3rd Sunday after Epiphany
January 23, 2022
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When 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, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “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, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And 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. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
The synagogue was buzzing. It’s not every day the hometown boy comes back to preach. No doubt, the neighbors knew him from the time he was a child. Others connected to him through his family’s wood shop. While growing up in Nazareth, Jesus and his family had been regulars in the synagogue, attending every Sabbath.
It had been some time since they had seen him. He had gone away for a while, gone to hear the prophet John by the river, after that retreating in the desert. Now, the word was spreading throughout the hills. Jesus was an impressive speaker, with a strong, resonant voice. He knew the scriptures, opened them to the people, and taught with wisdom and clarity. And now he was coming home.
The men took their customary seats. The women leaned forward to see him. We can picture his family was there, and all the neighbors. As he stood to read the scripture, the crowd hushed. Everybody was listening. In such a moment, Jesus didn’t need to do anything to get their attention. He had it. It was his to lose, but he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. Can you hear the anticipation?
Like I said: the synagogue was buzzing. Not only because it was him. Not only because he was familiar. Not only because he was right there. No, the excitement had to do with the passage that he chose to read:
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,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
And every eye was fixed upon him. They knew this text. They hoped in this text. Jesus unrolls their own Bible and gives it to them.
The text is Isaiah 61. Luke gives us a shorthand version of it. In many circles, it’s a big text, partly because it’s Jesus who says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” But the significance is not what the reading infers about Jesus. No, this is a big text because it points to an even bigger text.
Today, we heard portions of that one, too. It’s the 25th chapter of Leviticus, an extraordinary command from God to set aside one year as the year of the Lord’s favor. It would come every 50 years. Seven times seven, plus one more.
It is rooted in the practice of sabbath. God commands the people to rest every seventh day; ceaseless work is a form of slavery. Likewise, every seven years, you shall give the farmland a sabbath. Let it renew. Give it a rest. Let the fields go. Let the vineyards go. Every seven years.
And after seven periods of seven years – in the fiftieth year – there is a great reset. All the land is given back to the original owners. All the servants, whether slave or free, are liberated and turned loose. All the debts that have accrued, some of them smothering a family – all the debts are canceled. The prisoners are free. The oppressed stand up. The poor get a new beginning.
It's called the Jubilee Year. Or in the language of our text, “The Year of God’s Favor.” It’s a sabbatical for the impoverished, a sabbatical for the indebted, a sabbatical for those who find themselves in a hole and can’t climb out. Jubilee!
So Jesus goes to the hometown synagogue, looks out upon faces that he recognizes, sees those demeaned by a lopsided economic system that kept many in poverty while those who had a lot gained even more. He reads the prophet Isaiah, who announced the promise of Jubilee freedom, and he says, “Today is the day.” This is the Year of God’s grace. It is fulfilled in your hearing.
What an astonishing way for him to begin his ministry! He opens the Bible – which he knew well enough to dispel the temptations of the devil. He opens the Bible to this text – and he gives it to them.
This is the Year of God’s Favor. The Jubilee Year. This is it. It’s right here.
This is an amazing declaration, because ever since Moses wrote down the commandments of God, the people had waited a long time for a Jubilee Year. Apparently it's a whole lot easier not tasting pork or excluding the lepers than it is to lift up those who have been pressed down. Yet the commandment is there, declaring the values that God holds dear.
Leviticus is a
text that urges holiness, teaching that we sanctify the land by giving it a
rest. It also teaches that people are sanctified, not only by prayer and diet,
but by ceasing the endless cycle of domination and enslavement. We can't have
holiness without justice.
Can you see why
the people in that holy room are leaning forward? Can you hear how there isn’t
so much as a pin drop? Jesus is speaking to Jews. Nazareth is close to the
Mediterranean, where the Roman army has invaded their land. It’s near to a
primary trade between Babylon and Egypt, two other empires well-schooled in
domination. These people know how it feels to be put down.
They hear Jesus put the promise into the air: “This is the year to release all the captives” – and something in them awakens. They hear the ancient promise of “recovery of sight to the blind,’ and they know that’s a metaphor for those who can’t see the injustice of their own ways – these are the sightless who will see. They hear Isaiah sing again of “freedom for those oppressed,” and the pulse quickens. Hope seeps in. It is the year of the Lord’s favor. The Jubilee year. The Great Reset. The holy moment of fair opportunity.
And yet, has it ever happened? In fits and starts, but not completely. Can anybody guess why? The short answer is this: just because God commands it, that doesn’t mean anybody has done it. In one generation after another, the powerful speak up to say, “Not yet.” And those who are an inch ahead or above of their neighbors say, “Slow down. Don’t stir up trouble.”
One of my friends celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., by reading Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Ever read it? I hope you will. In April 1963, after King was arrested for peaceful demonstrations in Birmingham, he read a letter in the newspaper from a group of eight clergy – five bishops, a Baptist, a Rabbi, and a Presbyterian. All of them white. In their words, they said they supported the principles of justice, but they told King to cool it. Got the picture? White Southern preachers in Alabama, telling the Black preacher to quiet down and take measured steps.
King responded, in part, by expressing his disappointment, not with the white supremacist groups, not with the Ku Klux Klan, but with the white moderates. With those who wrang their hands, and said “let’s take our time, and this will work out some day.” King declared, “Today is the day for all to live in freedom and fairness. Not then, not some day, but today.”
Later that summer, Dr. King stood at the Lincoln Monument before 250,000 civil rights supporters. It was one hundred years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and little had changed. King looked at the crowd, took a breath, and said,
We have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note…that all...would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its [people of color] a bad check, a check that has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.[1] ….
Dr. King said it's Check Cashing Day. It’s the Day of Jubilee. The Year of God’s Favor. What a great sermon! The kind of sermon that is so honest that it could get you killed.
His words were rooted in the words of the prophet Jesus. Jubilee. Freedom for all. He wasn’t preaching a self-centered freedom, that hideous illusion that we are free to do whatever we please. Rather, he spoke of the freedom to participate in your own future, the freedom to step up for your own well-being, the freedom to work for equality and fairness, and the freedom from chains – visible and invisible – that keep people down when they could be standing.
The reason Jubilee needs to be announced is precisely because it hasn’t happened yet. I recall the line in the recent film biography of President Lincoln, when a Southern politician confronts him about letting the slaves go free. He says, “Sir, would you destroy our economy?” Well, if the economy is based on injustice, then it is time for a Jubilee. Not to destroy it, but to make it available for everyone. For everyone.
No wonder they leaned forward as Jesus opened Isaiah’s words to them. He spoke what they hoped. And as we will hear next week, he spoke what they dreaded. Check cashing day is a threat to anybody who believes the bank is only for them. How else can we explain 160 years of gerrymandering and voter suppression in America? Some are threatened by equality. Others are afraid of losing what they have hoarded. Jubilee is what we all want. It’s also what a lot of us fear.
Yet today is the day. It is always the day. The year of God’s favor is here. “The scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Let me conclude by saying something about the word here for “fulfilled.” It means, “filled up,” “just about overflowing,” all the way up to the brim, ready to spill over or burst out. In other words, “You’ve heard what God has said. It’s going to happen.”
That’s the promise Jesus puts in the air. So what are we going to do about what we have heard?
[1] Listen to (or read)
Dr. King’s speech at https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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