Good News for the World, TODAY - Luke 4 v 14 - 21
Sermon preached by The Reverend Dr Sam Cappleman 25 January 2004
Picture the scene in the synagogue in today’s gospel reading
The majority of the service is over, the reading from the torah the Parashah,
the long prayers and blessings…
There is only the short scripture reading from the prophets to come, it’s
called the Haphtarah, the dismissal so there can’t be long left
Just time to get out the mints and work out if this will be a one or two
polo reading and talk
You can almost smell the lunch the end of the service is so close
People’s attention is beginning to wander to the sport that will be on that
afternoon…
They were wondering who the Director of the synagogue had asked to read the
lesson and give an exposition (targum), would it be someone interesting or
the same old teachers…
Today he’s obviously asked Jesus
So Jesus gets up, picks up the scroll of Isaiah that has been passed to him
and decides which bit to read
He reads the section from Isaiah 61 which speaks of the radical change in
cosmic world order when the Messiah comes:
Good news to the poor
Release to the captives, and the oppressed, from whatever is keeping them
from being free
Recovery of sight to the physically and spiritually blind
And the year when everything will be returned to the Lord as in the year of
jubilee
He reads the lesson and sits down (which was customary for teaching) and
starts to give the explanation
And the explanation is quite simple - today this scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing
That’s quite some explanation – and if people had not really been paying
attention before, now they were!
The prophecies in the book of Isaiah related to the coming of the Messiah
and Jesus had just said, ‘That’s me’
Everyone believed the scripture – knew that God’s kingdom would come but it
was only Jesus who spoke of Today
But perhaps its not surprising that Jesus chose the synagogue to announce
why He had come into the world
He’s on a spiritual mission which would have cosmic implications – in Him,
the Today had come
Jesus responded to the hope that was aroused and expressed in the worship of
the Jews
The desire for a better world where the Messiah would rule
Jesus’ today ended the period of waiting
Just as Ezra, reading in Nehemiah had created a new world of post exilic
(Rabbinic) Judaism as text and interpretation came together so did Jesus,
only this time it was far more radical
Not surprisingly if produced both antagonism – they tried to do away with
Jesus by throwing Him off the top of a cliff, especially when they
understood that the Good News was for the gentiles too - and loyalty, they
still came to hear Him when He spoke in their synagogues later in the gospel
Because what had started as a normal synagogue service had turned into an
event which turned their life upside down
It demanded a response, either to worship Jesus as the Messiah or denounce
Him for blasphemy, there was no comfortable, three polo mint, middle ground
left
Jesus had come to fulfil the word of God, explain it in all its fullness and
make it relevant for the world
Just as we too have a responsibility to explain the word of God, make it
relevant for the world
And, just like the Jews in Jesus’ time, many people, even today, know
something of the scripture, but they are far less sure it’s relevant for
them, or at this particular moment
Perhaps they’ll get round to thinking about it at some time in the future,
when they’re less busy
But if we believe that God’s word is relevant to our society, we need to
make sure that we’re making it relevant today
Now is the time; there is no need to wait, we need to communicate it with
that same sense of urgency as Jesus did when he stated ‘Today’
And in order to explain it we need to be familiar with God’s word and His
ways, so that we can explain and demonstrate it with our words and our lives
just as Jesus did
The more we are familiar with God’s ways and God’s word the easier it is to
explain it and make it clear
Think of how it is when you get a new video or DVD recorder…
To begin with the manual is so complex you’re not even sure you’re reading
the bit that’s supposed to be in your own language
Every time you want to make a recording you have to refer to the manual, and
even then you go out and you’re not confident the things going to record
After a while you become more familiar and refer to the manual, which by now
looks simpler and you can’t work out why it seemed so complicated before
Until eventually setting the video becomes second nature, you know how to do
it without referring to the manual and you’re confident it will record every
time
And it’s when we are that familiar with the ways and words of God, that
explaining it and making it relevant for today becomes much more simple and
straight forward, second nature almost
We also need to be close to, and familiar with, the people we seek to share
the Good News with.
Jesus was known in the synagogue, the gospel reading tells us that he
‘taught in their synagogues’ and that when He came to Nazareth He went to he
synagogue as His custom was.
Jesus was close to the people who wanted to share the Good News of Today
with, and we should have that same closeness
How we do it is a different matter. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians
makes it clear that there is no one way of doing it, we are all different
and we will make Jesus relevant in different ways - an appropriate model for
the week of Christian unity
How we each understand and experience God will affect how and what we
communicate and we don’t need to try to be like each other
And it’s not as if we’re even doing it on our own, just as Jesus was filled
with the power of the Spirit, just as the Corinthians were filled with the
Spirit, so are we
Luke has strong theology of the Holy Spirit as we’ll see in the coming year,
a strong theology of a Holy Spirit who is with us to empower us in all we do
or say
Many people feel that the world is a nasty, hopeless place to be
Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, showed that there was hope and
fulfilment in the words of God
Today, we are called to do the same