When he opened it

Scripture Lessons: Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, and 8-10; Luke 4: 14-21, NT page 61 Sermon Title: When he opened it This Thursday I’ve been invited to give a lecture and a sermon at Columbia Theological Seminary where I went to school, and I’m very excited about it. I’m excited to have been asked and I’m even excited to get back on the campus of my alma-mater, which probably has a lot to do with the reality that I am one of those extremely fortunate people who is actively using the degree that he earned from the school he attended. It’s just this unfortunate reality that too few people actually get to do that. Some people have these gifts and skills that they never really get to use, so the world is full of actresses who work as waitresses, playwrights who become electricians, engineers, writers, hairdressers, and designers who have to settle into a job that pays the bills even though for them it’s just a job that pays the bills and not the vocation that they love. This is a hard thing – it must be – to force yourself to go to a job that you hate – but what’s worse is to settle into a life that you hate because your whole identity has been compromised. I’m afraid that’s what we’re doing to our new dog. We went to the pound and found this coon hound. We didn’t know at the time that she was a coon hound, and being from Atlanta we didn’t really know what it would mean to own a coon hound, that they cannot be dissuaded from their vocation, but that’s what we have – ask any of our neighbors within a two-mile radius, a coon hound is exactly what we have. She slipped out the front door yesterday and I chased her, but she’s a lot faster than I am, and I even slipped and fell in the snow in front of Matt and Miranda Campbell and Zach and Ashley Maddux who were kind enough to help me catch her. And every time a cat walks into the neighbor’s yard you can hear her howl and you can’t make her stop. You watch her and you know that she is genetically engineered to chase that cat and as long as it’s in the yard that’s all that she can think about. Part of me wants to have her vocal cords removed. Sometimes I’m tempted to remove her vocal cords myself. But other times I watch her watching that cat, and I just feel sorry for her. How frustrating it must be to never get to do the thing you were born to do. But, though we are called to be a royal priesthood, holy and set apart, so often we are like our coon hound - stuck inside just looking out the window. In reading our second scripture lesson, this passage from the Gospel of Luke, I know that the Lord refused anything but his true calling – that our Lord was born to do something – he was meant to do something – and by the grace of God he is choosing to do it in this 4th chapter. He returned to Nazareth – this small town “where he had been brought up” – and while he was in the synagogue there he stood up to read, and I can just imagine that when he took the scroll it was one of those moments where those who were present knew that they were witnessing something significant. Then he unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To let the oppressed go free, To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, sat down, and with the eyes of everyone there fixed on him he told them: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He’s saying: This is who I am, this is what I was born to do and now I am ready to do it. It’s a significant moment. Think about the first time Mozart saw a piano, or when Henry Ford took apart a bicycle to make his first automobile – these must be something of a glimmer of what it was to witness Jesus claiming his ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth. It’s in this moment, when Jesus takes the scroll, that it becomes real. Jesus becomes the person that he was born to be, and according to Dr. Fred Craddock, “this event announces who Jesus is, of what his ministry consists,” and “what his church will be and do.” To me, the unfortunate reality is that we, the Church, in many ways we are more like the actress who’s making a living as a waitress because we’ve given up our true purpose for something that appears to be more realistic. We were created to make a difference in this world, but rather than actually doing it we are stuck inside watching it happen on the news – rather than being active agents of change we have been lulled to sleep. Of course there was a time when the frontier was expanding and churches were popping up from here to the Pacific. The Seminaries were following close behind to provide the pastors for those churches, but as times changed, one by one those seminaries closed up. And it’s not bad – even though so many have closed there’s still plenty – because the seminaries that remain can still produce more than enough pastors because the churches have started closing up too. It appears to many that the Church is becoming this dated institution that has gone the way of the mule drawn carriage and the pay phone – so in an effort to fight the trend I’ve seen the Church try to remain relevant. Now there’s a dangerous word. To be a relevant church – well – if you’re a relevant church and the people say they don’t need the religion of their parent’s or their grandparent’s than you go and give them the religion that makes sense to them. It’s not altogether a bad idea. As society changes, in many ways the Church has to change with it. Back when my mother was a child she sat right in that pew and if she squirmed my grandmother would pinch her in that soft skin on the underside of her arm. Some would say that this is what parents need to do now, but we’re a little more relevant than that. Susie Baxter provides our children with these wonderful coloring books and crayons and nobody has to get pinched... hopefully. I think that’s fine. That’s the good side of being relevant. You change a little bit. You get creative. You see old problems with new eyes and come up with something better. But I fear that in other ways being relevant hasn’t been so good for the church. Consider the first line of Jesus’ mission statement: “Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” If that’s his call, if that’s what he did – and we know that he did – than has the Church lived up to such a calling? In so many ways I know that we do, but in other ways I’m not so sure. In fact, I believe that the Church in the United States has changed her focus just a little bit so that the ministry of the Christian Church in the United States and the World focuses not so much on the poor, but among the privileged, the pious, and the powerful. We want to be relevant. We’re losing influence and we don’t want to lose any more, but just because there’s a Presbyterian running for President – that doesn’t mean he’ll be representing our values – I don’t care if he can quote “Two Corinthians” or not. To represent Christ is to preach Good News to the poor, release to the captives, and to let the oppressed go free. Will any of the candidates be doing that? We can’t just settle for getting by. But too often that’s exactly what we are doing. Just trying to – make a living – hold on – pay the bills – get some shade of a Christian in the White House, but we were not born to just get by. According to legend, there was a time when the Church was so powerful that the prayers of our forefather, John Knox inspired such fear in the Queen of Scotland that she is famous for saying, “I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the armies of England.” Now maybe we’re not as powerful as we used to be, but what if we tried a little harder to be true to ourselves and not so hard to just survive? What if we spent a little more time preaching good news to the poor, and not so much time just preaching? What if we spent a little more time proclaiming release to the captives and a little less time looking at them suspiciously? What if we spent a little more time praying that the blind would recover their sight, the oppressed would go free and not so much time trying to appear respectiable? What if we reclaimed our identity as followers of the one who changed the world? What if, when the scriptures were read, the people wept for joy – for by our actions these words were fulfilled? Ralph Waldo Emerson is one who might call us away from the work that we’re doing and to our true calling. Dawn Taylor reminded me and everyone else of Facebook that he said, “The purpose of life is not [just] to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” We were created for a higher purpose and a greater calling – so do not settle. Live with purpose and know what it means to live the life that God created you for. Amen.