirit-filled Son of God is the real deal that all the emperors of the world are not. If you are the normal Joe or Jane non-Jew back in that day this is Good News.
Jesus came out of the wilderness and preached around Galilee and soon came to his hometown synagogue where they gave him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and Jesus laid out the nature and scope of his ministry. Jesus found and read the passage that begins: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” The Holy Spirit will enable him to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, give recovery of sight to the blind, set the oppressed free, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. That last one had to do with economic equity. Jesus, the Holy Spirit-filled Son of God has and will turn the world upside down as far as wealth and power go. Jesus is in it for the poor, the captive, the oppressed, the disabled, the economically disenfranchised. That’s Good News.
Jesus told the people of his hometown, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” They were amazed and they should have been. You see, if we read on into Luke’s second book, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, we discover that on the day of Pentecost God filled the followers of Jesus with the Holy Spirit and then they went throughout the world and boldly proclaimed Jesus to be the Son of God, and Lord and Saviour and they embodied his ministry in their fellowships. The brief glimpses that Luke gives us into the communities that arose because the Holy Spirit had awakened faith in or loyalty to Jesus in people who heard the proclamation of the Apostles show us that in those communities Christians eliminated poverty. People were released from those things that held them captive, be it demonic or otherwise. Slaves were treated equal to masters and women regarded as equal to men. Spiritual as well as even physical blindness was healed. People could see their way forward. They could have hope. Finally, people shared. There was economic equity in these Christian fellowships. It was evident in those early Christian fellowships that Jesus, the Son of God, was reigning and that by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit he was making his reign of unconditional healing, freeing, hope for the disenfranchised loving-kindness evident. These fellowships were signposts, to use N. T. Wright’s term, signposts of the reign of King Jesus, the Holy Spirit-filled Son of God who will return and establish his kingdom.
Now, I’m going to try Jesus’ six second sermon out on you: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” What do you do with this Jesus? What is your response to this Holy Spirit-filled Saviour/King who is God the Son become one of us? Are you amazed at him? This is the Jesus you’ve heard about since you were wee tiny and taught to sing, “Jesus loves me this I know.” Are you amazed at him, challenged by him, confronted by him? Do you feel anything at all about him other than saying, “I choose to believe in God because it helps me cope with the trials of life?” Or, “I’ve had some moments and Jesus wears the face of the one who was with me in those moments?” Is he and his ministry Good News to you?
Well, to be honest I don’t think “amazed” is the word we would use to describe our reaction the Holy Spirit-filled Son of God Saviour/King Jesus. I think the reason for our lack of amazement is we missed that paragraph Jesus read from Isaiah that spells out Jesus’ Holy Spirit-powered ministry and which in turn frames and guides the ministry of the fellowships of those who follow him who are also filled with that same Holy Spirit. We seem to have read a different paragraph from somewhere else; one that doesn’t mention the Holy Spirit. This paragraph simply reads: be a good person, believe in God whom it’s your duty to worship at church on Sunday because that’s what good people do, and God will bless you with providing what you need and you’ll go to heaven when you die. It’s all about you individual and whether you’re a good person and whether you’ll go to heaven when you die. Nothing about this Holy Spirit-filled ministry of Jesus the Son of God.
Friends, the Holy Spirit was/is upon Jesus and upon us his followers that we may be fellowships of Jesus followers who strive to eliminate poverty among ourselves. The Holy Spirit is upon us that we may be fellowships where people can find release which means forgiveness from the captivity of guilt and shame and that they may begin to see their way, the Way. The Holy Spirit is upon us that our fellowships may be places where people find freedom from the things that oppress them, things like addictions and prejudices and broken relationships. The Holy Spirit is upon us that we may be fellowships that strive to empower the disenfranchised and who publicly strive for their rights.
Jesus has placed us in his Kingdom that together we might seek it and strive for it. When we do that we discover Jesus in our midst and we personally encounter him. That’s when he gets amazing. Amen.
