I was gone last Sunday at the ELCA Youth Network Extravaganza in Louisville, but the Gospel reading for that Sunday was Jesus’ first sermon, a message in which he laid out his mission to proclaim the good news of God’s reign to all people. Today, we hear the second half of that reading, in which Jesus’ hearers move from enjoying his message to attempting to throw him off a cliff – it’s quite a transition!
In this sermon, I’m exploring our call as Christians to share the good news of Jesus with love, even when that message is controversial. As a pastor, I’m committed to proclaiming God’s radical love for all, no matter how tumultuous the current political environment might be. This Sunday is also Living Hope’s annual congregational meeting, which I address in this sermon.
Today’s Scripture readings are Jeremiah 1:4-10, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, and Luke 4:21-30. While the majority of this message is written for this week, I did lift two paragraphs from my sermon on February 3, 2019 on these same texts. Here’s the livestream of the service from Christ the King and the sermon podcast audio.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
As a pastor, I have discovered annual meeting Sundays are some of my favorite days to preach, because we get this opportunity as a church to pause and reflect on why we’re here. We look back at what God’s done in and through us over the last year, and we consider where God’s calling us in the future. The Roberts’ Rules reality might not always feel that inspirational, but that’s the idea.
I get the joy of doing this twice each year, so I get to do two annual meeting sermons! Two weeks ago for Christ the King’s meeting, I got to talk about our call to do whatever Jesus tells us, and we had a great reading about the variety of gifts God gives, and how we come together to use our gifts for the common good.
Living Hope’s meeting is today, and I think our first reading from Jeremiah fits well.
God speaks to Jeremiah, saying “I have called you; I’ve appointed you to be a prophet.” Jeremiah’s commissioned to go out and speak God’s message to the nations. But like many prophets (and like us), Jeremiah objects. He doesn’t know how to speak; he’s only a boy. He’s not ready, he’s not educated enough, he won’t know what to say.
But the Lord responds, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”
Just that by itself is a great promise for us, right? I think it’s easy to look at budget deficits and empty pews and wonder if we’ve got enough to do what God’s calling us to do. But the message God gives Jeremiah is for us too. Do not be afraid, for I am with you to deliver you.
Like Jeremiah, we’re all called as Christians to go out and proclaim God’s word. As we heard Mary tell the wedding servers two weeks ago, our job is to “Do whatever Jesus tells you to do.”
Then, turning to Luke 4, in this sermon in his home synagogue, Jesus tells us in broad strokes what that looks like. Some of you were in church last week to hear the first part of the story. I wasn’t here, but I listened to the sermon podcast, and Pastor Brown referred to this sermon as Jesus’ “inaugural address; it’s his first declaration of what he sees to be his mission the world.”
I’ve usually referred to it as “Jesus’ mission statement” but I recently saw someone say this is Jesus’ “manifesto” and I like that even better.
This sermon is Jesus’ declaration of how the world ought to be.
For those of us who weren’t here last week, listen to what he says. Jesus opened the scroll to the prophet Isaiah, and read, “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 set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus’ vision is for liberation, good news for the poor, the sick, the outsiders, everyone on the margins, everyone who’s oppressed. It’s a declaration: God hasn’t forgotten you; God cares about you. That’s Jesus’ message, and therefore, that’s what we proclaim as a church.
The rest of Jesus’ life lives out that manifesto, right? Jesus heals, Jesus forgives, and on the cross, Jesus reveals God’s love to everyone. On Easter, Jesus liberates us even from the power of death. Jesus calls us to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
We are here this morning because we believe in that message. We believe in the good news Jesus proclaims, the good news of God’s kingdom. We’re here to pray that it will be on earth more as it is in heaven, and to be sent out to do God’s work to transform the world, to work for God’s kingdom.
The trouble is that the world we live in can seem very far from Jesus’ vision. We have a long way to go. And Jesus’ vision, God’s plan for the world, the message we’re given to proclaim, runs counter to what our society seems to demand.
