“Attuned to God’s Mission”

January 28, 2001

Lectionary Text: Luke 4:14-30

           

In one of my favorite resurrection stories, the risen Jesus appears before the disciples and greeted them with Salaam Aleichchum – Peace be with you. I wonder if the risen Christ were to approach you through your Muslim neighbor and greet you similarly, you know the correct way to respond -- Aleichchum Asalaam!  Let me quote from John 20:21ff, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you" And before we go any further with this, I want you to notice “As the Father has sent me” is about God’s mission to the world, “So I send you” is about Jesus commissioning us for our mission. When he had said this, Jesus, fully knowing that we cannot do any of this by our own power, breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'" Notice: “So I send you” (Breathe) “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit was given for the purpose of fulfilling God’s mission.

 

Yesterday, at the Co-Creator Team meeting, we talked about our identity. In order to get there we talked about our own passions, about social and cultural trends in our society and about what Jesus’ heart cry would be for our church. We had some interesting themes – diversity, justice, peace, wholeness, our global mission came to the top of our lists. We began to think of new ways to express that identity in our name, so that others would know who we are. These are very important questions for us. I cannot over stress the importance of these meetings. Next Saturday we will ask questions about the mission of the church. Having said that, let me immediately add that we must carefully consider these comments by Bishop Leslie Newbegin, famed British missionary to India. He said, "there is nothing called the mission of the church. That's a misnomer. There is only God's mission and the church the vehicle through which God's mission is fulfilled."

 

It makes sense for us then, to look closely at Jesus’ mission, how he went about establishing this kingdom, and the ways in which the early Christian community tried to continue that work. We must also ask ourselves what we must do in our context to continue the work of Christ here. There is no better place to begin that exploration than in Luke 4:14ff, which describes one of the first days of Jesus's ministry. Luke saw something in Jesus' life that was very similar to the life they were experiencing in the early church. He begins his narrative of Jesus' ministry with this descriptive phrase: "Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit."

           

Bishop Newbegin’s made that comment, I am sure, because over the centuries, the church has often lacked in the power of the Spirit, has been unable to be in tune with God's mission and has found no alternative but to put its trust in its own power structures and traditions. We’ve had no way to imagine a different way of doing things. And sometimes that has caused us even to be the very antithesis of God's mission. But at the church’s best times, we’ve found ourselves filled by the power of the Spirit, attuned to God's mission and engaged in it with power.

           

When Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, i.e. attuned to God's mission and empowered to be engaged in it, returned to Galilee, the religious community got excited about him. Soon, Jesus' preaching calendar began to get filled up. Every synagogue wanted him as the guest preacher. The prestige of the synagogue depended upon that. And Jesus went to many synagogues and everyone sang his praises.

 

            Do you know where politicians got into the habit of going to their hometown to announce their candidacy? They got it from Jesus! Jesus went to Nazareth, his home town, to announce his campaign. He stood up to read and the famous preacher, the hometown hero, was given the scroll of Isaiah, and he read those famous words from chapter 61, "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." He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. That is sat down to preach. In those days, you stood to read the scripture and sat to preach. And their eyes were fixed on him. There was an air of expectancy that filled the room. "Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," he said. That was his announcement, his manifesto. He is saying, this is a description of God's mission and I am empowered to be engaged in it.

 

            In those days people didn't stay politely and quietly until the entire sermon was over, like you all do! When the preacher said something unexpected, outrageous or controversial, and preachers filled with the power of the Spirit often do, people spoke up right then and there. These people don't seem to have caught the impact of what he said immediately, perhaps their eyes were still glazed by his reputation. "Is this not Joseph and Mary's son?" they asked each other.

