Mark Twain once wrote that ‘it is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things : freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and the prudence never to practice either of them !’
In the gospel of Luke (Ch.4 vs. 16-21) we are given the account of Jesus visiting the Synagogue in Nazareth and being handed some scripture and exercising freedom of speech and conscience, but not having the prudence not to practice them – he reads the passage from the prophet Isaiah which we heard this evening (Ch.61). It’s a wonderful passage talking about bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the broken hearted, proclaiming liberty to captives and release to prisoners. It talks about the time of jubilee – proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour.
The passage is a whole string of celebrations as the Lord triumphs and sin and misery and evil and death are conquered… It was no coincidence that as Jesus read the scripture in the Synagogue that day, it was this passage that he read – for in doing so he was revealing himself as the fulfilment of the prophecy.
He was linking up the Old and the New Testaments as we know them and confirming God’s continued commitment to caring for his people…
It’s an incredibly radical message that he gave. First by aligning himself with the fulfilment of the scripture he was effectively proclaiming himself as the Messiah… It was he that had come to achieve the victory promised in those words from Isaiah. And this proclamation was going to be unbelievably controversial – it would make Jesus a figure of hate amongst many – some who thought that he threatened their own elevated positions of power, but some simply because they believed that this carpenter’s son was just too big for his boots !
And so it was a risky reading, but secondly it was a powerful political message – for years and years people waited for a Saviour, people waited for someone who would come along and deliver them from the oppression of living under occupation, of paying too many taxes, of obeying complicated and very often man made rules to ensure their place in the Temple was secure and so on…
And Jesus was saying he had come to do these things – not perhaps in the way they expected, but he had come to do them!
And the words by themselves would have been incredibly simple – I could say now that next Saturday I can go and play in the European Champions Final because I’m good enough – it would mean nothing because I won’t be playing and I wouldn’t have been good enough ! I can say that I can bring peace to all the places of conflict in the world – but the reality is I can’t !
Talk is cheap and without proving the meaning of what we say through our behaviour and actions it means nothing…
So it would have been very easy for Jesus to speak these words, to make ludicrous claims about himself, to build himself up as someone that could start a new cult that people would turn to – and just as cults grow up today, people would join – some people would inevitably be taken in and would go along with their ‘new leader’ !
But Jesus didn’t just speak words – though some of those who heard him in Nazareth weren’t listening or didn’t want to hear, Jesus would prove the meaning of what he said… In our New Testament reading this evening (Luke 7:1-35) we have a small number of examples which show us the power of Jesus – we have the healing of the Centurion’s Servant, the bringing to life again of the widow’s son at Nain – in them we recognise the miraculous power of Jesus, but we can also see some of the compassion and love – he didn’t need to go all the way to see the Centurions Servant but he went to show that we was willing to travel anywhere and meet anyone who was in need of his healing…
He didn’t need to raise the widow’s son, but he recognised her distress and saw her broken life and used the opportunity to show some of the incredible life giving power of God…
And then we heard of Jesus being approached by some followers of John the Baptist asking whether Jesus was indeed the person they’d been waiting for – John was in prison, the Romans continued to rule, the Temple authorities remained corrupt as did the local tax collectors – what had changed ?
Well, some of these things hadn’t changed and they weren’t going to – even today there will be corrupt rulers, there will be abuses of power, even within religious authorities at times – but what Jesus pointed his questioners to was something much more important – people being healed of disease, receiving sight, the lame walking, the lepers being cleansed, the deaf hearing, even the dead being raised, and the poor, those who had so often been overlooked and neglected, received good news !
What had changed wasn’t the earthly rules and powers but what had changed was the opportunity to offer a hope that would last into all eternity….
Jesus never came just speaking words – Jesus didn’t come offering to overthrow things which wouldn’t last anyway – Jesus came to bring life and hope and meaning to people which would last forever…
His earthly life was short – and by the end he had relatively few followers, but those followers were not a cult that would die out, but a family that, filled with the Holy Spirit, with the power of God, would share their message and build a Church that will go on and on and on…
Today we are part of that Church – not a small group of followers doing our best just to keep things going, but part of a family, guided and inspired by God…
Like the followers of John the Baptist we too can sometimes get a little discouraged, but when we do, we can always focus back to Jesus and we can look at the miracles he did, we can look at his love so completely revealed as he hung on the cross dying for us, we can look at his glorious resurrection – death conquered for ever…
And we can also look at the miracles he has performed in our lives – the miracle of loving us whatever we have been or done, and the miracle of offering us a place in his everlasting kingdom – a place sitting at his table…
We have seen the miracles, miracles which, every day, even touch us… AMEN
In the gospel of Luke (Ch.4 vs. 16-21) we are given the account of Jesus visiting the Synagogue in Nazareth and being handed some scripture and exercising freedom of speech and conscience, but not having the prudence not to practice them – he reads the passage from the prophet Isaiah which we heard this evening (Ch.61). It’s a wonderful passage talking about bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the broken hearted, proclaiming liberty to captives and release to prisoners. It talks about the time of jubilee – proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour.