In Luke 4, Jesus shares this beautiful vision of God’s kingdom coming, the world transformed, and people love it. He says this is happening today, here, through him, now in your hearing.
And everyone in that synagogue is on board. All spoke well of him. This is what they’ve been waiting for. God’s sent a liberator, a Messiah to save them!
Jesus keeps going, and here’s where it gets sticky. He gives some examples from Israel’s history of God blessing people outside of Israel. He reminds them that the prophet Elijah was sent to a widow in Zarephath, not in Israel. The prophet Elisha famously healed Naaman, a Syrian leper.
And the people listening realize Jesus is not just talking about God blessing them; he’s talking about God blessing their enemies, the people they can’t stand, the people who are different, the people they don’t want in their land.
Verses 28 and 29: “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.”
Sometimes God’s message is not popular. People get upset when we start saying God’s love is for those other people too, whoever the others are.
I don’t know if you heard about the sermon Bishop Mariann Budde gave at the ecumenical prayer service in Washington last week after the inauguration, but I think it’s a good illustration of this.
She spent most of the sermon calling for unity in our nation. Not just surface level expansive unity, but “a way of being with one another that encompasses and respects differences…that enables us…to genuinely care for one another even when we disagree.” Sacrificial unity based on love for our neighbor, based on honesty and humility, “honoring the inherent dignity of every human being” as children of God.
She concluded her sermon–and if you heard part of it, it was her conclusion–by pointing out that there are many people in our country who are scared now, especially transgender children and undocumented immigrants, and she asked our new president to have mercy.
And a member of Congress was so incensed at an American female bishop asking a president to have mercy on the least of these—which, by the way, is exactly what prophets do over and over in the Bible, speaking to those in power—that he called for her to be deported.
Everybody likes talk of unity. It gets controversial when those other people are included.
We’ve been blessed to live in a time and place in history where religious freedom is a core value for many, where our government has not been in the habit of threatening Christians and churches for speaking out on behalf of the poor, the outcasts, the refugees, the least of these (the ones Jesus proclaimed good news to).
And I call us to be alert, to work to maintain that freedom of religion. I’ve personally written to our own congregational representative, Glenn Grothman, to express my concern as a citizen that he’s co-sponsoring a House resolution (HR 59) condemning Bishop Budde’s sermon (although I don’t see anything about him calling for her deportation).
I will never tell you who to vote for from the pulpit, but I will be political if that means proclaiming the message of Jesus, if it’s political to proclaim that God’s love extends to all God’s children, that all people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, that transgender children and migrants and refugees and the poor and the captives and those are oppressed are all made in God’s image.
As our ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton said in a statement last week, “This church is committed to upholding the humanity of everyone, regardless of who we are or where we come from…As the ELCA, we will continue to proclaim the radical inclusivity of Christ’s love.” Regardless of what political party or politician you might support, as Christians, our first allegiance must be to Jesus.
Church annual meetings are an opportunity to reflect on who we are as a church, on what God is calling us to do.
The budgets we vote for are a statement of our priorities. Are we operating out of fear, or out of faith in God? Are we focused on ourselves and our own comfort, or on living out Jesus’ call to love our neighbors, to proclaim the good news of Jesus?
The council members we elect as leaders are called to keep us on track as a congregation, to equip the rest of the congregation to minister in ways that fit with Jesus’ priorities.
And at the core of it all is love, as Paul tells the early church in Corinth. Without love, we’ve missed the point. Love is what transforms the world. Love is the message we proclaim. Love is the foundation of God’s kingdom. Love is the way we live. We don’t take political positions to score points; we take positions out of love, love for the world, love for our neighbors, love for those who need to hear they are loved.
It doesn’t matter how much money we spend, how much power we acquire, how eloquent we are, how much we give away, if we don’t have love. Our mission as a church is to reflect God’s love. Love that includes you, and love that includes our neighbors and all of God’s children. Amen
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