An Undomesticated Gospel
Luke 4:14-30
14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 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, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18 “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,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”20 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. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers[a] in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 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. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
If you’re new here, you may not know that I can be kind of smug about stylistic expression. That’s a couched way of saying that I have tendency to sneer at farmhouse chic “live laugh love” décor. It’s just not my gig and I am probably over-compensating for not fitting into various societal norms throughout life, but I am truly a punk about it. It’s not that I resent the idea of living, or laughing, or love or even reminders to be more attentive to these things, it’s just that the more common it becomes, the more washed out the words seem to feel. And I do think these words point to the important stuff.
I wonder if there isn’t a similar effect with the words Jesus reads from the scroll of 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,
to let the oppressed go free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Poetic, bold, inspiring proclamation. Last week we heard about Jesus’ baptism among the people and then this follows. This baptismal identity is embodied in the work of justice and liberation. Jesus gives voice to what baptismal life is to be about and who it is to be for – not a personal or private salvation, but for the whole of the world and particularly for those most-often ignored, overlooked, and oppressed.
It is not a promise for someday off in the distance but for the here and now. It’s an invigorating vision, but I wonder if that’s as far as we’re willing to let these words go. If they, too, have become pretty words on a plaque for us to appreciate but not incorporate into our lives. At least not with the depth and breadth that they are intended.
This often happens with the prophetic words, work, and memory of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It shows up in bite-size chunks, just enough to sound virtuous and inspiring, but then put in service to other agendas. We want to be on the right side of history, but it’s warped into our own benefit of being right more than it is about enacting justice. The memorializing is often romanticized and domesticated and stops short of the disruption and anguish that surrounded these words when they were fresh. At a 50 years distance, we can tidy up his story and then embrace him on our own terms. But while he was living, he was held in contempt as a dangerous protest leader, with only 36% of white Americans thinking that his work was actually helping the cause of civil rights and a similar proportion feeling like he brought his assassination upon himself.
icpn by Robert Lentz
It’s easy to see how the boldness of the Gospel becomes romanticized and domesticated. When the words are just words, we read things like “he was praised by everyone.”
This story of Jesus has lived in my head as a trope of how hard it is to grow beyond the expectations of small town community, that it’s just too scandalous that a simple person would speak so confidently or rise beyond their station, as it were. Or that it’s just too hard to hear profound truth from people you’ve known intimately, from someone you remember as a child.
But this time when I read it, I noticed that even after Jesus read the scroll proclaiming these promises of liberation, and even after they announced the fulfillment of these promises in their being (which could have been considered blasphemy )….they STILL spoke well of him and were amazed at his gracious words.
Where it turns is when the people are denied ownership over this Good News. When they first hear it, it sounds awesome and some part of them thinks… “this is perfect. He’s one of ours, so we’ll get first dibs on all this goodness, right? Surely we’ll get some advantages out of our association.”
The Gospel of Luke highlights a Jesus who is bigger than one subset of people. The response is basically a punch in the gut of privilege. Not only will God’s blessing not preference those who expect it, it goes out of the way to reach those who would be considered “the wrong people.” In this first lesson on what Good News looks like in Christ, Jesus clarifies that liberation that does not privilege certain people. In fact, it unravels the idea that there can be a tiered or segmented Gospel. And THAT’S when they want to run Jesus off a cliff.
Good News to the poor is Good News for all of us, but it will cost something of those who expect pride of place in the relationship. It will disrupt the ways we secretly or not so secretly resent not having something we assumed either consciously or unconsciously.
The life and work of +KINDRED is to echo Jesus’s proclamation that today these words are fulfilled in our hearing. That liberation is not only spoken but embodied. That we would be free of any illusions of romanticism about an abstract good news to the poor when we sit side by side with one another around the table. Even now, when it is hard if not impossible to see one another face to face, the relationships born over shared meals and stories still hold in our hearts and we know that the poor are not an abstract and platitudes and well wishes are not sufficiently the Good News.
Honestly, I often struggle with how to share this Good News with those we love who face eviction, are sleeping their cars, and waiting in lines for food. It feels hollow to speak of divine love and care while so much seems uncaring. But perhaps the Good News is the promise and practice that while many want to pretend like you don’t exist or that your economics are the measure of your value as a person, we have not and will not forget you or diminish you. We insist that You are a revelation of God’s goodness in the world. We will tell others the same truth even when you’re not around and we will show up beside you at City Hall and any other hall of power when your divine dignity is not being honored. While some don’t want to see you, we’re not only glad you are here, but blessed by your presence and personhood. Even when things get messy, and they will, we choose love over ease.
We will walk alongside those with privilege to release the constricting notions and systems of superiority and control and actively work to undo them in the name of Christ. We will remind each other that God’s love and care is already for us so that we can be free of the exhausting ways we try to earn or wield it in our favor. God’s favor is called jubilee because the joy it brings outlasts the weariness of our trying to chase it.
And that just can’t be reflected by embellished lettering on shiplap.
Today, may these promises be fulfilled, revealed in whole, and embodied in our hearing. Amen.