The World's Shortest Sermon
Sermon for the Third Sunday After Epiphany, 2025
1 Corinthians 12:12-31 and Luke 4:14-21 | Third Sunday After Epiphany | January 26, 2025 | First Christian Church, Roseville, MN | Dennis Sanders, preaching
Holy God, we thank you for pouring your spirit of grace on us. We ask for your deliverance from a cold and wandering heart. Give us a steadfast mind and a kindled heart so that we can worship you in Spirit and in Truth in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
It’s been a week, hasn’t it?
I was in California for part of the week so I didn’t see the inauguration, but I saw the flurry of activity coming from the White House. I’ve seen all the responses on social media, about all the events. My point here is not to do a blow-by-blow account of the week, but to think about this text in light of our situation. How will we as the church, and as this congregation deal with the next four years? Does this passage in Luke have anything to say about our context?
This is all happening during the season of Epiphany, a season when Jesus is revealed to all of creation. This text is one way that Jesus is revealed to the people. But Jesus’ revelation is kind of odd. We might think Jesus has an answer to this, but his first sermon is basically one sentence. No explanation, just this little phrase. “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” It says nothing and it says everything all at the same time. Why does Jesus say this? Why does it matter?
We open up this text seeing that Jesus is a popular dude. Jesus comes back home and everyone has heard about all the great deeds he has done. He goes around to the local synagogues and people speak highly about him.
In all of this, he is empowered by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit who appeared at the baptism of Jesus is now empowering his early ministry. He then shows up in Nazareth and reads from the scroll. He looks at a well-known piece of Scripture, Isaiah 61. The writer of this passage is talking to a defeated people. They’ve returned from exile, but Israel is still not free. It is a vassal state of Babylon. You can imagine the scene is post-apocalyptic with hallowed out buildings everywhere and suffering is rampant. Amidst all this, the writer says freedom and liberation will come from God and not from humans. It will not come from a king in Israel or Babylon. It will come from the King, from God. It is in God that the poor will receive good news, that people will be liberated and the oppressed will be made free. When Jesus reads this text and then says that this scripture is fulfilled today, he is saying today, today this scripture is fulfilled by himself. He, the Son of God, will bring good news to the poor and free the oppressed.
Next week, we are going to hear how the crowd in the synagogue misunderstood Jesus. But I want to talk about how we can misunderstand this text. We read all these words that Jesus says echoing the words of Isaiah, about good news to the poor and think this is about preaching good news to “those” people. The message becomes a “lettuce sermon” meaning, “Let us” do something. It can justify pursuing an agenda and missing the deep message here. When Jesus says that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to preach good news to the poor and free the oppressed, it is saying that Jesus, is the one who preaches good news to people who are living in physical poverty, but also those who are living in spiritual .poverty. Some people are oppressed by regimes, but some are oppressed by guilt or addiction. Some are imprisoned unjustly and there are those who are in prisons of guilt and sin. Jesus comes to free us from sin, death and the devil. This message is not for “those” people, but it is also for us. I don’t know about you, but I am imprisoned by fear and guilt. You might be locked up by other sins, but in Jesus, today we are free. This is a message for us because we are in need of salvation and if we miss that, we miss the freedom Jesus gives to us.
One reason we have political turmoil these days is that people don’t know or feel God’s love in their lives. What would happen if people knew that today, they can know that God loves them?
On the other hand, if we experience the grace of God and freedom that God gives, if we appreciate that in Jesus we are made free, but don’t see that as a chance to become people spreading the good and freeing news of Jesus in word and deed, we are missing the whole point. The gospel of Jesus has real consequences in the world.
It’s interesting that Jesus does a little bit of proof-texting, where he reads the scripture and leaves out something to make a point. Of Jesus is God, so he kinda gets a pass. What is left out from his reading of Isaiah 61 is found in verse 2 where the writer says, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God.”
Jesus doesn’t talk about vengeance. Does that mean that God doesn’t care about vengeance? Well, God cares about justice. In the relationship between God and humanity, God cares about how sin has damaged the relationship and has repeatedly hurt God’s heart. The prophets in the Old Testament repeatedly call out the people for falling away from God and doing things that offend God such as not caring for the poor and needy.
So why does Jesus leave that out? It goes back to that short sermon: Today the scripture has been fulfilled. Jesus is saying that it is he, through his work on the cross that has dealt with the vengeance. In Jesus, God took the anger on himself. Jesus says that freedom and love is here and vengeance is now a thing of the past because of the love shown on the cross.
So what are we going to do over the next few years? I think as a congregation, we can speak out when the times call for it, though I hope we can do that no matter who is in the White House. But more than this I want us to remember the good news of Jesus is for you. You are the ones who are poor, lost, locked out, and forgotten. Know that Jesus has come for you and comes to give you abundant life. Know that you are loved by Jesus who comes to give you the gospel and hope. And then share that good news with those around you who need and long to hear a message of freedom. Remember that today, this day Jesus fulfills what was promised in Isaiah to you and to me.
I’m not asking you to forget the problems of the world, but I am asking that you be grounded in the one that gives us freedom and liberty. I hope you know and feel the grace of God and in gratitude respond in grace and show mercy and justice to everyone, resistance and MAGA, straight and gay, native-born and immigrant alike because today the longing of the prophet has been fulfilled by the man from Nazareth. Thanks be to God. Amen.