Scripture Fulfilled Today, In Your Hearing (January 26, 2025)
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21
When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brough up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and when he finished, he began to say to them: Today this Scriputure has been fulfilled, in your hearing.
We have two readings today about religious services like this one, where people gathered around God’s Word hoping to hear a word from God for their own time and place.
One of these readings is our gospel passage. After Jesus is baptized and starts making the rounds of the villages in Galilee, he returns to the synagogue in Nazareth, the congregation where he grew up. They’ve heard what he’s being doing in the neighboring towns and invite him to give a guest sermon. His text comes from Isaiah – but for Luke, who is writing the gospel story for us, this text is a summary of the entire message of Jesus. Good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, the year of the Lord’s favor.
(Actually, the Isaiah text says “the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of our God’s vengeance,” but Jesus makes a point of stopping the reading in the middle of the sentence, I think very much on purpose.) Because whatever that text might have meant in the day and the time in which it was written, Jesus wanted to make the point that – at least the part of the text that he chose to include was a word for that congregation, in that moment, in their hearing.
The first reading today describes another service, about four hundred years earlier. The Jewish people’s 70-year exile to Babylon was over, some people have returned to Jerusalem, but the Temple is still in ruins, and no one remembered what they were supposed to do. Nehemiah, the governor appointed by the Persian Empire, and the priest Ezra, are trying to get the community organized again. And so they call all the people together for a service where the Law of Moses will be read to the people so they can rededicate themselves to what their community was supposed to be.
And so the priests read out the Law of Moses. The Ten Commandments, of course, but then all of the other laws that define Israel as God’s unique people, who live together in a just community where everyone is taken care of, especially the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. They heard passages like: “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the foreigners, providing them food and clothing. You also shall love the foreigner, for you once were foreigners in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:17-19).
And as the Law of Moses was being read out, the people were not happy about it. In fact, they wept and cried out. It sounded like such a burden. Life is already so hard, why do we have to care about everybody else, why can’t the widows and the foreigners take care of themselves? Why do we have to follow all of these rules and commandments? And, in fact, as the sermon of Jesus in Nazareth went on, it didn’t go over very well either – we’ll see that in next Sunday’s gospel reading.
But when Ezra and Nehemiah got pushback from the people over the Law of Moses, they had to explain to the people: You don’t understand, it is in fact a great blessing to be God’s own people. Of course, to be God’s blessed and chosen people means we need to live the way God does – with mercy and compassion for others, because God has shown mercy and compassion to us. That’s why we’re ending this service with a feast – with a meal of celebration where we are not going to forget to share with those who don’t have anything to eat because they are included in the promise of God with us. That’s what it means to live as God’s own people.
Paul’s message to the Corinthians in our second reading today is the same: The Corinthians, in their gatherings, in their worship, they are formed by God’s word and shaped by a common meal where they are invited to enact and become what they already are: the body of Christ. And in the body of Christ, just as in our own bodies, every single member is important. If you stub your toe, it’s not just your toe’s problem – the whole body feels it.
To be the body of Christ is to act in the world as Christ did, and that means to care about the poor and the imprisoned and the blind; to be the people of God is to share with those who have not. Just as in our own bodies there are parts that are thought of as not so beautiful or especially vulnerable, and we take special care to protect and lift up those parts – so we do the same in the body of Christ, and whoever is hurting or fearful or feeling vulnerable today has to be our special concern.
There are quite a few people right here in our community who are hurting and feeling vulnerable right now. I know people personally who have lost jobs this week – not political people, but non-partisan career workers – and others who are afraid they’ll be next. Among the people Bishop Budde lifted up in her sermon last week, especially queer kids and children in immigrant families, take my word for it, there is a tremendous amount of fear and uncertainty right now. Perhaps it will all work out, but perhaps it won’t, and nobody knows right now. And there are so many who are hurting and vulnerable for reasons that have nothing to do with our current political moment. Right here in our community and right here in our congregation this morning. People whose hurts we know about and people who are bearing their burdens quietly and alone.
We have been called together this morning to be church together, to be the body of Christ for one another and for the community where we live. Maybe that feels to you like a burden, like an imposition – and if so, you are not the first to react in that way. But Ezra and Nehemiah – and Jesus and Paul – invite you to see it in perspective. It is by God’s mercy and compassion that you have been invited to be part of God’s own people, to be members of Christ’s own body, to be fed and nourished by rivers of God’s grace flowing through you to others who are hungry too. Receiving and having faith in the mercy and compassion God has for you, and sharing that mercy and compassion with your neighbor are two sides of the same coin.
There’s a lot going on the world that we have no control over. It’s easy to cheer or complain about what other people are doing, but in the end dwelling on our opinions about what other people do just feeds the sense of being powerless to have any agency ourselves. But actually putting down the screens and the TV remote and doing something compassionate for a neighbor in need has the wonderful side effect of making us remember how merciful and compassionate God has been for us, how loved and cherished we are, how much God has enabled us to do for others if only we have the faith to believe it.
And so this morning we have gathered around God’s word of mercy and compassion, we have gathered to share a meal where we enact who we are being made to be, the body of Christ. May the words we receive be fulfilled also in our hearing.