A Meditation on Luke 4:14-21:
Celebrating the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 20, 2013
1.
1.
So at the age of
thirty, thirty-one, Jesus is coming out.
I don’t know about you, but I think that’s what’s going on in this
morning’s reading. Jesus is coming out. In Nazareth: where they know him and love him
as a good kid; where they appreciate his good manners and honor his hard work. And if you’ve been where Jesus is—you know. That it’s hard. That it’s scary. That this bridge has to be crossed. Before all the others: all the preaching, all
the healing, all the loving, all the forgiving, all the feeding. Jesus has to come out. Has to leave one moral universe and choose a
very different one.
So just a little Greek this morning. ‘Evangel’ is the Greek word here for ‘good news.’ The ‘evangel’ is Isaiah’s good news: this message of encouragement and hope, this enacting of liberation and release. So an evangelical faith busts out of those safe, cozy, religious closets—and rings and sings with what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now.” “The Holy One has anointed me,” Jesus says, “to bring good news to the poor.” Right now.
Now imagine Jesus
coming out like that, and then rolling up the scroll, and sitting down near his
family. And he’s noticing all eyes turning toward him, following his steps. Maybe they’re intrigued by changes in his
personality. Maybe they’re unnerved by
his chutzpah, by his particular choice of texts. Who’s to say?
But all eyes find Jesus. And from
his bench, aware of all those eyes, Jesus says, out loud: “Today this scripture
has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Now sometimes,
sometimes this New Revised Standard Version is just a tad too polite. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in
your midst.” Too polite, I think. Because I have this feeling that what Jesus
really says is something like: “Today this scripture has to be fulfilled in
your midst.” You see the
difference? Not: “Today this scripture
has been fulfilled in your midst.” But:
“Today this scripture has to be fulfilled in your midst.” Or: “Today, friends,
this scripture makes God’s passion for liberation urgent and luminous and
primary in religious life.” Or just:
“Today, friends, this scripture fires me up.”
I don’t know about you; but I kind of imagine Jesus sitting down, all
eyes on him, and then Jesus looking all around and saying: “Today, friends,
this scripture just fires me up!”
In so much of his
teaching, so much of his story-telling, Jesus speaks with a kind of urgency and
passion that makes a good many of the folks around him just flinch. The good news, he preaches, is not just a
good idea—it’s our mandate, our vocation, our practice every day. An evangelical faith takes its cue from God’s
passion for liberation. And liberation,
he says, is not some sweet lullaby, promising comfort in the distant by and by;
it’s a freedom song, a freedom song, begging courage and action NOW.
And all this urgency, all this passion—it gets Jesus into trouble. It gets him into trouble with the good folks at home in Nazareth. It gets him into trouble in the great halls of religious, political and academic power. It gets him into trouble all over the place. Freedom songs have a way of doing that to you. And good news for the poor is very often dangerous news for the powerful and the rich.
This is all stuff
that Martin Luther King, Jr. knew very, very well. He knew that good news for the poor was
dangerous news for the rich. He knew
that his speaking out for peace in churches would rattle the powers that be in
Washington. And he knew that an
evangelical faith busted out of cozy closets and proclaimed God’s love in the
bright light of day and the hot heat of the city square. When Dr. King came out against the Vietnam
War at Riverside Church, a year to the day before he was shot, he sounded
something like Jesus and a lot like Isaiah.
I want to read a little bit from that speech:
“I
am convinced,” he said that night, “that if we are to get on the right side of
the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of
values. We must rapidly begin the shift
from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives
and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant
triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being
conquered.” That’s King in 1967. And he goes on.
“A
true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and
justice of so many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good
Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole
Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly
beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion”—this is Martin Luther
King—“true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not
haphazard and superficial. It comes to
see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look
uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth...A true revolution of
values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: ‘This way of settling
differences is not just.’ This business
of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans
and widows, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically
handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom,
justice and love.”
Again, that’s King,
on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church, coming out, against the war in
Vietnam. And when I talk about
evangelical faith and evangelical courage, I’m thinking about Dr. King and what
he said that night. What he tried so
hard to do with the last months and weeks of his life. Evangelical courage draws energy and hope
from God’s own passion for liberation and peace. Evangelical courage speaks the truth in love,
and trusts that, in just this way, the truth can set us free. Evangelical courage embraces “the fierce
urgency of now,” trusts in the anointing of the Spirit to see us through. And evangelical courage insists on compassion
as salvation, on love as holy prayer.
2.
Now we’re getting
together next Sunday to talk about eight values—what I’m calling eight
motivating values—in our life together at First Congregational Church. And right there at the heart of those eight
is this one I’m calling evangelical courage.
And I want you to know that I see this in your eyes. I see it in your choices every day, every
week. It’s not a pipe dream here, evangelical
courage: it’s the muscle and bone of who we are. Of Christian faith and practice.
Did you know? Did you know that just this week our own Art
Schuller, working with COPA allies in Monterey County, won a huge victory for
poor and working class families in Monterey?
