EPIPHANY 3C - Nehemiah 8:2-10; Psalm 113; 1 Corinthians 12:12-17; Luke 4:14-21 - 21 January 2007 - A sermon preached by The Rev. Peter Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

 

A Love Affair With Scripture

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Does anyone hear have a favorite verse of Scripture, a favorite story from the Bible? If so, would you like to share it with us? (Wait for responses) Why does this verse or story speak to you? What makes it one of your favorite sections of the Bible?

 

Frederick Buechner, one of the great preachers of our time, writes this about the Bible:

 

“... one way to describe the Bible, written by many different people over a period of three thousand years and more, would be to say that it is a disorderly collection of sixty-odd books which are often tedious, barbaric, obscure, and teem with contradictions and inconsistencies. It is a swarming compost of a book, an Irish stew of poetry and propaganda, law and legalism, myth and murk, history and hysteria. Over the centuries it has become hopelessly associated with tub-thumping evangelism and dreary piety, with superannuated superstition and blue-nosed moralizing, with ecclesiastical authoritarianism and crippling literalism. Let them who try to start out at Genesis and work their way conscientiously to Revelation beware.

 

And yet-

 

And yet just because it is a book about both the sublime and the unspeakable, it is also a book about life the way it really is. It is a book about people who at one and the same time can be both believing and unbelieving, innocent and guilty, crusaders and crooks, full of hope and full of despair. In other words, it is a book about us.

 

And it is also a book about God. If is not a book about the God we believe in, then it is about the God we do not believe in. One way or another, the story we find in the Bible is our own story.”

                        (Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, p. 9)

 

A PEOPLE BACK FROM EXILE

 

The people of Israel, who had been in exile in Babylon for quite some time, were given permission by Cyrus, King of Persia, after he gained control of the Babylonian Empire, to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. The earlier background was this: prior to their captivity and period of exile, the people of Israel had been disobedient to the law. They had taken advantage of the poor, and failed to respond to the warnings of the prophets that they get their act together. If they did not repent, they would face the judgment of God. The leaders and people of Israel were not faithful, and did not repent, and that judgment came - in the form of foreign powers who overran the country.

 

Now, thanks to Cyrus, they have returned to Jerusalem, and are given another chance to start over. To help them make that start, Ezra gathered all the people at the gate outside the temple, and stood on a platform, and began to read the law of Moses - that is, what we know as the first five books of the Bible, or the Pentateuch, and what the Jews call the Torah - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Ezra read it from early morning until midday, to the men and women and to the older children - “to all who could hear with understanding.” (Nehemiah 8:2)

 

And what was their reaction, as they attentively listened to the Torah being read? They wept. They wept because when they heard the Torah being read, they realized that they had turned away from God and lost touch with God. They realized that they had forgotten who they were and whose they were, and that this loss of connection with Yahweh - their own faithlessness - had led to the destruction of their beloved city and their beloved temple, and had led to them being separated from their land and their loved ones.

 

Now they were back, and all they held dear was being rebuilt and restored. Their own lives were being restored. And through the reading of the Torah, their very connection with Yahweh was being restored. And they wept. And on that day they were reminded by the leaders that it was not a day for mourning. It was a day to celebrate their restoration. It was a holy day, for they rediscovered that the Lord was their strength. And scripture was at the very center of this holy day.

 

This story of a people who had fallen away from God, and who then are restored, is a story about Israel in the sixth century before Christ. But it is also a story about us.

 

JESUS IN NAZARETH

 

Jesus was familiar with the Torah and the Prophetic Books and the sacred writings from Psalms and Proverbs and all the rest. Those were his scriptures, what we now call the Old Testament. You can be sure that he was quite familiar with the book of Isaiah, one of the key prophetic books, a book that spanned the time prior to the exile, during the exile, and the period during which the people had returned to Judah. The part that Jesus got up to read in his hometown, in that synagogue in Nazareth, was from that post-exilic period, when the people had been given a new hope, because they had returned home.

 

Imagine Jesus reading those scriptures about the history of his people - imagine him reading Isaiah as a child. Imagine him reading Isaiah 61, as the prophet brings the wonderful news of deliverance to those who had been in captivity. And now fast forward a bit. This man, who first read these scriptures from Isaiah as a boy, is called on to read in the synagogue. It is his day to read the lesson, and it is from this very section of Isaiah that he reads.