 

            Now, Jesus gets warmed up in his preaching. He begins to expound on what this means. He is very aware that these people who seem so receptive to him now are not going to be, when the preaching is over. The preaching on the reign of God is going to take him into an area which the congregants at the synagogue at Nazareth are not going to like. Jesus is going to tell them that God's mission goes against their structure and tradition. He tells them that when there was a three and a half year famine in the land, and God's prophet Elijah, one also filled with the Spirit, i.e. one who knew God's mission and was empowered to be engaged in it, was called to go, where now? To a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. He was sent to a foreign widow. Not to anyone in Israel, the chosen ones. And then, a widow, a woman whose husband had died, and therefore considered not to be in God's best favor. Jesus does not stop there, he gives another example. Elisha, another prophet filled with the Spirit was also sent to a foreigner, Naaman the Syrian. Why, weren't there any lepers in Israel? Of course there were. But God chose the Syrian.

 

            So, what's the point. The point is to say that God's mission is different from the synagogue's mission. The synagogue thinks that they need to simply cater to the Jews, God's chosen people. But Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, fully attuned to God's mission preaches, no, God's mission is an inclusive mission. You could hear their protest, can't you? But we are the chosen people. This is consistent with scripture. Why would God be interested in the making this an inclusive community, when scripture says we are the chosen ones? Aha! But Jesus is also within scripture. His examples are taken right from the book. Jesus unfreezes Isaiah for them. They had never read Isaiah that way, they had never considered Elijah's visit to the widow at Zarephath or Elisha's to Naaman the Syrian that way. How can this be, they are wondering.

 

            I hope you undersand this carefully. Throughout history, people in religious authority who interpreted scripture, chose scriptures they wanted to highlight and that became the norm, the tradition. Such interpretations often led to claims that were designed to exclude people who were different from the those who held power. When questions arose, around who or what is legitimate and what interpretations were orthodox or the right belief, they were resolved by referring to this tradition. This way, religious authorities consolidated power.

 

            Some of us who are older may remember a time in our nation's history when slaves were held to be inferior. In fact, religious authorities in those days even wondered if slaves have souls! Now, there are a couple of places in the Bible where one could find support for that institution. And that was enough justification for them. Never mind, everything else the Bible had to say about there being no Jew or gentile, slave or free in Christ Jesus. Never mind, what the Bible said about how God freed the slaves and led them to Promised Land. Never mind Jesus' manifesto that he came to proclaim release to the captives. That was how the religious authorities maintained their power. It took a Martin Luther King and a civil rights movement to change our thinking on that subject. Many Southern Baptists and the Vatican still use a similar argument to keep women from the pulpit and the priesthood. Never mind that the Bible says there is no male or female in Christ Jesus. Never mind that some of the illustrious prophets of Israel were women. Never mind church planter Lydia and pastor Priscilla. The tradition has consolidated the power in males, and it is the same tradition that is used as a guide to resolve this question as well.

 

The religious authorities in Jesus' day considered themselves to be legitimate heirs of the long line of orthodox interpreters of the faith. So, when later in the gospel story, Jesus meets people who are sick and disabled, people whom the religious authorities said were in disfavor with God, therefore sinners, Jesus does not hesitate to go to them, touch them despite the religious prohibitions about contamination and heal them even on a Sabbath. That he would go out to those who had found disfavor in the eyes of society was a real problem for the religious authorities.

 

Once Jesus healed a man who was born blind. Everyone was convinced that he was a sinner. They even wondered if he was a sinner before he was born! So, the religious authorities questioned the man. John 9:24 has this amazing confrontation. "Speak the truth before God" they glared at him, "We know this fellow is a sinner." And in his utter theological the man says, "Whether or not he is a sinner I do not know, all I know is this: once I was blind, but now I see."

           

All along his ministry Jesus was in a power struggle. The questions of religious legitimacy and tradition are ultimately questions of power. If you have power, that power will legitimate your position and your role and then, that power will make your assertion and claim orthodox. That is what happened between the man born blind and their righteous judges. Unable to make him deny what Jesus had done to him, they pronounced their verdict on him, not on the ground of who is right or who is wrong, not for reasons of what is true and what is false, but solely on the basis of power. Look at John 9:34. "Who are you to lecture us?" they scolded him. "You are born and bred in sin?" Then they expelled him from the synagogue. See, when all arguments fail, all reasoning falters, and all claims prove false, power is the last resort. I hope you notice that power politics in religion is far more brutal than the power politics in the world of politics, because it deprives God's beloved children of a sense of their belonging to the family of God.

