Vicar Michael Reid Trice
January 24, 2016
In our Time here — God is calling; Jesus is calling – You, Me and Us – in Faith, Word and Action today.
The Gospel text for today reminds me once more of the images of the desert where we witnessed together Jesus in the manger on Epiphany. It reminds me that, like the safety of a manger amidst hardships, we all have some collection of childhood memories we can draw upon, which made the world a more redeemable place for us.
My collection of these memories, oddly enough, included summer evenings of watching the diesel big rig trucks roll out of the Sandia Mountains of central New Mexico, as they snaked down the highway and toward the Rio Grande River Valley. We drove alongside these rigs in my mother’s 1970 Chevy station-wagon. It was olive green, and we called it Sherman (after the tank). The rock band The Eagles were playing on the AM dashboard radio in the background, with the melodic, drifting vocals of Glen Frey. Those trucks were a curiosity to a seven year old – I wanted to scroll down the window and ask where they were going, what were they carrying to their distant destinations. Young minds need safety to be curious and creative.
I came out of the desert with these questions. But Jesus came out of the desert with a vision and mission in the world. Jesus knew the context of desert living, from the manger forward. Jesus could probably still taste the dust on the back of his throat when we meet him again in the Gospel text today. In the verses immediately before our reading, we realize that Jesus has just spent forty days in the desert where, as you may recall, he was tempted by the promises of the devil for an easier more glorious life. Those weeks were dry and scorching in the daytime, and cold at night. But Jesus knew the experience of being desert-ed. He was born in one. From the manger onward he learned the skills for survival. We believe that his earthly father, Joseph, probably died when Jesus was about fourteen. Those formative years provided just enough time for his father to teach him about carpentry, and for his mother to teach him about trusting his own strengths, as we learned last week from pastor Julie’s homily.
In the desert, Jesus learned how to walk longer in the day if the sun was at his back. He knew how to pace himself in life between water stores for the sake of replenishment. He would have learned these life lessons and skills in Galilee.
And after all of that preparation, our Gospel today places us at the start of Jesus’ earthly ministry. He arrives out of the desert renewed and reassured of his mission, and enters into Nazareth. Galilee was a region known for being a bit off-the-chain in contemporary Jewish life. It was a region defined by the confluence of peoples and ideas that could be counter-cultural, entrepreneurial, and with the fierce determination of a settler mentality. Galilee is not unlike the Pacific Northwest, and Seattle (like Nazareth) was a major trade route of human goods, novel ideas, and political concerns.
This is Nazareth. And, it is in this city that Jesus walks into a worship space, he opens the scroll, unfurls the manuscript of the Torah to Isaiah, and reads from the scroll. We heard those very words just moments ago in the reading. I want to explore the experience of that event. Now, imagine that you and I are just three rows back in this densely packed room. Jesus is suddenly the assisting minister, the reader, the interpreter, the speaker. It’s kind of like being a vicar, in this role, at the moment! J
Anyway, you and I can see him just up front and to the left, past wooden chairs and a shaft of light painted on the floor through the open window. Jesus picks up the Torah, reads it, sits down again and into the pregnant silence, he utters – “the word you heard is fulfilled in your hearing.”
What? What was that? What is fulfilled? You and I can just make out the side of Jesus’ face when he says this last bit about fulfillment. It wasn’t just what he said, that holds our attention; rather, what we heard was the confidence of a human being infused with divine purpose. This moment, that we are watching together, marks two things in our Christian walk. First, it marks the start of Jesus’ earthly ministry, what we call the Way of Jesus; and second, from the Way of Jesus to the two millennia after, this moment marks the beginning of a deeper unity to which the Church is called.
First, about the way of Jesus. In his own words, here is what the Gospel tells us Jesus’ ministry is about. It is about putting the last first, about bringing the poor into the circle of abundant life; it is a ministry focused on care for the poor in mind, body, heart and soul; and, in Jesus we see a dedication to those on the margins of daily life, always in solidarity with the voices of the ostracized, young and old alike.
Today, this spiritual connection to the Way of Jesus is also evident in the church whenever we build sheltering homes for the homeless even in the heart of our fellowship; This connection is located in witnessing to the promise of a liberated humanity from the final sting of brokenness, it is about the hard work of forgiveness. The Way is about sack lunches in church offices, and refusing the idea that any of us are left outside of the love of God. The Way is evident in the woman or man who spends hours this weekend on the east coast, checking on those who are housebound through a virulent winter storm, assisting the desert-ed and stranded, if you see what I mean. This is all at the center of Jesus’ ministry, the Way, which we continue to this day.
And, the second thing today’s readings mark reveal are about our Christian unity in the world, two thousand years later. For, each year around the world, Christians everywhere celebrate the week of Prayer for Christian Unity. This celebration of Christian unity takes place in the third week of January, at the same time when we remember both the confession of Peter and the conversion of Paul to the Way of Jesus.
Christian unity, across all divisions, seeks to follow the Way of Jesus, and to do so together in the world. Lutherans, Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, and more, belong to what 1st Corinthians calls the whole body of Christ. We are constitutive members of the one visible Body of Christ in the world. Why is this week important? Because unity, and not division, is what we hear together in Jesus that afternoon in Nazareth.
Recall our reading in 1st Corinthians, about the body with many parts. As Corinthians notes – we do all bring different skills and talents, and we are still part of one family. Sure, we all have specific spiritual gifts, and we are still members of a single Church; we all believe that scripture is fulfilled in Jesus’ reading of the Gospel today; even as we live amidst difference. Christianity all over the earth lives with difference, just as we do in our own families. Sometimes families, like the church, fracture. Years later, we can continue to look for fault, or maybe fault isn’t the ultimate issue any more. Time has a way of wearing down animosities, and makes room for perspective and a viable future.
For all Christians everywhere, seeking unity is a visible expression of what Jesus is doing in Nazareth. Ultimately, even and especially in the deserts of our lives, God is present and anointing us. Jesus is crystal clear about this at the very start of his ministry: The final word in our lives is not poverty, captivity, blindness or oppression. It is instead, good news of release, recovery, restoration, freedom and love. The fractures of this life, and the disunity in the Church or in our families, is met with a resounding word of resistance to cruelty and neglect, and an opening to love –Substantial, love first. And love happens wherever we seek deeper understanding, awareness, empathy, and the virtues of unity in the world. God is calling. Faith, Word and Action to you and me.