Sermon Archive

Professional football is taking a siesta today. There’s not a single game for the first time in twenty-one Sundays, since the first of September. And of course that’s because the Commissioner chose not to create a conflict with today’s Annual Meeting of our congregation! You see, every year we send him plenty of advance notice.

Yet, fear not, o ye cold-turkey football fans, for next Sunday is the Super Bowl!! And after that there’s the Pro Bowl. So there are still two action-packed Sundays lying just ahead!

But with those of you who aren’t football fans, I want, on this “off Sunday,” to share a delicious piece of satire spoken of yore by that well-known social commentator George Will. “Football,” he said, “football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”

Well, some of you laughed, which means you caught in Will’s epigram some of the comedy of his satire. Maybe it’s because, as Presbyterians, you’ve come to dislike committee meetings as much as he has.

But then I think I saw one or two of you turning a bit red in the face, which means you caught some of the bite of Will’s satire, perhaps because you object to his equation of football with violence.

In either case, whichever your reaction, your brain made a lightning-quick interpretation in which you “read between the lines” and heard Will saying both that football is sublimated warfare and that committee meetings are sophisticated huddling.

And on the basis of your interpretation, you reacted. You laughed, or you flushed. Having read a particular meaning between the lines, you reacted in a particular way.

In the span of a single second of hearing, you “read” the saying for sense. You went beyond a merely literal comprehension of it to an interpretation of it, and you found in Will’s statement a deeper meaning, a meaning accessible only by interpreting the saying.

Yes, effective hearing entails more than detecting words’ sounds. Effective hearing requires comprehension and interpretation—hearing for sense, as well as for sound.

Now, both of this morning's scripture lessons describe an act of helping people to hear for sense. An ancient text is read aloud, and those listening to it do not immediately grasp its deeper meaning. So to help them understand the text more fully, a spoken interpretation is added to the oral reading.

Our First Lesson, from the book of Nehemiah, depicts what is really quite a momentous event in Jewish and Christian history.

In this passage, we find offered for the very first time a description of a Jewish leader reading scripture to a congregation and then having that followed up with an interpretive exposition of its meaning. In other words, our passage describes the very first sermon! It describes the birth of preaching! Now there’s a historical first to warm your heart, one that’s far more important than, say, the first Super Bowl! The first sermon!

So it came to pass, on the first day of the seventh month, a little more than 2,400 years ago, that a priest by the name of Ezra read aloud from a scroll of the Five Books of Moses, that set of authoritative religious texts called the Torah—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy: the Five Books of Moses.

Ezra read from that scroll to an assembly of men, women, and children, and then some Levites, who were helper-priests, offered the people an interpretation of the text. As the book of Nehemiah says, “They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.” (Neh. 8:8b)

And through this act of hearing a passage accompanied by spoken interpretation, the deeper meaning of the sacred text did come clear to that congregation, and it evoked from them quite a dramatic response.

When the assembly heard both Ezra’s reading of God’s commandments from the Torah and the Levites’ interpretation of them, they wept, for through the interpretation that was offered they came to realize the many ways in which they had failed to keep God’s commandments. The people wept.

But then Ezra counseled them to put aside their mourning and to instead rejoice and make merry, while sharing the food of their banquet with all who were hungry. For it is a far better thing to celebrate the receiving of God’s word, to celebrate our coming to a deeper knowledge of God’s will for us, than it is to weep over our human frailty.

So the process of reading aloud, interpreting, and responding to a biblical text is here described as taking place for the very first time, at an assembly of the people during the 5th century B.C.

And that process went on to become a basic component of worship and education first in the Jewish synagogue and then in the Christian church.

And our Second Lesson, from the Gospel of Luke, describes for us a fine example of a first﷓century Jewish synagogue service, featuring scripture and a sermon.

Luke’s passage is set very shortly after the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. Jesus comes to his hometown of Nazareth, and there, on a sabbath day, he goes to the synagogue, “as was his custom.”

Through this description, the author of our gospel makes clear to us that everything Jesus does and says comes from within the bosom of Jewish religion. Here, in Jesus’s own worship life, he affirms the sabbath, the synagogue, and Jewish scripture.

During this synagogue service, after the prescribed reading of a lectionary passage from the Torah, Jesus stands to read another portion from the holy scriptures of Israel—this passage, from one of the books of the prophets. It is the scroll of the prophet Isaiah that is handed to Jesus, and, unrolling it, he chooses to read aloud a portion from the scroll’s final section.

These verses from Isaiah speak of the call of one who is to become a prophet, the call of one who is to proclaim the good news of God’s deliverance to all who are poor, or captive, or blind, or oppressed, the call of one who is to proclaim the start of a year of Jubilee, the start of a year in which the poor are given a fresh beginning both by having returned to them all the property they’ve lost through foreclosure, or even through sale, and also by restoring to those who are indentured servants their freedom—as I said, a miraculous year in which the poor are given a totally new beginning through a dramatic equalizing of wealth.

