It is great to be with you at St. David’s. I love coming to Tsawwassen and to this church. I appreciate the ministry of St. David’s in this area and beyond. I am very grateful for the ministry of your Rector, Simbarashe, here but also in a number of places in the diocese. His leadership and dedication to the gospel goes far beyond these walls. It is good to be with all of you.
A couple of years ago I was invited to preach at a small country church in Wexford County in Ireland. It was not the most beautiful church in the world. Rather plain, grey in colour, set back from the road with cows grazing on the farmland in the surrounding fields. It was a short drive from the main road up to the church’s gate to enter the car park. A cemetery or a church yard surrounded the fairly rectangular building. The rector of the parish was there to greet me when I arrived. A big grin on his face. He had known my father.
The church was the same church that my father and his parents and his siblings and many other relations had attended for oh so many years. The names of many of my relatives were etched on several gravestones in the church yard. Uncles, aunts, grandparents, great-grandparents all there.
I had been invited to preach at what is essentially known as our family church in this part of Ireland. Word had got out that I was a bishop in some far off land and so an invitation was sent out.
Many people started to arrive. Some of whom I knew and others not as familiar but most were reminding me that I was a relative of theirs. I was starting to feel a little nervous. Preaching to a congregation is one thing, preaching to family who had watched you grow up is quite another thing. My uncle George was there. He had been attending that church for about 90 years, what words could I preach to him? A man who was devout in his faith and trusted deeply in God’s grace. He knew me as a youngster and probably had a formed opinion of me. Could the Spirit be known in the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts?
“Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. 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…”
Jesus returned to his home town. I am sure that he was excited to be there. It is always good to come home, the cooking is always better, the beds most comfortable. Perhaps everyone made a fuss over him. “I remember you when you were just this tall, and look at you now. You are all grown up. Your mother must be so proud of you. I hear that you are a rabbi, well, well.” Maybe he was invited out to dinner with friends he had had when he was younger, a chance to talk about old times.
I am sure there was great excitement as he was invited forward at the synagogue. They were probably delighted for him. He got up and he read a portion from the prophet Isaiah: “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, and let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” Everyone must have been impressed, he read it so beautifully. And if he had just sat down it would have been great. If he had simply read the words and smiled and sat down all would have been perfect. But he didn’t, he broke into the silence that had followed the scripture reading and said “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
We hear these words with our Christian ears on and think “Of course Jesus would say this, it is only fitting.” But the people in attendance would struggle to understand them. How could this hometown boy, Jesus, who they had been so happy to see return, declare the fulfilment of the words of “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me?”
But take a moment with me to reflect on those words that Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah: “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, and let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Not many at that synagogue would have recognized it but I think that with these words Jesus has just defined his whole ministry, his whole calling, a glimpse of the Word of God… but it was quickly ignored. And even today these words seem to wash over us without us stopping to pay closer attention to what our Lord was saying.
The faith that we cherish, the hope of our baptism, the centre of our relationship with God has been defined and we don’t really pay much attention to it. Jesus said: “The Spirit of God has anointed him to bring good news to the poor, 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 favour.” These are gospel words, words of life. Not words of spreading hatred, division, tension, war, violence. Not words of judgement, scorn, keeping out the stranger or only showing compassion to a small few. Not words of the divide between rich and poor growing ever wider. Not words of continuing to destroy this planet. Not words of housing being an option for only a certain few. No, words of bringing good news, of changing the world, of bringing the kingdom of God into our midst, of seeing the presence of the Spirit in this very moment. This was a calling to change the world. It was a calling to turn upside down the thinking of our times and see God’s face in all people of God… all people of God. It is a calling for us to change this world and to change ourselves. It is a calling to see that at baptism the Spirit of the Lord rested upon us as well.
This past Monday was Martin Luther King Jr Day in the United States. From the perspective of 50 years or so it seems a long time ago that Martin Luther King was with us and stirring the world to put an end to racial segregation and preaching about a year of the Lord’s favour. His words too were earth shattering, world changing, bringing new life. They were words that we cannot or should not quickly ignore. His “I Have a Dream” speech still sends chills down many a spine as he dreams of a new world of justice. But there were many other words that he preached. He once said, “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centred people have torn down, other-centred people can build up.” He once said, “Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.”
On Tuesday of this week a bishop in the Episcopal Church preached words directly at the new president of the United States. She said: “In the name of God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country.” She said, “I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”
This past week has been the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Today is the final day. And the Church throughout all the world needs us to be praying for unity. Now by unity I do not mean that we all fully agree on everything, that is something different. But that we agree that the Spirit of the Lord continues to be on people of faith. And that Spirit might lead in all sorts of directions. But we recognize it when good news is brought to the poor. When the captives know release. When the blind have recovery of sight. When the oppressed are set free. When we want all people to know the year, the lifetime, of the Lord’s favour. These are the words that Jesus preached and they are central to the life of the Church in the world but we do not always act as if they are. We are too busy arguing with one another or creating disunity rather than focussing on building relationships and trust.
You see our faith calls us to invite the Spirit of the Lord to rest on us as well. To pray for God’s guidance and hope working in and through us. We are called to be different from the enticements of the world clamouring for more and more. We are called to recognize and help bring about the kingdom of heaven in our midst. We are called to continue to be part of fulfilling the words that Jesus spoke of today.
Back in Ireland at our family’s church, I came to know that what I needed to preach to all my relatives and to myself and anyone else who might be listening is similar to the words that Jesus read: For “The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because the Spirit has anointed us to bring good news to the poor. The Spirit has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” May these words indeed be fulfilled in our hearing… in and through us as we follow the steps of Jesus.