That healthcare team—Art’s team, our team—pushed and pushed and pushed
until that county’s Board of Supervisors passed healthcare coverage for folks
at or below the poverty line. A bridge
program until Obamacare kicks in next year.
I heard that between three and four hundred uninsured families will have
healthcare coverage this spring. You see
how evangelical courage embraces “the fierce urgency of now”? Those are families in King City and Salinas,
families Pajaro and Gonzalez. Families
we’ll probably never know. Going to the
doctor. Getting the right medicines for
their kids. Released—at least, a little
bit—from captivity and fear. Because the
Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because the Holy One has anointed us. With evangelical courage. Thank
you, Art.
And did you
know? Did you know that next month Stoney
Brook and I will meet with Santa Cruz County police chiefs to organize a Gun Buy-Back
event right here at FCC—where friends all over the county will be encouraged to
turn in guns they no longer want around, or guns they no longer feel safe
having around, or guns they never wanted around in the first place. No questions asked. Just bring your guns, turn them in. And we’re looking at finding some money to
buy back some of the scariest weapons, machine guns, automatic weapons, as they’ve
done in places like LA and Oakland. You
see how evangelical courage draws energy from God’s passion for peace? And Stoney and I are looking for local
artists who might take the metals, the materials turned in and break them down
into works of art—some sculpture and jewelry perhaps, icons of compassion and
hope. Because the Spirit of the Lord is
upon us, because the Holy One has anointed us.
With evangelical courage.
And to these
examples, I add a third. Did you know
that, next month, our own Suzanne Semmes will launch a special support group
for those going through divorce, separation, huge relational transitions? You see, we know that these journeys of the
spirit, these trying transitions require courage of a similar sort. And we believe in the power of this
community, in the power of the Spirit among us, to encourage and affirm and
welcome and connect. This new group will
make holy space for those going through divorce and separation—gay and
straight—so that there’s love enough for healing and faith enough for
learning. For all of us. We believe that the Spirit of the Lord is
upon us, with us in transition, and that the Holy One anoints us for joy, for
delight, for creativity along the way.
And that’s evangelical courage, too.
Just like that push for healthcare coverage in Monterey County. Just like that Gun Buy-Back program we’re
developing up here. The heart of God shines
with compassion and mercy. For every one
of us. All the time.
3.
I guess I’m hoping
that the eight values we’ll discuss next week, and hopefully embrace in our
congregational meeting: I guess I’m hoping these values will inspire us to come
out of any closets we’re hiding in. Especially
the safe, cozy, religious closets we can hole up in as first-world
Christians. I’m hoping these eight
values will capture something precious, something provocative in the
theological soul of First Congregational Church. And stoke the fires of our collective
imagination.
Now you could
reasonably ask: But what good are words, really? What kind of difference are a bunch of words
on a sheet of paper going to make—in our neighborhoods, in our cities, in our
lives? That kind of skepticism is
healthy and vital and well-earned in religious communities across many
generations. What good are words
anyway? What kind of difference do they
make?
Time will tell, I
guess. But I know they make a difference
for Jesus. I know he chooses his words
carefully, prayerfully. I know he takes
the scroll in his hand and follows Isaiah down, down, down until he finds just
the words he needs. The very words he
needs. For this coming out sermon. For this ministry of liberation and
release. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me,” these are the words he chooses, “because the Holy One has anointed me to
bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind,
freedom to the oppressed.” These words,
Isaiah’s words, Jesus’ words—they make all the difference. They evoke a new universe filled with
promise, freedom and all kinds of courage.
And our values? What of the words we come up with? Well, you know, if they do anything at all to
inspire the kind of passion we’ve seen this week: Art and his COPA team
fighting courageously for healthcare for voiceless friends who could hardly
fight alone; if they do anything at all
to embolden the kind of creativity we see in Stoney’s Buy-Back program and Deb
Culmer’s Stations of the Cross; if they
do anything at all, along the way, to feed and comfort and inspire Suzanne’s
new support group...to shine a light for anyone and everyone walking through
darkness...
If these values,
these words, these ideas do any bit of that, all of the conversation we’ve had
will be worth it. All of the classes,
all the retreats, all the paper we’ve used to print it all up. Because tomorrow is today, as Martin Luther
King said at Riverside. And we are
confronted with the “fierce urgency of now.”
Words set before us choices. And
those choices are all we have.
I want to finish this
morning with the last paragraph from Dr. King’s Riverside speech, a year to the
day before he was murdered in Memphis:
“Now
let us begin,” he said. “Now let us
rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new
world. This is the calling of the sons
[and daughters] of God, and our brothers and sisters wait eagerly for our
response. Shall we say the odds are too
great? Shall we tell them the struggle
is too hard? Will our message be that
the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we
send our deepest regrets? Or will there
be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of
commitment to their cause, whatever the cost?
The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of
human history.”
So for all those who
choose peace; for all who choose liberation and freedom; for all who bring good
news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind; and for Martin Luther
King, Jr., who points our way forward still, we give thanks today. May their courage be ours forevermore. Amen.
