Recovery
Luke 4:14-21
January 24, 2010
Every week, everywhere, sermons are preached in all manner of churches. The origin of the sermon is uncertain, but most think that its real roots were in the rise of the synagogue following the Babylonian Exile of Israel. Removed forcibly from Jerusalem and access to the now destroyed Temple, Jews had to reconfigure how they kept their identity as God’s people alive. They couldn’t sacrifice animals in the Holy of Holies anymore, so instead they sacrificed, offered up, their words. The Torah was read and then commented or preached upon. If there are any doubts, Jesus’ teaching around the synagogues of Galilee, climaxing back home in Nazareth, is evidence of what happened. We haven’t changed much.
It was his custom to go to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as is ours, and he stood up to read. We are not sure whether he was on the rotation of readers of the Torah, a weighty and prestigious task, or simply volunteered as an honoured guest. In the first century you had to have the ability to read the Bible in Hebrew, no longer the spoken language, with the correct intonations and chanting. Jesus did not select his reading; he was given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, for there was and still is a lectionary-type schedule for reading in public worship, marked right into most Hebrew Bibles. It was a remarkable passage, the Spirit was moving both in the passage from Isaiah 61:1-2 and now in Jesus - “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
We have rendered that declaration a little too passively, for it is not just an idea but a passion that has grasped us and won’t let us go, at least just yet. It is a prophecy, a human being speaking for God, something we are no longer familiar with, yet it soars all the same. Many a book and many a sermon have borrowed a phrase for its title from these two verses.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
I don’t believe Jesus intoned these lines in a monotone, and he was not without a certain dramatic flair, for when he finished reading, he closed the book, handed it back to the attendant, all of which is the normal routine to show respect for the Scriptures. Something like our practice of the beadle bringing in the
Bible and laying it upon the pulpit where it will be read as the Word of God. And then he sat down. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed upon him.
Not because he had made any melodramatic move, but because that’s what teachers do - sit down in order to teach. The congregation was almost certainly standing and straining to hear every word of what he would now teach and preach. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” An odd and cryptic message: what exactly has been fulfilled? Say that again?
The Lectionary Guys have done it again and stopped the reading right there, then will pick up the rest of the story next Sunday. I will sneak in the next verse, “And all spoke well of him, and wondered at his gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.” This was odd, but it was very nice, for the moment. Save the rest for next week.
People have listened to this prophecy for millennia and have thought it wonderful, whimsical, and most of the time, dreaming a little too much. Preach good news to the poor? Does that mean we who are not poor can’t hear the Gospel? The preacher is sent to release the captives? Aren’t they captives because they have done something wrong? Our country does not imprison innocent people. To set at liberty those who are oppressed? Oppressed happens elsewhere, where there is no democracy. Recovery of sight to the blind? Isn’t that expecting a little too much of miracle, especially if this prophecy is supposed to be our perpetual action plan, our mission statement?
These words are poetic and wonderful, but aren’t they a little too idealistic and utopian for us church people who have to live in the real world? We can’t afford doing these kind of things anyway and still pay the light bill. It’s our government’s job to take care of the poor and the captives and the oppressed.
But we’ve missed something; we’ve missed that notion of recovering. Is there anybody here who has not experienced the joy and the deep gratitude of recovering something? Maybe you have recovered the use of an injured part of your body. Maybe you have recovered a lost friendship, a marriage gone sour and now become sweet again, a talent atrophied and now muscular, an optimism about life clouded once by cynicism. Maybe you have recovered your sight - I was blind but now I see - a vision fueled by compassion that sees the deep hurt of people and no longer can turn away and say, “that’s not my problem.” Every one of us is recovering. I have always admired those men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous, who many years and decades into their pilgrimage describe themselves still as “recovering alcoholics.” That may describe you precisely, for many of us not, but as human beings we are all continually in the process of recovering God’s creation in ourselves. We are “recovering children of God” and we never quite get it all back.
But remember, Isaiah and now Jesus are prophesying, speaking for God, that our calling is to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind. We have our own blindness to be healed, but when we help others see, bring good news of liberation to the poor and the captives and oppressed, it aids our recovery double fold. I was blind, but now I see.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan