Sunday 3rd February

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, preaches based on the reading from Luke 4v14-22

Who do you think you are?

A week ago last Monday Barack Obama delivered his second inaugural speech when he was sworn in for his second term as President of the USA. Inaugural speeches are important set-piece occasions which set out the President’s vision for his coming term. Some of them have been very famous, containing quotes that continue to inspire long after the President’s term has ended, and indeed long after the President has died. There’s a memorable quote from John F Kennedy’s inaugural address which people still invoke today: “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

What Presidents say in their inaugural addresses can be very significant. Now Luke also regarded what Jesus said in our Gospel reading today as very important. What Jesus said in the synagogue in Nazareth is sometimes called ‘The Nazareth Manifesto’, and Luke evidently regarded it as exceedingly significant. We know that because he gives it prominence.

Matthew and Mark record Jesus’ visit to Nazareth, but in the middle of Jesus’ public ministry. Luke instead deliberately puts it at the beginning. He uses the incident in order to summarise the public ministry of Jesus, his message and his aims. He gives a preview of the Gospel that Jesus preached and the rejection he suffered. Although chronologically this wasn’t Jesus’ inaugural address, in Luke’s eyes it very much expresses what Jesus’ ministry was all about.

Jesus went to the town where he was brought up, Nazareth. On the Sabbath day, he went, as was his custom, to the synagogue.  During the service he read from the scriptures, what we now call the Old Testament, and he read some verses from the beginning of Isaiah 61 and he also added another verse from Isaiah 58 in relation to the oppressed. And after reading these verses he preached on them. The eyes of the congregation were fixed on him. “What is he going to say?” they wondered. And he began by saying, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

In other words, if you want to know whom the prophet was writing about, he was writing about me. Extraordinary! This is in effect what Jesus was saying. “Today, not tomorrow, not some time in the distant future, but today – today this scripture has been fulfilled.”

And Jesus continued to teach this through his earthly ministry. The scriptures spoke of him and the scriptures were fulfilled in him. Who did Jesus think he was? He thought that he was the fulfilment of God’s promises in the OT. He wasn’t just another prophet, but the fulfilment of prophesy, and all the diverse prophecies in the OT together converged on him. Jesus was the fulfilment of prophesy. Jesus announced who was, the Messiah, the Christ of the scriptures whom God had sent to save his people. And that was the first thing that Luke wanted to say about Jesus, that he was the Messiah, the one sent by God to save the world.

But Luke had another purpose in recording this incident, in recording the manifesto that Jesus announced. Yes, Luke wanted to make clear who Jesus was – the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, but Luke also had a message for the church. It would be the church, the early church that Luke was part of but also the church that you and I are part of in Herne Hill in 2013 that would have the task of implementing Jesus’ manifesto. If Jesus’ Nazareth manifesto is also going to be our manifesto, then we need to reflect more deeply on what Jesus said in Nazareth. There are two main points I want to make.

The first is that the public ministry of Jesus was exercised in the power of the Holy Spirit. And our ministry and mission, if they are to follow in continuity with the ministry and mission of Jesus, must also be exercised in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In his writings Luke was very keen to emphasise the work of the Holy Spirit. His second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, is full of the work of the Holy Spirit. He records the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost and the results of his coming as the church spread right through the Graeco-Roman world. Luke writes in his Gospel that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of his virgin mother. He tells us, in Chapter 3, how the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism, how he was filled with the Holy Spirit when he left the River Jordan after his baptism, how he was led by the Holy Spirit into the desert where the Devil tempted him, as Gill spoke about two weeks ago. And here in verse 18 we read, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me [that is Jesus], because he has anointed me to proclaim good news...”

Again and again in these early chapters Luke refers to the Holy Spirit within the ministry of Jesus. So Jesus’ ministry was a ministry of preaching, teaching and healing, but it was a ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is vital to keep the word, the preaching and teaching of the good news, and the Holy Spirit together – to preach the word in the power of the Spirit. Sometimes there is too much emphasis on the word, but we need the Holy Spirit to add power to the word, and to carry it home to the mind, heart and conscience.  Sometimes there is too much emphasis on the Holy Spirit, we neglect the word and forget, as Paul wrote in Ephesians, that the sword of the Spirit is the word of God. Both are mistakes. There’s an often quoted saying which puts it like this:

“Without the Spirit we dry up

Without the Word we blow up

With the Word and the Spirit we GROW up.”

It’s only if we keep the word and Spirit together that we can mature as Christians. The ministry of Jesus was the ministry of the word in the power of the Spirit. He kept the two together, and so should we. As Cameron and Gill have mentioned, we’re going to suggest a plan of short daily Bible readings from Luke, that we can all do through Lent. And as we read those passages from Luke, as we read the word of God, let’s be open to the work of Holy Spirit, asking him to show us how we can grow in faith. Reading the Bible isn’t simply an academic exercise; it’s also a way of nourishing ourselves spiritually, a way of bringing Jesus to the centre of our lives so that we are better able to bring Jesus to the heart of our community.