The passage is a whole string of celebrations as the Lord triumphs and sin and misery and evil and death are conquered… It was no coincidence that as Jesus read the scripture in the Synagogue that day, it was this passage that he read – for in doing so he was revealing himself as the fulfilment of the prophecy.
He was linking up the Old and the New Testaments as we know them and confirming God’s continued commitment to caring for his people…
It’s an incredibly radical message that he gave. First by aligning himself with the fulfilment of the scripture he was effectively proclaiming himself as the Messiah… It was he that had come to achieve the victory promised in those words from Isaiah. And this proclamation was going to be unbelievably controversial – it would make Jesus a figure of hate amongst many – some who thought that he threatened their own elevated positions of power, but some simply because they believed that this carpenter’s son was just too big for his boots !
And so it was a risky reading, but secondly it was a powerful political message – for years and years people waited for a Saviour, people waited for someone who would come along and deliver them from the oppression of living under occupation, of paying too many taxes, of obeying complicated and very often man made rules to ensure their place in the Temple was secure and so on…
And Jesus was saying he had come to do these things – not perhaps in the way they expected, but he had come to do them!
And the words by themselves would have been incredibly simple – I could say now that next Saturday I can go and play in the European Champions Final because I’m good enough – it would mean nothing because I won’t be playing and I wouldn’t have been good enough ! I can say that I can bring peace to all the places of conflict in the world – but the reality is I can’t !
Talk is cheap and without proving the meaning of what we say through our behaviour and actions it means nothing…
So it would have been very easy for Jesus to speak these words, to make ludicrous claims about himself, to build himself up as someone that could start a new cult that people would turn to – and just as cults grow up today, people would join – some people would inevitably be taken in and would go along with their ‘new leader’ !
But Jesus didn’t just speak words – though some of those who heard him in Nazareth weren’t listening or didn’t want to hear, Jesus would prove the meaning of what he said… In our New Testament reading this evening (Luke 7:1-35) we have a small number of examples which show us the power of Jesus – we have the healing of the Centurion’s Servant, the bringing to life again of the widow’s son at Nain – in them we recognise the miraculous power of Jesus, but we can also see some of the compassion and love – he didn’t need to go all the way to see the Centurions Servant but he went to show that we was willing to travel anywhere and meet anyone who was in need of his healing…
He didn’t need to raise the widow’s son, but he recognised her distress and saw her broken life and used the opportunity to show some of the incredible life giving power of God…
And then we heard of Jesus being approached by some followers of John the Baptist asking whether Jesus was indeed the person they’d been waiting for – John was in prison, the Romans continued to rule, the Temple authorities remained corrupt as did the local tax collectors – what had changed ?
Well, some of these things hadn’t changed and they weren’t going to – even today there will be corrupt rulers, there will be abuses of power, even within religious authorities at times – but what Jesus pointed his questioners to was something much more important – people being healed of disease, receiving sight, the lame walking, the lepers being cleansed, the deaf hearing, even the dead being raised, and the poor, those who had so often been overlooked and neglected, received good news !
What had changed wasn’t the earthly rules and powers but what had changed was the opportunity to offer a hope that would last into all eternity….
Jesus never came just speaking words – Jesus didn’t come offering to overthrow things which wouldn’t last anyway – Jesus came to bring life and hope and meaning to people which would last forever…
His earthly life was short – and by the end he had relatively few followers, but those followers were not a cult that would die out, but a family that, filled with the Holy Spirit, with the power of God, would share their message and build a Church that will go on and on and on…
Today we are part of that Church – not a small group of followers doing our best just to keep things going, but part of a family, guided and inspired by God…
Like the followers of John the Baptist we too can sometimes get a little discouraged, but when we do, we can always focus back to Jesus and we can look at the miracles he did, we can look at his love so completely revealed as he hung on the cross dying for us, we can look at his glorious resurrection – death conquered for ever…
And we can also look at the miracles he has performed in our lives – the miracle of loving us whatever we have been or done, and the miracle of offering us a place in his everlasting kingdom – a place sitting at his table…
We have seen the miracles, miracles which, every day, even touch us… AMEN
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