Epiphany 3 C

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31; Luke 4:14-21

Don’t you wish you could have seen the eyes of those sitting there that day in the synagogue in Nazareth when Jesus showed up and surprised everyone?

What if Jesus showed up in our worship this morning, and read from scripture? What if Jesus himself preached the sermon for us today?

What text would Jesus pick? I don’t know…would he follow the lectionary cycle of readings that we use? If he picked a particular reading for us today…would that make that part of the Bible better…or more important to us? If he read from the Book of Habakkuk, for example, would we all feel like we came to school without having done our homework?

Most modern Christians have a…complicated relationship with the Bible. After all, it’s a complicated sacred text.

There are things in the Bible that are comforting, uplifting. There are things in the Bible that are troubling…contradictory…maddening sometimes.

And then there’s most of the Bible that — let’s admit it — mostly bores us.

Fortunately for the people of Nazareth in synagogue on that particular sabbath…Jesus did not pick a boring text. He was handed a scroll of Isaiah, and from that scroll he read portions of his choosing.

And then the drama: Jesus finishes reading and returns to his seat. Obviously the people of Nazareth know something is up because all of their eyes follow Jesus as he sits. They stare until he tells them this zinger: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus himself, the same Jesus that the people of Nazareth had known since his birth, that Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of the scripture that he read.

I would have loved to see their eyes. Think about this scripture, though. Jesus is reading from scripture that was first proclaimed to people 500 years before he was born. And the words of Isaiah were extrememly important to those folks who lived through great change…tragedy and redemption. That scripture was for them. Of course, it meant something different to the folks in synagogue that day that Jesus read it. They heard this scripture about their ancestors and tried to figure out what it meant for them. And here comes Jesus who says if they want to know what it means, they have to know…him.

Plus, now we have this scripture…both the words of Isaiah in the Hebrew scriptures and the words of Jesus quoting Isaiah in the New Testament. What does it mean for us? How can scripture mean so many different things to different peoples?

So, the Bible is already somewhat complicated, but then we make it worse because different people interpret different parts of the Bible differently. Sometimes different is OK — and sometimes it isn’t: almost every evil deed there is can be justified by quoting selectively from scripture. The Bible can be used to condemn people and trap them. Many of our brothers and sisters in Christ use the Bible so cruelly that it makes me hesitant to admit that I read the same one.

That’s a shame, because as we’ve heard in today’s readings…the Bible can do some pretty amazing things.

So, here are a couple things to know about how people talk about scripture and the claims they make about it.

Some people claim the Bible is inerrant.

• the Bible means exactly what they think it means — no more, no less
• The Bible is the trump card that they can play in any hand

Problems:

• the Bible never actually claims this about itself
• look no further than today’s reading
• discounts Sin
• God’s Word may be perfect but we are not, even literal readers
• idolizes a book

If you looked in our church’s constitution you would see that it does not claim that the Bible is inerrant. Instead, it describes the Bible as inspired.

• Spirit within it
• God takes otherwise dead words and breathes life into them
• God uses scripture to breath life into us, into the church, and into the world
• Bible itself not holy, but God’s Spirit that blows through it

And just listen to it blow through the scripture that Jesus chose to read for his hometown crowd in Nazareth:

“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.” (Luke 4.18–19 NRSV)

See, you know the Spirit is at work when these things are happening…when good news is proclaimed to the people that need to hear it…when bound and stuck people are set free.

Sent by the Spirit, the Word of God does two things: it reveals the truth of how we are all bound and chained to our own Sin, and then it sets us free.

The Law destroys the parts of us that try to play God, our sinful side…the parts that still believe we can achieve God’s love…and Grace makes us alive again through God’s righteousness…not our own.

So much of what passes for ‘Gospel’ in our modern use of the Bible is actually just Law. We believe that God will love us if we just go to church. If we just be nice to people around us. If we just say our prayers and know in our heart that we love God. In other words…we do have to win God’s favor, but God makes it really, really easy. This is the worst kind of Law because when we inevitably fail at these seemingly easy tasks…when we aren’t nice to the people around us. When we forget to pray and when we feel doubt in our hearts…then we’re really trapped because: if we mess up the easy tasks…what hope do we have?

Our hope is in Grace. The Good News. In the Word of God made flesh.

There is no ‘God loves us if we just…’ there is only ‘God loves us even though.’ The Gospel proclaims that from anything and everything that can bind you, God sets you free.

This is what God’s Word does to us. Whether that Word is read from a page of the Bible, preached in a sermon, sung in a hymn, or shared around the dinner or over coffee with a friend. Sometimes you (not just me the preacher) get to be the voice that God uses to set people free. Actually helping others be set free is part of our mission.

The Word made flesh is made real in our lives when the Spirit enters our story, and the stories of others through us. Jesus does show up in our worship, reading, praying, serving others. In using our gifts. Jesus shows up in our words when we set people free with the Good News.