Today in Your Hearing
Reflections on Luke 4.14-30
RCL Epiphany 3C
27 January 2019
Holy Trinity Cathedral
Luke 4.14-21
4.14Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16When 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, 17and 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, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
20And 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. 21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23He 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.’ ” 24And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25But 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; 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29They 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. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
In 1738 a young Anglican priest by the name of John Wesley returned home to England after a disappointing experience as a missionary in the American colonies. It would be fair to say that his confidence was at an all-time low and he had begun to question his vocation and his future as a priest. While he was in London, Wesley was encouraged by friends to attend worship with the Moravian Brethren, a movement within Lutheranism which had a chapel in London serving the German-speaking community of residents and visitors. On the evening of the 24thof May 1738, Wesley recorded his ‘Aldersgate experience’.
"In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."
This was the pivotal moment of revelation and conversion that transformed the disheartened Wesley into the man we now know as the founder of the Methodist movement.
At an early point in his public ministry Jesus travelled to Nazareth, the town in which he had been raised. He entered the synagogue and was invited to read the appointed reading from the prophets. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus read, “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, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” After sitting down, Jesus said to the assembly, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”[1]
Most of the people in the synagogue that day were amazed, not necessarily because they believed him, but because he was a local boy. How often had they heard him read the appointed lesson while he was growing up? For that matter, how often had they heard that same text? Perhaps they had grown deaf and no longer expected the prophetic text to be fulfilled. It was, after all, the lectionary text for the day, nothing more.
My own ‘Aldersgate experience’ of revelation and conversion occurred to me in the summer of 1995. I was in Ottawa attending the General Synod and, at the last moment, was asked to preach and preside in a three-point parish that I was to visit on Sunday. I should tell that the General Synod of 1995 was one of the first General Synods to engage in serious and difficult debate about the place of gay and lesbian disciples of Christ in the life of the Anglican Church of Canada. It was a stressful time and, in the midst of the debates and discussions, I was trying to prepare a sermon for that coming Sunday which just happened to be Pentecost.
What I learned during that time of debate, discussion and preparation was the power of just reading the Scriptures out loud and letting the words settle into my heart and mind. Like Wesley my heart was strangely warmed and God’s word was broken open like a fragrant loaf of freshly baked bread. It was a revelation that changed my perception of what God was doing and is doing in the church and in the world. When I spoke of that revelation on Sunday and during Synod, I lost friends and, in some circles, my ‘good’ reputation. But I have no regrets.
When the reader proclaims the texts appointed for the day, it is tempting to forget that he or she is speaking God’s Word to us. Like the people in the synagogue in Nazareth, we have heard all of this before; the words can roll off the surface of our minds and hearts like rain rolling off the roof of a building. Yet, we never know when there is someone sitting next to us, in front of us, behind us --- dare I say, in us --- who need to hear the Word of God again --- for the first time.
To proclaim the words of the scriptures is to release the power of the Word of God into our midst. The readers and the preacher stand before us, small in stature, a known quantity, familiar figures. Within their grasp lies the power to free the Word from the texts that sometimes imprisons it, so that the heart of some one sitting near to us may be “strangely warmed” and God’s new creation begins again to work its transformation of our loneliness, our despair, our fear.
It has been the Anglican way to use a lectionary to determine the readings of the day or to provide appropriate readings for various occasions. We tend to restrict the freedom of the presider or preacher to decide on the scriptural texts that will be set before the people. In choosing a lectionary approach Anglicans make clear that the reading of the scriptures is too important to be left in the hands of an individual. The scriptures belong to the community and it is the community’s responsibility, using various agents and agencies, to determine the texts to be laid before us and broken open for our nurture and formation.
For this reason Anglicans have been loathe to omit a sermon or a homily or some reflection on the text or texts read on a given occasion. There are many Christians in the world today who know what the Bible says. There are fewer who have reflected upon and be trained to comment on what the Bible means. All of us intuitively recognize the importance of context in human communication. Often we will respond to a statement or questions by asking, “What do you mean by that?” Likewise, the Scriptures have a theological, historical, social, cultural, and literary context that influences what is meant by what is said. It is to the preacher that the responsibility falls to help us move from the surface of the text into the depths of its meaning.
All of this has but one end: giving the Spirt the opportunity to reveal and to convert those who hear the word of God. We are here to listen attentively to the voices of Scripture. Those voices may lead me as the preacher in a particular direction, while those same voices may lead you to explore different avenues. The words that may leave my heart cool may well be the words that leave your heart ‘strangely warmed’. A word or phrase may embed itself in your heart and mind, causing you to ponder what God is asking you to become and to do.
There is a well-known collect that bears remembering today. “Eternal God, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever. Amen.”
Read. Mark. Learn. Inwardly digest these words. Today they have been fulfilled in your hearing.
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