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| MLK icon by Ross Boone, at https://www.behance.net/gallery/63044783/MLK-icon |
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.”
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"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," Jesus says.
The Spirit of the Lord that descended upon him like a dove at baptism, the Spirit that cast him into the wilderness to be tempted and tried, the Spirit that has now brought him back to begin his ministry. Jesus, today, by the Spirit, lays out his “mission statement” for the rest of his ministry. He has come specifically to care for the poor, the oppressed, and the forgotten.
The people praise him at first, but don’t be fooled. Just a few minutes after Jesus preaches these words, these same crowds will try to throw him off a cliff. But we’ll get to that story next week.
Today, I want to focus on how these words from Luke 4 represent for us not just the heart of Jesus’s mission, but the heart of our own calling in faith: to bring the joy of God’s kingdom to those who, in this life, are neglected and cast out and undervalued; to work for holy justice in this world.
This past Monday, we as a nation recognized a day in honor of the late preacher and civil rights activists, Martin Luther King, Jr. A week ago Tuesday marked the church’s commemoration of him as a “renewer of the church.”
In a September 1962 sermon delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, Jr. used today’s gospel text to describe how Christians are to reflect - with zeal! - God’s intense concern and care for the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized.
He’s a better preacher than I am, so I am going to hand over the rest of the sermon to him.
Excerpts from "Can A Christian Be a Communist?"
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sermon Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church
September 30, 1962
Christians are always to begin with a bias in favor of a movement which protests against unfair treatment of the poor, but surely Christianity itself is such a protest….[however the world expresses a concern for the poor and the oppressed, it can express] no greater concern than the manifesto of Jesus, which opens with the words, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, recovering the sight of the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” And so a passionate concern for social justice must be a concern of the Christian religion.
We must admit that we, as Christians, have often lagged behind at this point. Slavery could not have existed in the United States for almost 250 years if the church had really taken a stand against it. Segregation could not exist today in the United States if the church took a stand against it.
This morning if we stand at eleven o’clock to sing “In Christ There Is No East or West”, we stand in the most segregated hour of America.
Oh, we have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds, and this is the tragedy facing us today. We must admit that the church has often lagged behind, that the church has too often been an institution serving to crystallize the patterns of the status quo. Oh, we’ve identified the name of Christ with so many evil things….
We robbed him of his good name. And we’ve identified that name with segregation. We’ve identified that name with exploitation and with oppression and with so many of the evils of history.
This is why Karl Marx one day looked out, and this is why others following him have looked out and decided to say, “Religion is the opiate of the people.” It has too often been the opiate of the people. Too often the churches talk about a future good over yonder and not concerned about the present evil over here.
Oh, I tell you this morning, and I believe in immortality. I believe in it firmly and absolutely. But I’m tired of people telling me about the hereafter and they don’t tell me about the here. You can’t say hereafter without saying here.
It’s all right to talk about silver slippers in a symbolic sense over in heaven, but give me some shoes to wear down here. It’s all right to talk about long white robes over yonder, but give me some clothes to wear down here. It’s all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey over yonder, but I want to see men living in decent homes right here in this world. It’s all right to talk about all of these things in terms of a new Jerusalem, but I want to see a new Atlanta, a new New York, a new America, and a new world right here.
This is what we’ve got to see—that the church has a social gospel that it must be true to. We must certainly work with individuals and seek to change the soul; that’s very important. But we’ve got to deal with these social conditions that corrupt the soul, and any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and not concerned about the city government that damns the soul, the economic conditions that corrupt the soul, the slum conditions, the social evils that cripple the soul, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood.
We’ve got to see that we are challenged to have a greater social consciousness in this church. We must be concerned about the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject, deadening poverty.
I don’t mind saying this morning that too often in capitalism we’ve taken necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I will never be content, I will never rest until all of God’s children can have the basic necessities of life.
I want to see all of God’s children with a decent home and three square meals a day and able to educate their children. God wants this for everybody. And I will never be content as long as somebody over here can make five hundred thousand dollars a year, and I’ve met black men and women down in Mississippi who make less than five hundred dollars a year. Something wrong with that. And I see hungry boys and girls in this nation and other nations and think about the fact that we spend more than a million dollars a day storing surplus food. And I say to myself, “I know where we can store that food free of charge—in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of people in our nation and in this world who go to bed hungry at night.” And God has left enough and to spare in this world for all of his children to have the basic necessities of life.
Jesus said, “I know you need it. I know you need money. I know you have need of clothes. I know you need a car to ride in. I know you need a home to live in and to sleep in. I know that you have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God. Seek ye first righteousness, and all of these things will be added unto you.” And this is what we must do.
We are challenged to dedicate and devote our lives to the cause of Christ. [And] why is it that we don’t have this zeal for Christ? Why is that we don’t have this sense of purpose, this sense of dedication for his kingdom? Oh, these problems that we face in America and the world wouldn’t be here today if we were as dedicated to Christianity as we ought to be…
Open the Book of Revelation. The word “witness” means being willing to die for the cause of Jesus Christ. This morning, my friends, we must believe that there is something so dear, something so precious, something so eternal, that we’ll die for it. And if you haven’t discovered something that you will die for, you aren’t fit to live. You may be thirty, as I’ve said so often, at that moment some great principle stands before you, some great truth, some great decision, and you fail to take a stand because you are afraid that something will happen to you or that you will be killed and you want to live a few more years. Well, you might go on and live until eighty, but I submit to you that you were just as dead at thirty as you are at eighty and the cessation of breathing in your life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
You died when you failed to stand up for something. You died when you failed to give yourself to some great principle. You died when you refused to stand up against segregation. You died when you refused to stand up against some great evil of society. Somebody’s calling us this morning, saying “Go preach my gospel. You shall be witnesses unto me in Samaria, Judea, and unto every part of the earth, carry this gospel into the villages, to the hedges and the highways, and tell men about Jesus.”
If we will do this, we will make this old world a new world. And men the world over will join hands as brothers, and they will walk this earth knowing that we are all God’s children. Once again, we will be able to sing, not only in [in church] on Sunday morning. We will hear the very angels in heaven stop silent and the eternity stand still. And we will hear Peter cry out, “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and Christ. And He shall reign forever and ever. Hallelujah, hallelujah!” This is our faith, and this is our hope.
Today, as First Lutheran Church, we remember that are the body of Christ and individually members of it! On this RIC Celebration Sunday, where we give thanks for the gifts and witness of our LGBTQI+ siblings and affirm our welcome to all people. On this Annual Meeting Sunday, where we give thanks for the ways that God continues to call us into ministry into this next year.
In all of this, we trust that God’s Spirit is leading us toward transformation, that we might go out with courage to bring Christ in real ways to our broken, fearful, hopeless world.
In this season of Epiphany, we still shine with the brightness of Christmas. The fragile baby in the manger still leads us seek God the vulnerable corners of our world. And so we go out today with the words of Howard Thurman, who reminds us that the work of Christmas - the work of the Spirit - is still ahead of us:
The Work of Christmas
Howard Thurman
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
Amen.