21 January 2007

Luke 4:14-21

What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? What does it look like when one has the power of the Spirit within them? Does it mean speaking in tongues and/or ecstatic movement by the one filled with the Spirit? Is there a noticeable physical change to one who has the power of the Spirit?

Today we heard about Jesus preaching in his own synagogue. He’s come home after his baptism and the temptations in the desert. According to Luke’s gospel, he hasn’t started his ministry yet; this is the beginning of it right here, when he gets up to preach in that Nazareth synagogue.

The synagogue was the local meeting place, church and school. Jesus would have spent many hours in this synagogue as a young man and while growing up. It was a gathering place for community meeting, likely only for the men of the community. But these people would have known Jesus and next week we find out that, indeed, they do know him, all too well.

But right now we’re focused on Jesus preaching in the synagogue. And, according to Bruce Prewer’s website, there were certain things done at the synagogue. The leader of the synagogue or president was called the hazzan. He was the person in charge of the worship. The typical meeting at a synagogue went something like this: they began with the “shema” or “Hear O Israel, the lord your God is one God” and then the prayers. This was followed by the “parashah” which was a set reading of the law. Then came the “haphtarah,” which was a free reading selected by the speaker of the day. The hazzan selected someone to be the speaker who chose the haphtarah. After the haphtarah was read, the selected person would then sit in the speaker’s chair and present the sermon. (Yes, he got to sit.) On this particular day, Jesus was asked by the person in charge to read that free reading, the haphtarah, and he selected a text from Isaiah.

But before all this happened, remember that our scripture reading began with the fact that Jesus was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. And that’s where I began this sermon. What does one look like who is filled with the Holy Spirit? Well, we only have to look at this story to know.

Because once again we have Jesus as our example. “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee.” What do we make of this, that Jesus finds himself filled with the Spirit and returns and immediately preaches the sermon of which we heard the beginning?

Well, let’s look at what Jesus, filled with the Spirit, says. The scripture he quotes is, as I said, from Isaiah. “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 favor.” That’s what he’s on about. That’s what he is here to do, filled with the Spirit.

That’s what we’re called to do when we are filled with the Spirit. That’s our call as people of faith in response to the gift of the Spirit. We don’t have to participate in ecstatic dancing or speak in tongues. We don’t have to expect that we will go through cataclysmic events when we find we are filled with the Spirit.

No, we simply have to bring good news to the poor; 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 favor. That’s all. When we are filled with the Spirit we are, simply put, on about the work of justice in our world. That, following Jesus’ example, is our sign of the Spirit in our midst and in our souls.

Takes a lot of pressure off, huh? We don’t have to prove anything by ecstatic dancing. We aren’t expected to speak in tongues or anything like that if we follow Jesus’ example.

Just do justice. Hmmmm, kind of makes you want to go through the other things, doesn’t it? There is no “just do” when it comes to justice, is there? There is hard work and plenty of it when it comes to doing justice. But if we are to follow the example of Jesus, that’s where we’re stuck.

We need to bring good news to the poor. And what good news might that be? That the world seems tilted against them? That a tiny percentage of the world controls amazing amounts of the world’s wealth? That we tend to ignore them when it comes to our governmental policies? Well, the good news is that God cares about them as much, if not more, as God cares about the rest of us. But the good news would really be that our government is looking out for them as is called for in our Judeo-Christian ethic.

And we need to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind. This in a state in which we house more captives than anywhere else? Where we continually seem to be spending money on new prisons while ignoring the root causes of crime and violence? The release that the captives need to hear is that we’ve solved the problems of poverty and racism once and for all. How are we to do that?

And we’re to let the oppressed go free? This in a world in which there seem to be oppressed people around every corner? Oppression is how we keep people in their place and keep the playing field uneven so that the haves can continue to have at the expense of the have nots. Challenging the system of oppression that keeps anyone who is different from the ruling class down and out is a tall order. It will take changing centuries of societal patterns.

Whew! If we are indeed filled with the Spirit we do have a lot of work to do. But that’s just the point. We have the Spirit with us to empower us. We have God on our side. So challenging those century-old patterns is nothing compared to God’s power.

The Spirit of God is upon us to be what Jesus would have us be: to have us be the people of this earth that make a difference and cause justice to happen. There are people on the margins; children who need tutoring; families without homes; people who don’t know God’s love; prisoners who need to know that society cares about them; and myriads of other ways to use the energy that the Spirit gives us.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus said. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us to proclaim good news to the poor. May it be so.