The second point that I want to emphasise is that the ministry of Jesus focused on the good news of freedom. This is the core of his message in his Nazareth manifesto. There are four groups which he mentions:

·      The poor to whom the good news is proclaimed

·      The prisoners whose freedom is announced

·      The blind who receive their sight, and

·      The oppressed who find release from their oppressor.

The poor, the prisoners, the blind and oppressed. A critical question that is much debated is whether the condition of these groups is spiritual, social or socio-political. Is Jesus referring to the spiritually poor, the spiritually bound, the spiritually blind and oppressed? Or is he referring to a socio-political condition – those who need economic release and political liberation? Which is it?

I grew up in South Africa in the days of apartheid and for many white Christians the answer was simple; Jesus was talking about the spiritually poor and blind. The church should stay out of politics, they said. Religion and politics don’t mix. They spiritualised the Gospel, defining what was promised as exclusively salvation from sin. They were very critical of those Christians who challenged the apartheid structures, accusing them of preaching a ‘social gospel’. I suspect that if they had been on the receiving end of apartheid oppression instead of being its beneficiaries they would have come to different view. On the other hand certain forms of liberation theology have politicised the Gospel to mean political and economic liberation from the oppressor.

So, which view is right? I would suggest that each of these views is unbalanced without the other, and that if you spiritualise the Gospel with no social concern, or if you politicise the Gospel with no spiritual message, then you are not doing justice to the good news. Those who spiritualise the good news ignore the fact that Jesus did preach to the poor, that he did have a concern for the dispossessed and that he did give sight to the blind. On the other hand those who politicise the good news forget that Jesus did offer forgiveness of sins – forgiveness to those who were bound by the guilt of their sins.

So if we either politicise or spiritualise the good news, we neglect the alternative. So how do we resolve the dilemma? The only way to resolve the dilemma is to affirm both, because that is what Jesus did. He was concerned for the economically poor and politically oppressed on the one hand. But he was also concerned for the spiritually bankrupt on the other. So the poverty that the Nazareth manifesto speaks of is both spiritual – the humble poor who trust in God for salvation – and social – the destitute and oppressed poor. And the Gospel is good news for both. Why? Because in the kingdom community, in the community of those who have submitted to Jesus, the spiritually poor who acknowledge their bankruptcy receive a full and free pardon. And the socially poor and deprived receive a new dignity because they are loved and accepted as equal members of the Christian community. And the Christian community challenges the materialistic and self-centred values that are prevalent in so much of modern society.

We don’t go one way or the other. We place our hands at both extremities and bring them together and find that in the kingdom community the message is good news for both. We need to keep the two together. Words and action belong together; we should not separate them. That is why Christians were at the forefront of the campaign against slavery in the 19^th Century. That is why today many Christians are involved in campaigning for trade justice and why the Griffiths are out in Chennai with the International Justice Mission literally freeing people from slavery. That is why a group from our parish regularly goes to Brixton Prison to worship with the prisoners there, to share the good news of forgiveness and redemption. That is why we’ve run Alpha groups in our parish. And that is why we want to bring Jesus to the heart of our community, to everyone be they rich or poor.  

So the ministry of Jesus was a ministry of the Word in the power of the Spirit. He kept the Word and the Sprit together. And the ministry of Jesus was a ministry to the spiritually and socially-politically poor. Not one without the other, but both.

As we reflect on the public ministry of Jesus and especially his Nazareth manifesto, what we should hear is his call for balance and warning against polarisation. John Stott, a well known preacher and writer and one of the most influential Anglican clergymen of the 20th century, described it as BBC – Balanced Biblical Christianity! He didn’t mean a wishy-washy middle of the road Christianity. Sometimes the middle of the road is the right place to be in, though as someone once said, “We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road; they get run over.”

But often, as with the poor and dispossessed, we need to embrace both sides. Our mission involves spreading the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the Scripture. Our mission involves sharing God’s concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men and women from oppression. Both/and, not either/or.

One of the great weaknesses of the Christian church is that on issue after issue we polarise. We occupy one pole and push everybody else over to the pole. And sometimes we’re not even on speaking terms with each other. But we see how to avoid polarisation in the Nazareth manifesto.

First like Jesus we must keep the Word and the Spirit together.  We must never separate them, but proclaim the Word in the power of the Spirit and remember that the Word is the sword of the Spirit in all his mighty work. And secondly, like Jesus, we must be concerned with both the spiritually poor and socially poor. Why? Because the good news of the Kingdom of God is good news to both.

Balance, yes, but an extremely challenging balance. In his Nazareth manifesto Jesus said that he came to bring in the Kingdom of God. He came to conquer disease, sin, injustice, poverty, spiritual ignorance and even death itself. And he invites us to join him!

Let’s pray.

Let’s reflect for a moment on the public ministry of Jesus, especially in the synagogue in Nazareth, the proclamation of the good news in Word and Spirit to the spiritually and economically poor and down-trodden. We humbly pray that you will equip us to follow Jesus’ example as we seek to bring Jesus to the centre of our lives and the heart of the community. Amen.