 

That day, in the sermon at Nazareth, Jesus told those people that the reign of God is about a community that includes those whom religious power has disenfranchised. And you know what they did? They ran him out of the synagogue, ran him out of town and tried to kill him. What Jesus was saying about God's mission may have been based totally on scripture, but it ran thoroughly counter to their tradition, assumptions, prejudices and biases, which said, God could not possibly love the widow of Zarephath or Naaman the Syrian. It is the same religious authorities that ran him out of the synagogue, that expelled the man born blind from the synagogue, that opposed him every time Jesus tried to share God's love with the disenfranchised, and ultimately took Jesus to his cross.

 

            When the disciples were filled with the power of the Spirit, in the Acts story of the giving of the Holy Spirit, at Pentecost, similar things happened. Why? Because now they were attuned to God's mission and were empowered to engage in it. That day, people who gathered from all over the world heard the gospel in their own language. It was not just salaam aleichchum any more. It was also, namaste, como estas, previet, ayubowan, and anyanghasayo. There was a radical break from the legitimacy and orthodoxy of the Judaic past. The gospel was shown to have no language barrier. Indeed, language itself was freed from its religious captivity. Language that says for instance, that if God is Father, then God cannot be Mother was gone. Language that described God in one cultural form for instance as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant was gone. Language that was dogmatic, rigid, exclusive, absolute and uncompromising was gone. Everybody heard the gospel. It was broadcast in the language of hard rock music. Homer Simpson spoke that language. It was in the movies, it was in Time and Newsweek and Chicago Tribune.

 

            When Peter and John met a man who was lame and they took him by the hand and said, "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, walk," the man began to walk and run. And you know what? The religious authorities were furious. In Acts 4:7, "By what power," they wanted to know, "have you done this?" By what power? That a man was healed from a life long disease does not concern them. What concerns them is only the question of power. The power to rule, the power to condemn or forgive, the power to destroy or to save is theirs and theirs alone. That power of theirs had been seriously challenged by Jesus of Nazareth. So, mustering all their power and employing all intrigues they managed to put him to death, but what is this... he seemed to be still at work, healing people, releasing the captives, restoring the disenfranchised people to their community of faith, making people whole, building a community of God's reign. And he’s out there doing that even today.

 

We need to think about power long and hard, particularly because power is a foreign concept to most of us who throughout our Christian upbringing have been taught the virtues of powerlessness. And because we are Baptists, and we have the responsibility to make these decisions ourselves. These times of thinking about identity and mission are good times to to decide how we are going to exercise that power. We can, of course, exercise that power to exclude people. Oh, Come on, you say. We don't do that? We welcome everybody. Let me tell you something. If we are welcoming, we cannot keep that welcome hidden. We have to let people know that we are welcoming. We have to let the Muslim community know, not only that  we now know  to greet them but we know how to relate with people of different faith traditions. We need to let the poor know that there is abundance at the Lord's table, that we will work hard to eliminate the unjust systems that keep them in poverty. We need to let immigrants know that there we welcome them, and even if they are undocumented, never mind what the government says, in the Christian community foreigners will be received. We need to let the homosexual community know that God loves them.

 

Now see, some of these are hard, aren’t they? But this is precisely why Jesus had to take his ministry from the synagogue to the sea shore. The synagogue's mission was different from God's mission. Is the church's mission different from God's mission?

           

How are we going to exercise power? Are we going to be true to Jesus' mission of the reign of God, or are we going to be true to our own mission? Are we going to be filled with the power of the Spirit of Jesus, to preach the good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, or are we going to be filled with our own privatized spirituality that simply seeks our own fulfillment. I want to pray that the Risen Christ may breathe on us the Holy Spirit so that we may be fully attuned to the priorities God's kingdom and empowered to engage in it.