 

The attendant handed him the scroll of Isaiah, Jesus found the place, and began to read.

 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

            because the Lord has anointed me;

He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

            to bind up the brokenhearted,

            to proclaim liberty to the captives,

            and release to the prisoners;

            to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Isaiah 61:1-2)

 

Something happened as Jesus read those words to the congregation assembled in Nazareth. They were no more old words of the past, or even wonderful words about Israel’s deliverance from captivity over 500 years ago. They had come alive again on that very day, and in that moment of their being read by Jesus, Jesus knew it... and everyone in that synagogue knew it. You could not hear a sound. Not even a baby was crying. It was if people were holding their breath, as they watched Jesus roll up the scroll, give it back to the attendant, and sit down. This is what rabbis did when they were ready to teach. They sat down. Luke writes, “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” I guess. Something was definitely up. They could all feel it.

 

He paused for a few moments. Then he began to speak. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He said some other things, too. You’ll have to go home and look it up. Or you can come back next Sunday and hear it. But one thing at a time.

 

Imagine Jesus reading these verses from Isaiah that day, and then thinking, perhaps right after reading the words, as he sat down and paused, “They all think they know me. After all, I grew up here. They know my parents and my brothers and sisters. They know me. Well, at least they think they do. Today is the day I tell them that these words apply to me, that God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of the sight to the blind. They heard me read the words. They associate them with the coming of the Messiah, because of what they have been taught. But will they connect the dots? Will they see me, the one who just read the words, as the Messiah?”

 

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

Today, right now, in this moment, while you are sitting here - boom! This scripture that is over 500 years old has been fulfilled. Can you find yourself in that synagogue, in that moment? Well, let me ask you this: have you ever read a passage of scripture, or heard it read one day in church, and it has just hit you like a ton of bricks?

 

This is why we need scripture. This is why we need to read it for ourselves, and why we must come to church and hear it read. Because you never know when it is going to grab you right where you are - on a bad day, or a good day, or on a so-called ordinary day when you weren’t sure if you even wanted to pick up your Bible, when you weren’t sure if you even wanted to come to church - and all of sudden, wham! This is me! This is us at St. Ambrose right now! This is speaking to me, speaking right into my life, to something I’ve been struggling with. It’s helping me make sense of my life!

 

Make no mistake. The scripture is not God. But despite all the weird but true things that Buechner says about the Bible in those words of his that I quoted at the beginning of this sermon, it is the Word of God, and it is our story, too. And it leads us to the living Word - to the living, loving God who wants a relationship with us, and who wants to teach us a thing or two about how to love each other.

 

I must confess: I’ve been having an affair for many years now. I’ve been having a love affair with Holy Scripture. It confounds me at times; it nails me to the wall at times; but it also feeds me and helps pick me up when I’m in a place of despair. It is not my God. But it leads me to my God, and it also leads me to deep, deep truths about myself. It is from Holy Scripture that I learned I was the beloved of God, and that life is all about grace, and that without God in my life, and without His grace, well... there just isn’t much life to be had - period.

 

We need the Scriptures. We need them because they help sustain us, and they lead us to our very salvation. We need the teaching and guidance that come to us through them, and most importantly, we need them for the God that they reveal.

 

For those of you who have your favorite scriptures, I am glad for you. Whether you have a favorite scripture or not, keep being open. For you never know how God might reach you - on any given day, through any given scripture. It might seem like one of the more obscure and obtuse verses of all time, and all of a sudden - bam! - it hits you right between the eyes.

 

So keep reading. Keep listening. Keep hearing. Keep seeking to understand. For the Holy Scriptures “contain all things necessary to salvation” (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 526), and God still speaks to us today, and makes Himself known to us today, through these ancient words. At any given moment, be open to what God might want to say to you, and when that word comes - for it will come - be thankful. For whenever that happens, it is a holy day, just as holy as when Ezra read the Torah to the people of Israel, and they wept... just as holy as when Jesus unrolled the scroll and read from Isaiah, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

 

We give thanks to you, O God, for your Holy Scriptures, and for the amazing gift that they are to us. “Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ...” (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 236) Amen.