3rd Sunday After The Epiphany – Katharine Armentrout
JESUS AND HIS BLUEPRINT
We have just heard Jesus layout what I would call His “blueprint for ministry”. He was filled with the Spirit that morning, as he read the powerful promises from Isaiah 61:
“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,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And when he sat down and all eyes were upon him, he said, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
At the time that passage was written, faithful Hebrews had prayed for their long-awaited release from Exile and the rebuilding of Israel.
And, at the time of Jesus, faithful Jews were praying for God to release them from Roman domination, release from their crushing taxes, their poverty and oppression that had been created by that Roman system.
Jesus, when he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” is announcing that through his ministry those promises, promises made especially to the least in the kingdom, will be fulfilled and that the coming of God’s kingdom is upon them.
When he arrived at the synagogue in Nazareth that day, he had already undergone a profound spiritual journey –
He had been baptized in Jordan river where the Holy Spirit had descended upon him and a voice had announced “You are my son, the Beloved”; then, led by the Holy Spirit, he had spent forty days in the desert where he was confronted by the devil’s temptations.
I think it was during that time of great temptation and privation that, to use our vocabulary, Jesus came to terms with what being the Beloved, the Son of God, would require of him, what he would face in his ministry, but also understood that the Holy Spirit would accompany him through that ministry.
So, when he arrived at his hometown synagogue, Jesus took full ownership of who he was – the Anointed one – and proclaimed that Isaiah’s message of great hope would be fulfilled through His ministry.
And what was to be the focus of Jesus’ ministry? What was the laser-focus of his work? His focus will be God’s focus.
And God’s focus has been clear from the first pages of the Old Testament: His unfailing concern had always been the welfare of his people – both the spiritual and physical care of God’s people, especially those who are at the margins.
Remember it was our God who made clothes for Adam and Eve to cover their naked bodies before they left the Garden of Eden, a tender moment from the very beginning of our relationship with God;
And it was God who broke open Pharoah’s hold on the enslaved Hebrews and set them free.
It was God who sent the Cloud by day and the fire by night to guide them, and provided manna and water for the Hebrews as they made their way to the Promised land;
It was God who gave the Commandments that establish the rules for right living; the Commandments that prohibit murder and covetousness and lying and adultery, each of which prohibition protects God’s people from one another, and especially protects the vulnerable.
God is powerfully clear about his priorities when he says to the prophet: “Is this not the fast I choose? To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the yoke, to let the oppressed go free. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless into your house?”
God from the beginning has had the care of His people foremost in his concerns. And those concerns have always been laser-focused on the poor, the oppressed, the captive, the blind.
The word “poor” in both the Old and New Testament includes not only those who have little in the way of money or land or goods;
it includes those who, for one reason or another, are on the fringes or the outside of society – those marginalized by gender, race, physical handicap. Widows and orphans. Prisoners.
And who are the “oppressed”? They are those who are under the harsh control, either physical or economic, of others.
In Pickens County they are the poor who won’t, or can’t, speak up for themselves because of fear of loss of job; or won’t speak up about dangerous conditions in their rental trailers because they fear eviction; or immigrants who hide their illnesses or abuses for fear of deportation; they are the addicts whose lives are quite literally a prison;, etc.
If you wonder about this emphasis this morning on the poor and oppressed, if you are quietly saying to yourself “Oh it’s just Katharine the Deacon talking; she always talks like that”, then just consider this fact when wondering about the priorities of our God:
There are over 300 verses in the Bible that address our responsibility to care for the poor and to work for justice. The poor and the oppressed always have a priority on God’s care and concerns.
And it was these concerns that Jesus took up with his ministry.
We remember so many specific examples of his ministry to them: he healed the blind; he ate meals with the outcasts and sinners; he confronted those who would put heavy Temple tax burdens on the faithful poor; he fed the hungry; he healed the child of a gentile woman.
The ministry of Jesus to the poor and the oppressed followed the blueprint that he set that morning in Nazareth; and set the priorities and blueprint for his disciples and for us.
Priorities which we took on at our baptism when we each promised to seek an serve all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves and promised to strive for justice and peace among all people, while respecting the dignity of every human being (not just those who look like us or think like we do) ..
This is God’s kingdom-work, Spirit-infused work, and as Jesus’ followers, we, each one of us, is needed for the work. Each us has been given unique gifts by God, as the apostle Paul tells us in our Corinthians passage.
Those gifts are essential to the mission and ministry that Jesus set forth on that Sabbath day long ago.
“You are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Says Paul.(vs. 27.) Our individual gifts are important; and we know that when we come together with our gifts, as part of the Body of Christ, that we can accomplish even more.
As someone wrote, the best way to understand Paul’s point with the body of Christ is to think of it in the true Southern plural: “All y’all are the body.”
And the Kingdom work that is being done by “all y’all” here at Holy Family for the Pickens County community is remarkable. We pray each week for these organizations, but do you realize how many people from Holy Family are involved in making them work?
You have brought tangible good news to the poor through the food pantry and CARES Financial Assistance center, which was established right here at Holy Family; it truly is a haven for the poor of this County, and many from Holy Family have volunteered there and continue to support this wonderful place with donations of food and money. The Weekend Snack program, which provides food to kids in Pickens County, is an organization. It was started by folks at Tate United Methodist Church together with folks from Holy Family. And now 8 or 10 folks from Holy Family, along with other volunteers, pack almost 500 bags of food each week for the students who have signed-up for the program.
You have brought healing to the broken and the sick through the work at the Good Samaritan Clinic which got its organizational start right here at Holy Family. Quite literally life-saving work is done by the staff and the volunteers at the clinic.
Holy Family has many volunteers at Good Sam and a number of our folks are on the Board of Directors…Truly God’s saving work is done there.,
ACES, The Appalachian Children’s Emergency Center, is a shelter established with the help of a number of Holy Family folks. It provides a safe, loving home for older foster children who have been removed from their homes and have no one to care for them.
Our volunteers continue to serve on the board; they help raise funds for ACES; and they provide direct mentoring to the some of the kids.
Additionally we have volunteers working with the Boys and Girls clubs; we have Holy Family folks now serving on the board at Habitat for Humanity; we have volunteers up at Arrendale Women’s prison in Cornelia; we have volunteers at the Senior Center and helping with.
And this list does not include those volunteers go to Honduras and Haiti, when travel is safe. And I know that I am missing some! The needs of the poor and the oppressed just in this County remain great even though we are providing some wonderful services:
For instance over half the kids in the county qualify for free and reduced lunch which means over half the children in our county come from families that are near the poverty level; we have a terrible scarcity of affordable housing and the rents are now very high – at the apartments behind the Mountainside Hospital is $1,100 a month for just a 2 bedroom apartment and that does not include utilities; we have no homeless shelter in the County and yet we have folks who, for no fault of their own are homeless and have no other support.