Third Sunday after the Epiphany (C)
January 27, 2019

O God of freedom, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

The Gospel writers were each very careful about how they began their accounts of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. And, like siblings, each account about where and how it all began is different! Here are four different answers to the question of what was the most important inaugural moment. Mark begins by telling of Jesus exorcising an unclean spirit in the synagogue in Capernaum. Matthew’s first story of Jesus’ ministry is about a large body of teaching that Jesus did in front of crowds on a mountain. John’s story of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is the water to wine extravaganza at the wedding in Cana. And Luke begins the story of Jesus’ active ministry by telling about Jesus making a visit to his home synagogue in Nazareth.

Jesus, Luke says, was filled with a spirit of holiness – the same spirit of holiness that would fill Jesus’ followers after his death. Luke says that it was Jesus’ custom to attend synagogue on the Sabbath. When the scriptures were handed to him, Jesus found Isaiah’s proclamation of freedom: freedom from hunger, freedom from illness and disability, freedom from poverty, freedom from prison, freedom from debt, freedom from all kinds of oppression. It’s a little bit of a mash-up, rather than a direct quote from Isaiah, but certainly the spirit of Isaiah is as Jesus reports. Isaiah was proclaiming the end of the Babylonian exile. According to Luke, Jesus was proclaiming that his ministry, too, was going to be about liberation – about freedom.

It’s interesting to me to think about this freedom in light of Nehemiah’s story of the return of the Hebrew people from exile and slavery in Babylon. (This is the only time that a reading from Nehemiah appears in our three year lectionary!) The people have returned to Jerusalem and they have gathered at the Gate to the city where the water flowed from a spring. They heard the word of the Holy One and they wept when they heard it. They wept — the water flowed from the springs in their eyes – perhaps because they realized how far from free they had been in Babylon. Perhaps they realized how far from free they still were even though they were back in familiar territory. Perhaps they wept for all that had been lost. And the religious leaders – Ezra and Nehemiah and the Levites – respond to their mourning with an instruction to “celebrate! Don’t mourn – celebrate because rejoicing in the Holy One is the source of your strength. This day is sacred. You are God’s sacred people. Don’t mourn over the past. (You know, stop hoping for a better past.) Rejoice. Go eat and drink, and share what you have with whoever has nothing prepared.” It’s not just “don’t worry, be happy.” Rather, it’s “don’t worry, be happy and invite all those who have nothing prepared to share in your celebration.”

I hope those of you who have heard me preach before noticed that verses 4 and 7 are missing from our reading from Nehemiah this morning. I hope you wondered what was missing! Maybe you even guessed that I would tell you! (You were right!) Those two verses contain long lists of names. Perhaps they’re left out in deference to lesson readers everywhere – but I wish they hadn’t been. Verse 4 lists the names of the people who stood with Ezra as he read the sacred text. Nehemiah says that Ezra was standing with eleven others on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose. He was standing with his leadership team.[1] And then in verse 7 is a list of thirteen additional people who were there to help the congregation to understand the sacred text because the sacred text is hard to understand.[2] Let’s not miss the idea that the scripture has always been challenging to understand and that Ezra had a very large leadership team helping to proclaim freedom!

It’s interesting to me to think about freedom in light of Paul’s teaching about the body of Christ. As members of the body, he says, Christians are not free to disregard the value of another member – even if that member is weak or seems less important. Every part is important, Paul says. The eye must not say to the hand, “I have no need of you.” The ear must not say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body.”

Now the reason that Paul was writing about this to the people in the church in Corinth was that they were arguing with each other. We know that in ancient times, sometimes people in churches didn’t like each other, didn’t respect one another’s opinions or sufficiently regard one another’s dignity. In ancient times, sometimes people who were a part of the church behaved very badly toward one another. (Can you imagine?) In the early church, sometimes some people thought that other people shouldn’t be members of the church or sometimes people felt that they themselves didn’t belong or didn’t really fit in! Paul was trying to teach them that everyone is important and everyone belongs – even members who are weaker than others, or members who are less honored, or less respected or less popular than others. Paul was giving a pep talk about what it means to be a part of a team – one body with many members with a variety of gifts, who have great need of one another, in spite of ideas to the contrary.

Paul was using the metaphor of a body to say that some parts are more noticeable or may seem more important than others, but every part is important. Every part deserves compassion and respect. Think for a moment about what compassion means. Think for a moment about what respect means. Now think for a moment about what you would say if I went around the room and asked each one of you what you think of as the strongest part of your body, and what the weakest part or the least likeable part of your body is. Think for a moment about what you might do differently if you started treating the weakest or least likeable part of your body with more compassion and respect. Maybe it’s your hair or your belly or your upper body or your legs or your nose or your teeth or your hands or your feet. Each one of us has at least one body part that could use more compassion and respect.

Now think of Emmanuel Church as a body with lots of parts. Think for a moment about what you would say if I went around the room and asked each one of you who you think are the most honored or popular or influential Emmanuelites and who are the least honored or least popular or least influential Emmanuelites. Think for a moment about how much stronger our body at Emmanuel would be if we treated the least honored or least popular or least influential members with greater respect. Maybe when you thought about it, you thought to yourself “Actually I think I’m one of the least honored or least popular or least influential Emmanuelites.” Maybe you thought, “I’m not sure I’m even considered an Emmanuelite.” (Well I can tell you that you are today by virtue of your presence with us this morning, because that’s how it is around here.) Think for a moment about how much stronger our body at Emmanuel Church would be if you treated yourself and everyone else with greater compassion and respect, and if everyone else treated you with greater compassion and respect.

Even if you are already a very compassionate and respectful person, I guarantee that you can do something today that is even more compassionate and respectful than usual. Even if, and maybe especially if, you’re feeling a little cranky or bored or less than comfortable, you too can do something that is compassionate and respectful. Maybe it’s toward someone in your immediate family. Maybe it’s toward someone who you don’t usually think about or someone you try to avoid. Maybe it’s toward someone you love but don’t agree with or understand. Maybe it’s to someone you don’t even know and may never see again.

So what does that have to do with freedom? Well, if a body is at odds with itself, it is not free to do other things. If a stomach is grumbling, for example, or an ear is aching, the whole body suffers. If people in the church are grumbling or aching, the whole community suffers. And when we’re suffering, we’re not free to pay attention to the needs of others – we’re not free to help get other people free.

And helping get other people free is our job as Christians, because Christians are the body of Christ. If, as Luke says, Jesus Christ was filled with a spirit of holiness to fulfill the scriptures – to set people free, then, as the body of Christ, filled with the same spirit, Christians have inherited the same responsibility. We have the same call, the same invitation, the same challenge to express the compassion and respectfulness that are manifestations of true holiness. Today we have opened the scriptures that proclaim freedom: freedom from hunger, freedom from illness and disability, freedom from poverty, freedom from prison, freedom from debt, freedom from all kinds of oppression. Today we are called to rejoice in the source of our strength and share what we have with those who have no provisions for a celebration. Today let’s do what we can to make sure that this scripture is fulfilled in our hearing. Not just in the distant past and not in some unforeseeable future. Today, let’s see how it could be more so among us.

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