Then, after Jesus has read aloud this passage from Isaiah, he rolls up the scroll and gives it back to the attendant. Next, in accordance with custom, he sits down, in preparation for offering his spoken interpretation of the passage—in preparation, that is, for delivering his sermon, which is, according to Luke, his very first sermon, and, according to many, the very best news he would ever proclaim.

Now, the first part of the sermon Jesus preaches on this occasion is found in the very last verse of this week’s lesson. And you’ll need to come back next Sunday for Part Two of both Jesus’s sermon and my sermon on his sermon.

But—not to keep you in too much suspense—in today’s part of Jesus’s sermon, he comments on the passage that he’s just read, saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Now, Jesus’s interpretation is astoundingly bold—quite audacious. He proclaims to the congregation that it is he himself, rather than any earlier prophet, who is being spoken of in Isaiah. It is he himself who is the one called by God to this ministry of liberation.

So Jesus is urging his listeners to hear this passage from Isaiah in a new and deeper way, in a way that understands Jesus himself to be the interpretive key to the text’s meaning.

Jesus is saying that the anointing of the prophet by God’s Spirit that’s spoken of in Isaiah’s text is to be interpreted as a pointing forward to the event of the anointing of Jesus himself by God’s Spirit at the time of his baptism in the waters of the Jordan, which the Gospel of Luke describes in this way (Luke 3:22): “And the Holy Spirit descended upon [Jesus] in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, [saying,] ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

Now, in the passage from Isaiah that Jesus reads aloud, with that prominent clause, “because [God] has anointed me”—in that passage, the verb “has anointed” is pregnant with deep meaning. For the Hebrew word there is “mashach,” the verb related to the noun “mashiach,” which literally means “anointed one” and is usually translated “Messiah”—thus, the deep meaning, “because [God] has made me the Messiah.”

And the Greek word used in Luke’s translation of this Hebrew verb is “échrisen,” which, not surprisingly, is related to the noun “christós,” which literally means “anointed one,” and is usually translated “Christ”—thus, the deep meaning, “because [God] has made me the Christ.”

Thus, in Jesus’s sermon at the synagogue in Nazareth, in which he speaks of himself as having been anointed by God, Jesus is implicitly laying claim to the title “Messiah,” or “Christ,” and that is the best spoken interpretation, the best good news, the best sermon, of all.

And what is the mission of the Anointed One—of the Messiah, the Christ—the mission that Jesus is here claiming for himself? Well, that mission is to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free—and that, too, is a primary aspect of this great good news, this best sermon, of all.

You see, what Jesus is saying is that the task of the Messiah is to turn the hopes of the poor, the imprisoned, and the oppressed into reality—by setting in motion the process of amnesty, of liberation, of restoration that is identified with that biblical symbol “the year of Jubilee,” “the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Thus, Jesus’s first sermon, as narrated in the Gospel of Luke, boldly announces who Jesus is, of what his ministry consists, and to what tasks we his disciples are called—and, as I said, that’s the best good news, the best sermon, of all.

And throughout the upcoming chapters of the Gospel of Luke, everything Jesus accomplishes occurs by the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit that came upon him at baptism and that he himself understands and proclaims to be the fulfillment of this passage he has read from Isaiah.

Yes, throughout the Gospel of Luke, Jesus will be shown fulfilling the mission that is first enunciated in this morning’s Second Lesson—the mission that we will be hearing about in the reading aloud of our lectionary texts and in the preaching of our sermons for 10 out of the next 11 Sundays, between now and Easter, and then, too, for most of the rest of the year beyond that.

So as together we work through the Gospel of Luke in the coming months we will be encountering Jesus as he teaches, preaches, and heals, as he moves among the poor, the outcast, the sick, the blind—among all those whom most people considered marginal or expendable, among all those whom most people excluded from fellowship.

Throughout the Gospel of Luke, we will see Jesus releasing persons from various forms of bondage and oppression: from the bondage of sin and from oppression of every kind, whether social, economic, or political. And we will see Jesus restoring sight to those who are without it—whether physically or spiritually.

And through it all, we will come to understand that in the person and ministry of Jesus, God’s purpose of initiating the liberation of humankind has been fulfilled. And we will also come to understand that through Jesus we, along with others, have been freed from sin and despair, and that we have been freed in this way for a purpose—so that we in turn can go out to fulfill the mission to which God is calling us—that is, the mission of performing, in the name of Christ, Jesus’s kind of deeds, the kind of deeds that heal and liberate others.

And that’s the good news, the best good news of all. It’s good news that calls for us to rejoice and make merry, and to share the food of our banquet with all those who are hungry, as today we respond to the call to carry on the ministry that Jesus began.

Let us pray:

O God of the prophets and apostles, and of all women and men who speak Your truth and do it, we thank You for Jesus, the Anointed One—the Messiah, our Christ. Because Christ is life, we no longer mourn. Because Christ is light, we no longer grope in a nighttime of sin. Because Christ is liberating Word, we are no longer enchained to ways that oppress others, and ourselves as well.