Today in Our Hearing: Reflections on Luke 4.14-21

 

Today in Our Hearing

Reflections on Luke 4.14-21

 

RCL Epiphany 3C

23 January 2022

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            During my first year in seminary I was transformed by being introduced to the Jewish Scriptures.  Our professor, Father Joseph Hunt, worked hard to lead us out of the typical Christian view of the so-called ‘Old Testament’ as a lengthy introduction to the ‘real’ Word of God found in the Gospels and apostolic writings into an understanding of the richness of the Scriptures as Jesus and the first Christians knew them and treasured them.

 

            I remember vividly one occasion in that transformation.  We had travelled into Milwaukee with Father Hunt to worship at a local synagogue.  The building had originally been a theatre, so the seats sloped down towards the central platform where the service was led.  At one point during the service I tried to find a place to put down the Siddur, the Jewish prayer book, I’d been given when we entered.  There weren’t any book racks on the seats.  I was sitting on an aisle, so I put my book down on the step that was almost level with my seat.

 

            It couldn’t have been more than a minute or so before I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder.  As I turned to see who had touched me, my prayer book appeared in the hand of the older gentleman who was sitting directly behind me.  As I took the book, he gently and very kindly said to me, ‘We do not put God’s Word on the floor.’  He smiled as one might smile at a well-meaning but not particularly observant young student – which I was – and we returned to our prayers.

 

            Since that day I have never knowingly put a hymnal, a prayer book or a Bible on the floor since.  I’ve been known to juggle books on my lap or slip them beside me on the chair but never on the floor.

 

            It’s not always easy for Christians to embrace this veneration of books that bear our sacred texts.  In Jewish congregations there’s even a special feast that comes in the fall, Simchat Torah, literally ‘rejoicing in the Torah’.  On that evening the Torah scrolls are brought out their tabernacles and carried through the congregation with singing and dancing.  People will kiss the tips of their fingers, touch the scrolls and then kiss their fingers again as the scrolls pass by them.  It’s a celebration that the annual cycle of readings from the Torah has come to an end and a new one is about to begin.  Imagine if we, on the Sunday before the beginning of Advent, were to carry the Bible around the Cathedral, singing and dancing, as we celebrate the end of this year’s lectionary cycle in anticipation of the new one that will shortly begin.  I sometimes do imagine it.

 

            When Nehemiah, Ezra and the other leaders read the Torah to the gathered assembly of the returned exiles in Jerusalem, they were renewing the people’s knowledge of God’s promises after decades of exile in Babylon.  The people were not hearing some ancient and irrelevant texts of interest only to a limited few.  They were hearing God speak to them afresh and they wept as it entered their hearts, minds and souls.

 

            When Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth, he was most likely reading the passage appointed for that Sabbath’s service, the lectionary text for the day.  Everyone had heard these words before, but they were still expectant.  They knew this hometown boy was more than he seemed.  And he didn’t disappoint them:  ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Luke 4.21)  ‘Today,’ Jesus says to them, ‘today God’s promise of renewal and reconciliation and restoration has begun.  Right here.  Right now.’

 

            What Jesus’ audience in Nazareth did not know on that Sabbath is what we have come to know:  God’s promised renewal, reconciliation and restoration is a work in progress, something that some biblical scholars have called ‘the already but not yet’.  But, after all these years and after hearing all these Scriptures more times than we can remember, we may not be as expectant nor as hopeful as the returning exiles in Jerusalem or the occupation-weary Jews of Nazareth.  After two years of this pandemic, we’ve all grown weary and may sometimes feel as if we’re just going through the motions while we await some liberating word from our provincial and federal medical authorities.

 

            God’s promises may not yet have been fully fulfilled in our hearing, but there are already signs that God is accomplishing that which the Scriptures proclaim.

·      Good news is being proclaimed to the poor, whether they are hungry for food and in need of clothing or they are hungry for faith and in need of hope.

·      God is liberating us from our captivity to a disregard for this ‘fragile earth, our island home’ and from a narrow view of who are our sisters and brothers.

·      God is opening the eyes of many to see God’s work in the world and giving us courage to speak of what we see to those who are not sure.

·      Despite our disappointments and our doubts we catch glimpses of God’s favour, God’s graciousness and compassion, peeking out in the most unexpected places.

Today the Scriptures are being fulfilled in our hearing—for those who have ears to hear, hearts to love, minds to ponder, hands to serve.

 

            Forty years ago, Bishop Bill Frey handed me this Bible both when I was ordained to the transitional diaconate and when I was ordained to the presbyterate.  I’m pretty sure that many of you have one of these in your own homes, perhaps one given to you on your own special occasion.  When I pick it up, I feel its life and the potential the words it contains have to empower us to do ‘more than we can ask or imagine’.  Every time you and I open it, it is as if we are in the synagogue at Nazareth and the attendant has handed it to us.  Every Sunday or any other occasion when the reader stands at the lectern, all around us, perhaps most of all, within us, are hearts and minds and souls waiting expectantly for the promises to be fulfilled.

 

            These promises have already been fulfilled in our hearing; of that I am certain.  But may God grant that they be fulfilled in their completeness very soon, for we are all waiting and hoping for that day when ‘we and all (God’s) children shall be free, and the whole world live to praise (God’s) name.’  Amen.