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| photo by Deb Taylor, on Flickr |
1 Corinthians 12:12-27
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 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.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Luke 4:14-21
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“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 let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
--
We had a great conversation this last Monday in Bible study about the lectionary, that is, the prescribed three-year cycle of Gospel, Old Testament, and New Testament readings that we use in worship. We follow the Revised Common Lectionary, as do most other Lutheran churches, as well as many other mainline denominations. The idea behind the lectionary is that, in the course of each three-year cycle, we read a large and representative quantity of scripture. For the most part, I really like the lectionary.
But there are at least a few times each cycle when I really feel like the lectionary has let us down. Today is one of those days. We have a really nice gospel reading today. Jesus has returned from the wilderness and is in Nazareth, teaching and preaching, and everybody thinks he is great. He goes into the synagogue, and reads these fantastic words from Isaiah 61, proclaiming that he is the one who has been anointed to bring good news and freedom to the poor, the oppressed, and the captive. He says, "today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," and his sits back down. That's the end of today's gospel, but it's actually only half of the whole story in Luke chapter 4.
The lectionary doesn't give us the second half of the story until next week, except it is the second half of the story that gives today's reading it's punch. So the whole story goes something like this:
After Jesus opens the scroll, after he proclaims these really hopeful words from Isaiah, after he says the he is the one fulfilling the prophecy, after he sits down, the crowds, we read, are amazed by him, and they speak well of him. They like what he has to say...probably because they think that he's talking about them.
And this makes Jesus angry. Because they've missed the point. It is Jesus' intention to bring salvation to all, but his first goal is to bring salvation to those who most need it - not the faithful, established folks living in Galilee, but to all those who are living in the uncertain space out on the margins.
So in the second half of the story, Jesus snaps at them: "Don't you dare think that I'm going to do any miracles for you here; I didn't proclaim these words of salvation for your benefit! Remember Elijah? Remember Elisha? God sent these prophets to heal outsiders, not insiders. It’s not about you.”
And then the people get angry right back at him and conspire to throw him off of a cliff. Yup, that’s how the second half of the story goes. Jesus says prophetic things, and the people want to throw him off of a cliff. Because he spoke a truth that they did not want to hear: He said, "It's not about you."
I'm pretty sure that this is a truth that we don't always want to hear either.
Because who ever wants to hear Jesus say, "Don't be mistaken, I might love you, but right now, I'm not so concerned with you”? And who ever wants to think that Jesus might not give of himself equally to all people all of the time?
I mean, like those crowds sitting in the synagogue, we like the idea of Jesus reaching out to those in need...until we are confronted with the hard and humbling truth that maybe we aren't the ones most in need.
Yes, salvation is something that Jesus offers for everyone in a grand sense; but in Luke's gospel, Jesus makes it a point to begin this salvation with the outsiders and the neediest among us. Just one chapter from now, the Pharisees will question Jesus and his disciples about eating with tax collectors and sinners, and Jesus will answer, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick."
And when Jesus, in Luke's gospel, preaches the sermon on the mount, he won't say, "blessed are the poor in spirit" and "blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." He will say simply, "blessed are the poor; blessed are those who are hungry." It's not a metaphor. Jesus has come into the world for the sake of those who are literally the most vulnerable. Over and over again Luke's gospel, we get stories of Jesus reaching past the boundaries: offering healing and salvation to Gentiles, to Samaritans, to women, to tax collectors, to the unclean, to the poor.
And what this means is that Jesus, over and over again, says to those in a more privileged position, "It's not always about you."
I think that we as preachers sometimes do you all a disservice, because part of what we try to do in our sermons is find a word of good news for all of us in each week's readings.
And so when Jesus says "sell everything and give it to the poor,” we preach in generic terms about how following Jesus is a costly endeavor. When Jesus says things like, "If you want to follow me, you need to give up everything, deny your life, pick up your cross, and follow," we preach nice sermons about how he probably doesn't mean you actually have to give up everything, and he's really just saying to keep a loose hold on life and that following him is hard work.
We tend to read and interpret the Bible as if it were always about us.
But I'm not sure that Jesus in Luke's gospel would agree with those interpretations. I think that, sometimes, Jesus wants us to take him at face value. When Jesus says "deny yourself," he actually means to give up the material comforts and systemic privileges that we have been afforded. When he talks about bringing good news for the poor, he really means bringing good news to the poor, and not some metaphor about how we each are poor in some way. The message here is pretty clear: it’s not always about you.
Now, before you get too worked up and threaten to throw Jesus off a cliff, let’s take a moment to realize that this “it’s not always about you” message is actually pretty good news. It means that if and when any of us really do find ourselves out there on the margins, Jesus is going to be quick to find us. And it means that when Jesus dies on the cross for the salvation of the world, he really does mean all the ends of the earth, from the fringes to the center and back. The fact that we might have to learn a bit of humility and selflessness along the way just means that God is leading us, every day, to be more aware of the needs in our world, and more receptive to our calling to follow Jesus in taking care of them.
