Reverend Ian Doescher

The Third Sunday of Epiphany

Today’s gospel passage is one of those passages that has become so familiar to me that I almost don’t know how to preach on it.  Jesus is in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth—a town of only about 400 people or so—and the scroll with the scriptures is handed to him.  In ancient Israel, this would have been common—everyone was given a chance to read the scriptures and then say something.  So Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Then all wait for his interpretation of this passage, and all he says at first is: “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  For religious types who are also interested in social justice, this is one of the most familiar passages of the Bible because it shows Jesus giving a clear statement of his purpose, of what he has been sent to do.  Like Jake and Elwood in the movie “The Blues Brothers,” Jesus might as well be saying, “I’m on a mission from God.”

Next week, we’ll hear the rest of this story—how the people from Jesus’ hometown reacted to Jesus’ words.  For today, though, I want to help us understand what it might mean for Jesus’ mission to be preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.  And I’m going to do that by putting those various facets of Jesus’ mission into a modern context for us.  What would Jesus’ mission look like if he were here today?

Preaching good news to the poor.  My instant inclination when I think about preaching good news to the poor is about corresponding messages to the rich, which might not be such good news.  But two things are wrong with my inclination: first, I have to remember that by most of the world’s standards, I am a terrifically rich person, even if I don’t feel like it here in the United States.  Second, it bears remembering that Jesus doesn’t talk about the rich here—part of his mission is to “preach good news to the poor.”  The rich aren’t part of the discussion here.  What does good news to the poor look like?  The Oregonian, over the past few days, has been running stories about a couple in Beaverton who were in the process of adopting a little boy from Haiti.  When the earthquake happened, the husband of this couple stopped everything to travel to Haiti and find the boy.  Strings were pulled, paperwork was sped up, bureaucracy was overcome, and the man—the boy’s new adoptive father—was able to bring his son home to meet his new mother.  My spouse Jennifer, the boys and I were on our way out of the house yesterday when she started reading the article about the Haitian orphanage and the Beaverton family, and when it was time for us to walk out the door she was wiping away tears.  “Great,” I joked, “I needed you to get ready, and now you’re crying!”  Maybe preaching good news to the poor in today’s world means giving them fresh hope in a hopeless situation, inviting them to become part of our lives.  Maybe preaching good news to the poor means at least acknowledging that the poor are there, and then asking what you can do to help them.

Preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners.  I have a friend named Andie from divinity school who was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Some time during college, Andie made contact with and learned the story of Johnny Burr, an inmate in a North Carolina prison on death row for accidentally shaking a four-month-old child to death in 1993.  For a variety of reasons, Andie does not believe Johnny is at fault in the murder, and now, sixteen years later, Johnny is a committed Christian and new evidence is revealing that the child may have died by accident without Johnny’s involvement.  A new trial is expected.  But all of that is beside the point.  Every December, like clockwork, my friend Andie sends out an email to as many people as possible, asking for a simple favor.  At Christmastime, Andie likes to inundate Johnny with Christmas cards from around the country and the world, so he can have some Christmas joy in the form of tangible letters sent from people he doesn’t even know.  “I simply cannot describe how much it means to Johnny,” Andie says.  And she’s right—every time you write to Johnny, Johnny writes back to express his thanks.  These are simple acts, acts that aren’t going to change Johnny’s sentence or get him out of prison, acts that won’t change anyone’s mind about the death penalty or our judicial system, acts that aren’t intended to be subversive or rebellious or anything but loving.  But proclaiming freedom for the prisoners may not mean literally opening the jail doors and letting people out.  Instead, it may be as simple as continuing to show them human kindness, continuing to love them and to let them know they are still people too.  It is something like freedom when we realize and remember that even someone on death row deserves a Christmas card.  In many ways Andie is helping to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and I think if Jesus were here he’d be sending a Christmas card Johnny’s way, too.

Preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind.  It would be too easy to talk about recovery of sight to the blind in terms of Jesus coming to heal the physical problems some of us might have.  So let’s take blindness in its metaphorical meaning, blindness as not being able to see the truth of a situation.  I read an article this week that disturbed me to my core.  It is the sort of story that makes people of my generation terribly distrustful of Christianity—the sort of story that makes people my age look at Christians and declare, “What a bunch of hypocrites.”  This story takes us to New Zealand.  It turns out that the New Zealand army has been buying weapons from a defense contractor called Trijicon here in the United States.  It was recently discovered that Trijicon has been putting biblical references on their gun sights—evidently has done so for thirty years now.  One of the two scripture references is John 8:12: “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”  The other reference on some of the sights is to 2 Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”  The New Zealand army feels it is inappropriate to have these scripture references on gun sights.  And you know?  I totally agree with the New Zealanders.  The Bible is not a weapon, Christianity is not a religion of violence, and regardless of what you think of the military or defense contractors or whatever, it should be clear from a Christian standpoint that putting scripture on gun sights is not an appropriate way to evangelize.  From the perspective of my generation, this is an example of modern blindness, people being unable to recognize what Jesus stands for, what Christianity is all about.  If Jesus were here, maybe part of his mission would be to help people understand his message, and to understand that whenever it is associated with violence something has gone terribly wrong.  A week ago my boys took bumper stickers from Jennifer’s church and put them on our new car.  I started to be angry until I realized that one of stickers says, “Peace is the church’s business.”  It’s hard for me to argue with that statement.  So maybe part of Jesus’ mission would be to help the blind—the spiritually blind—to see.

Preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, releasing the oppressed.  We live in an era where it’s difficult to talk about oppression.  Nearly every disadvantaged group can be said to be oppressed in some way, and the backlash among middle class white men like myself is to say that we, too, are now oppressed because the world has made concessions for everyone except us.  Of course, I don’t think that argument holds much weight, but it’s out there.  I keep trying to tell Jennifer that as a left-handed person I am oppressed, but she doesn’t buy it.  (Typical of a right-hander, I might add.)  Really, though, oppression is a word that we throw around these days without as much meaning as it could have.  One thing that occurred to me when I really thought about it is that, at least in my life, oppression tends to be faceless.  What I mean by that is that although I can identify groups of people I would call oppressed, it’s hard for me to point to someone I know well and say, “Yes, there is an example of an oppressed person.”  Most of the people I know well are comfortable, are pretty well educated, are people who don’t really know what oppression is, even if they have isolated experiences of injustice.  But if Jesus were here today, his mission would still be to release the oppressed.  And you know what I think?  I think that means I probably wouldn’t see much of Jesus, maybe our paths wouldn’t cross much, because I would be leading my happy little life and Jesus would be off knee-deep in situations of real injustice in the world, releasing the oppressed.  It’s entirely possible that with Jesus coming to release the oppressed, I wouldn’t run into Jesus because I tend to keep my life at arm’s length from people who are really oppressed.  Maybe I would pass him by as he serves food down at the Portland Rescue Mission, maybe I would catch a glimpse of him on a news segment about African orphans, but I wouldn’t get close to him.  What would it mean for me to know a savior who releases the oppressed?  It might mean that I would have to stand with him, stand next to him, walking step in step with his mission.

Preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, releasing the oppressed and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.  “The Lord’s favor” is a difficult phrase to contend with, unless you know what Jesus is talking about here.  Other translations render Jesus’ words more accurately here, when they talk about proclaiming the year of Jubilee.  As most of you probably know, the year of Jubilee was one of the laws God established for the Israelites as God spoke the law to them through Moses in the book of Leviticus.  The year of Jubilee was to come every fifty years, and was a time when all Israelites would forgive their debts to one another, would release anyone who had been put into servitude, would remember that they had been oppressed in Egypt and would therefore seek to undo their oppression of one another, financial or otherwise.  The year of Jubilee was out of practice for centuries when Jesus read the scroll in the synagogue, so here Jesus is announcing that he has come to reestablish the practice of Jubilee.  It’s not hard to imagine what this might look like today.  We all know people in debt—most of us probably are in debt in one way or another.  We all know of companies in debt, and we know whole countries in debt, including our own.  What would it be like for everyone to forgive each other’s debts every fifty years?  It would surely be bad business for the largest banks of our day, but what an amazing thing it would be.  In the year 2000, nations around the globe took up the call of Catholic and Protestant churches worldwide, and forgave the crippling debt owed by some of the world’s poorest countries.  Just over a month ago, the House of Representatives introduced a bipartisan bill called The Jubilee Act, which expands the debt cancellation to twenty-two previously overlooked impoverished countries.  The notion of Jubilee has captured the imagination of United States politicians and people the world over.  Maybe if Jesus were here today, he would be a congressman promoting debt relief, proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of the Jubilee.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  A remarkable mission, for Jesus and for us. “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”—and in our action.  May it be so today.  Amen.