Jubilee

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” It’s maybe the shortest sermon ever. And unfortunately, maybe the most misunderstood ever, judging by what the people do afterward, in the part of the story that we will hear next week. Jesus, right at the beginning of his ministry, fresh from his 40 days of temptation in the desert, comes back to his home synagogue in Nazareth to step in as the guest preacher, and preaches the shortest sermon ever, maybe assuming that these guys will get what he’s saying, because after all they know him. But when they figure out what he is saying, they try to throw him off a cliff. No wonder the rest of Jesus’ sermons were longer! But we’ll get to that part of the story next week. For now, we’ll look at this part – the sermon itself. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The mashup of Isaiah that Jesus has just read is a selection of verses from Isaiah 61 and 58. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Jesus says. He has anointed me. In Greek, exrisen me, he has ‘christed’ me. God has made me to be the Christ, Jesus says, quoting from Isaiah, so that the poor would receive good news, so that the captives would be released, so that the blind would see, so that the oppressed would go free. God has made me to be Christ, Jesus says, because the year of the Lord’s favor has come. The Jubilee year, it is sometimes called. 

In the Hebrew Torah, the law provides for a sabbath every seventh day, and a year of sabbath every seventh year. Every seventh day, the people are to rest, including all the slaves and servants, and even the animals. Every seventh year, the land is to rest. No crops are to be planted. The people, the servants and slaves, the livestock, are to live off of their stores, and what the land provides. And God promises that there will be enough. After doing this 7 times, there is to be a year of Jubilee in the 50th year. It is to be a year of rest for all, as the other seventh years are. But more than that, it is a time of homecoming, of renewal, or restoration. Debts are forgiven, slaves are set free, and land is returned to its proper owners. If land has been sold to pay a debt, or taken by force, it is to be returned. The year of Jubilee, the year of the Lord’s favor, is a time for redemption and liberation, for all of creation.

Now, whether this was ever actually enacted in ancient Israel is doubtful. It is hard to imagine how any human society would ever successfully pull this off. But it was what God asked of the people as they were brought up out of slavery. It was what God held up as the ideal. 

And now, Jesus says, this has been fulfilled. Today. In your hearing. What does this mean for the people of Nazareth? Well, we’ll look at that more next week. But for now, we might ask what does this mean for us?

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians gives us an answer. Because Paul tells us, we are the Body of Christ. One body. Not just within the walls of this building, but the whole church in the world. We are the Body of Christ, and the Spirit of the Lord is upon us. We have been anointed, some of you were anointed right here in this room, baptized in this font, anointed with oil and sealed by the Holy Spirit to be a member of the Body of Christ. Anointed to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed. This is the mission statement, not just for Jesus of Nazareth, but for the Body of Christ in every time and every place.

And this is where it gets hard. Because mostly we are comfortable with people that are like us. We would prefer, if we are the feet of the body, to hang out with other feet, and maybe an ankle or toe. But definitely not hands. And really definitely not noses or belly buttons or other less savory parts. There are, you know, limits. But the thing is, a bunch of feet are not really all that helpful if they are not connected to the rest of the body, and even the most unsavory parts of the body have a function, and are necessary to the whole. And when any part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers.

Here in Washington, there is a growing population of individuals who are living in homelessness. Many of these people are just fallen on hard times, and they want to find a way to change their situation. Many of them just need a hand – some funds, some training, some support, some life skills – to make the shift to a permanent home and a more stable life. But some of them are not going to make that shift. There are a few, not most, not even a lot, but a few, whose disease state has progressed to the point that they may not be help-able. Not the way we want them to be. Their addictions and mental illnesses are such that they are not going to be able to sustain any kind of work, or learn how to stick to a budget, or meet any of the requirements for shelters or other programs. And when they suffer, we all suffer, though it’s often because they are making us uncomfortable, being noisy or smelly or sleeping in a chair in the teen section of the library. But they are still a part of us. They are still part of our community, part of the Body – they belong to us. And we may not turn our backs on them. We don’t help them because we expect them to satisfy our expectations. We help them because they are ours to help. Because we have been sent to proclaim good news, even to these members of the Body whom we would rather ignore.

Over the last year, we here at Peace have taken a sabbath. We had four months in which I was away, and during that time, we rested. We spent extra time in prayer, extra time in fellowship, extra time in conversation and study. We listened to new voices, and we learned some things about what we value and hold dear. And through it all, we continued to serve our community and proclaim good news for all the members of the Body. 

Just a few examples:

• We went to the City Council to ask for recognition of the marginalized voices in our community, including the homeless, people of color, and the LGBT community.
• We opened our building to community groups who needed space to meet, including grief support, Narcotics Anonymous, and a local advocacy group.
• We provided Crisis Fund assistance to members of our community in need, and kept our Little Free Pantry stocked throughout the year.
• We hosted Vacation Culture School, an opportunity for the minority groups in our community to be heard and share their stories.
• Individuals in our congregation used their gifts to support other local ministries such as Grace’s Place, the Pregnancy Assistance Center, the Human Rights and Homelessness Task Forces, Mercy Hospital’s spiritual care program, Loving Hearts, and so many other places, it’s hard to count.

We are not perfect. We are still learning and we are always in discernment about how we can better serve our community. But day in and day out, we are seeking ways to live out this call, to be the Body of Christ for this world, and to fulfill the words of Isaiah. This is not our doing. It is the work of Christ in us, the work of the Holy Spirit that has joined us together through our baptisms, named us and claimed us and called us to this community and this work.

Today is our annual meeting. We will gather for conversation and celebration. And fried chicken. As a congregation Bound by Christ, to Break Boundaries, we’ll share our successes of the past year, and then we will set the tone for the coming year. The budget that we will vote on will support that work, but it will not be all of it. Because the work that we do together as the Body of Christ is not our work. It is the work of the Holy Spirit through us. It is the messy and muddled attempts of a bundle of body parts trying to work together toward a goal that is not our own, toward the fulfillment of a mission statement that was put into motion thousands of years ago, and yet is fulfilled today in our hearing. This means moving our individual egos out of the way, setting our individual agendas aside, and listening, sometimes with ears that are not our own, to voices that are foreign and difficult to understand, about sufferings that we cannot comprehend and directions that we cannot fathom. This means welcoming people that make us uncomfortable, that push our buttons, that downright annoy us. This means sitting together in our discomfort, and listening for the voice of God, rather than to our own natural desires for control, for attention, for return on our investment, for clear outcomes on our own terms. It means entering into deep processes of discernment that often will lead us to unexpected ends. It means, in other words, doing the hard work of community, and trusting that even when our plans are not followed, that God is at work in this Body, fulfilling through this messy, muddled work, the proclamation of the Good News for all of God’s people in this time and place.

At Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat center in the Cascade mountains, people spend time, as we have this year, in rest, fellowship, and study, before returning to the outside world and their daily lives, hopefully renewed and refreshed for their work of ministry. As they leave, they are always offered this blessing, which I now offer to you, to us, to the Body of Christ at Peace Lutheran in 2019. 

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.