Because the Spirit of the Lord that empowered Jesus to serve the powerless is the same Spirit that binds us together into the body of Christ, many members, all connected, all different, and all equally beloved by God.
In last week's reading, Paul told the Corinthians that are a variety of gifts, but one Spirit. Today's reading is a continuation of that thought, where he uses the image of a body, to illustrate how God’s Spirit binds us to one another. Hands, feet, head, belly button, kneecaps, liver, spleen, eyelashes: each part of the body serves a purpose, and each part of the body depends on the health of the other parts. If one part suffers, the whole body suffers.
This is why Jesus reaches out first to the parts of our collective body that are suffering the most.
When we come to communion to share in the body and blood of Christ, we also share in the body of Christ in the world. We cannot receive the body of Christ at the table and then go on to deny the needs of any of the body’s members. We cannot eat and drink this abundance of grace and then leave the table to be selfish and stingy with the blessings that we have been given. We can’t come up here to see the love of Christ poured out and then pretend that we do not see the face of Christ in all people that we encounter.
I mean, it is totally true that the bread and the wine of communion are truly for you, and are a personal and intimate encounter with the real grace of God. But, my friends, while the meal is for you, the meal is not only for you. And the meal certainly isn’t about you.
The meal is about the seeing and being the body of Christ in the world, and especially about how we are called to follow Christ in seeking out and positioning ourselves with it’s weakest, most vulnerable parts, so that the entire body can be well and whole.
This is a message that we really really need to hear right now. Because, in case you haven’t noticed it, it’s election time. And I really hate election time. And for a long while now, I’ve struggled to put my finger on exactly what bothers me so much about it. But I think I have finally figured it out: What I really really hate about election season is how it encourages us to be shamelessly selfish.
Every campaign promise is about how your life will be better. How you will pay fewer taxes and how you will somehow get more benefits. How you will retain your freedoms. How you will benefit from a better economy. How your fears will be solved. How your security and dignity will be protected. To get elected, candidates have to speak pseudo-truths to all of their many and various constituents, telling us exactly what we want to hear and assuring us that our particular lives and our particular happiness is what matter the most. To get elected, they have to assure us, "it's all about you."
Except that Jesus tells us the exact opposite. He says that our own souls are bound together with every other person on this earth; that our health is completely depended upon the health of those who need the most, who suffer the most, who enjoy the fewest rights, the fewest freedoms, and the most challenges. Jesus tells us that it is not about what we want. It is about what is good for all. A vision of mountains being made low and valleys being filled up; a vision of the poor eating their fill and the rich going away empty; a vision of the holy, unsearchable power of God coming to touch lepers, forgive sinners, and die weakly on a cross as an ordinary criminal. This, my friends, is no way to win an election. But it is the only way to understand salvation.
We are members of Christ’s body, and if we live by his example, that puts us outside of any one particular political party. And it binds us - and our fates - together with all people.
[I have removed the paragraph that originally existed here, because it was overly (though not intentionally) political, and, after preaching it, proved to be more divisive than helpful.]
Because…Jesus says, “It isn’t about you.” And he says, “blessed are the poor.” And he says, “if anyone wants to follow me, let them deny themselves, pick up their cross, and follow me.”
If we truly believe that Jesus is salvation, that he is life beyond death, that he cares for the vulnerable - and maybe cares first for the vulnerable and calls us to do the same...well...I have no idea where that puts any of us on the political spectrum.
But I do know that it sets us free.
The good news that Jesus is the savior means that that we are to love the world as he loves it. It sets us free from having to toe a party line. It sets us free from having to worry about our stuff or our power or our education or our privilege. If Jesus is salvation, if we are all one in the body of Christ, then we are free to live out the only two laws that Jesus gave us: love God, and love neighbor - in heart, soul, mind, and spirit, in word and in deed.
At the very end of the story in Luke 4, the people are all set to throw Jesus off the cliff, and you know what happens? He turns around, and simply walks through the crowd, down the hill, and continues his ministry, even unto death, that he might save the world. Yes, they try to toss him over the edge, but he quietly goes on his way to keep on keepin’ on with his mission of love for all, and especially the last and least.
So you can get angry today at Jesus. You can get angry at me. But at the end of it all, Jesus’ love always wins the day. He came to die for your enemies. He came to die for our politicians. He came to die for the poor and the outcast. And he came to die even for you. Because he loves you. And he loves our world. All of it.
And the love of Christ is stronger than all fear. Stronger than all prejudice. Stronger than all hopelessness and anger. Stronger than death itself.
Hear the good news:
It’s not about you.
It’s about Christ.
Thanks be to God for that.
Amen.
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