Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (C)    

February 3, 2019

O God of healing, 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.

Last week, we heard the first part of the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry, according to Luke. Jesus, filled with a spirit of holiness, announced that, like the prophet Isaiah, his ministry was about setting people free – free from hunger, illness, disability, poverty, prison, debt, and from all kinds of oppression. Luke’s reports Jesus asserting that God’s promise in Isaiah was true in the distant past of the Babylonian exile, perhaps true in some unforeseeable future, but most importantly, true in the hearing of those listening (and that includes us). In this second half of the story, things take a sudden turn from amazing good to amazing bad, as my daughter Grace once said in despair.

I should say that there are all kinds of good reasons to doubt the historicity of Luke’s story, of Jesus opening the scroll of Isaiah, reading and offering commentary, not the least of which is the lack of anything remotely resembling a cliff in ancient Nazareth. But rather than interrogating Luke’s stories for facts, we might wonder together why Luke tells this story considerably differently from the other gospels. How is this story fulfilling Luke’s purpose? What is Luke’s purpose?

Luke begins the two-volume set (the gospel and the Acts of the Apostles) with a brief prologue written in the first person. Maybe you remember it. It goes like this: “Since many have set their hand to laying out an orderly narrative regarding the events that have been brought to fulfillment among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning, and who became servants of the word, passed it on to us, it seems like a good thing that I also, having exactingly traced out everything from the beginning, should write it out in order for you, most exalted [lover of God] so that you might recognize the reliability of the accounts you have been taught.”[1] Luke, admittedly not an eyewitness, is writing a new and improved dramatic narrative to persuade lovers of God of the truth of what hearers had already been taught. It reminds me of something an important theology teacher of mine once told me – sometimes it’s easier to communicate truth in fiction than in non-fiction; sometimes it’s easier to communicate truth in poetry than in prose.

Luke’s gospel is the one with the most dramatic parables – like the prodigal son and the good Samaritan. Interestingly, in the passage before us, when Jesus says the words, “Doctor, cure yourself,” he calls that a parable (not a proverb). Maybe he was referring by title to a longer story that his audience would have known. Or maybe this whole story is a parable. What have the listeners to Luke already been taught about doctors’ inability to heal themselves?

As you know, I’m interested in comparative sacred stories in Judaism and in Islam to both appreciate their traditions and to understand my own tradition better. This past week, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg wrote a Twitter thread sounds like it could be about anyone’s ability to heal themselves. She cites the Talmud, rabbinic teaching from the first few centuries of the common era. Seemingly in response to the question of whether suffering is rewarded, are these stories: Rabbi Chiyya fell ill. Rabbi Yohanan visited him and asked, “Is your suffering dear to you?” (in other words, do you desire to be afflicted?) Rabbi Chiyya said, “I welcome neither this suffering nor any reward this suffering might give me.” Rabbi Yohanan says, “Give me your hand. Rabbi Chiyya gave him his hand, and Rabbi Yohanan stood him up and raised him. Rabbi Yohanan was known as a healer. Later, Rabbi Yohanan fell ill. Rabbi Chanina visited and asked, “Is your suffering dear to you?” Rabbi Yohanan replied, “I welcome neither this suffering nor its reward.” Rabbi Chanina said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. Rabbi Ruttenburg writes that “the Talmud then asks: Why did Rabbi Yohanan wait for Rabbi Chanina to restore him to health? After all, he was a healer! He could just heal himself! The Talmud answers, ‘The prisoner cannot release himself from jail.’”

There’s a Qur’anic story too, that I’m reminded of when Luke says that Jesus passed through the angry crowd and went on his way. The story in the Qur’an is that Abraham smashed many clay idols belonging to his father and his people. The people were angry enough to want to throw Abraham into a big fire. The Holy One, in response, did not prevent Abraham from being thrown into the fire by the angry mob, but instead, commanded the fire to be cool, so that when Abraham was thrown into it, he was not burned, but passed through the flames unharmed. It’s an interesting idea that the Holy One doesn’t subvert the free will of the people, but in the ancient imagination of people of faith, the Holy One has command over the elements of nature.

In the ending of Luke’s story about Jesus’ last known visit to Nazareth, Jesus doesn’t argue with the people, nor does he condemn them. He just passes through them and goes on his way. I wonder if it was this experience that taught him to shake the dust off his feet and to teach his followers to do the same whenever they or their offerings were not well-received. This is the story of the day Jesus became homeless, according to Luke. People who had known Jesus since childhood ran him out of town that day and as far as we know, he never went home again. This is the story of when Jesus, the beloved child of God, became homeless.

There are some who understand Jesus as so divine that his feet barely touched the ground while he was alive on earth. That kind of Jesus might not have felt particularly bothered by being homeless. But I imagine a much more human Jesus – a Jesus who was profoundly changed by the experience of being homeless. Since this is the first story of Jesus’ ministry in Luke, it’s hard to know how he was changed, but I think the experience of being homeless must have made Jesus so much more radical in his ministry. I imagine he learned something more deeply about what liberation theologians call, “God’s preferential option for those who are poor.”

I encourage us all to think of circumstances when we might dig deeper, to be more generous and welcoming with our spirit, more generous and welcoming with our money, more generous with those we know and with total strangers, more generous and welcoming with those who owe us something, more generous with those who annoy or anger us. It’s a moral imperative but it’s not about guilt. It’s about practicing gratitude for whatever we have and it’s about freedom and an invitation to new life that we sorely need. It’s about understanding that, like Jesus, we are beggars who know where some bread is, who know where some money is, who know where some shelter is. We are beggars who know where some kindness is. It’s about sharing what we know and redistributing resources. It’s about the freedom and the new life of joy in one beggar showing another beggar where some treasure is.

On this Annual Meeting Sunday at Emmanuel Church, I want to thank you for being here – for taking part of the movement that goes from solitude to community to ministry, as Henri Nouwen used to put it. Notice that the journey isn’t only from solitude to community – that is a huge and hard thing in itself. It’s a journey from solitude to community to ministry. Ministry is the healing work we are all called to do as a consequence of accepting the welcome of God in Jesus. Gratitude and compassion are the essential ingredients of the ministry of healing work. Not long before he died in 1996, Nouwen wrote that healing ministry is about leading people to gratitude, because the world is so full of resentment, which makes us cling to disappointments and complain about losses, rather than giving thanks for what we have. He concluded that, “in this crazy world there’s an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they’re never separated. Where there is pain, there is healing…Where there is poverty, there is the kingdom.”

Perhaps you’ve seen the public sculpture raised on Newbury and Dartmouth Streets this past October in memory of Kip Tiernan, social activist, and force of nature, who joined the choir of heavenly angels in 2011. She is credited with founding or co-founding institutions in Boston such as Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, the Boston Food Bank, Aid to Incarcerated Mothers, Rosie’s Place (the first shelter for women in the United States), Boston’s Emergency Shelter Commission, the Finex House, the John Leary House, My Sister’s Place, the Transition House, the Victory House, Food for Free, the Greater Boston Union of the Homeless, the Poor People’s United Fund. It’s a long list that I love to read. The memorial displays her wisdom in many engraved quotes – this one struck me this past week: “Somewhere along the line charity replaced justice, and we developed an ethic to meet the need rather than acknowledge the need for a new ethic. After all, charity is sharing what belongs to you with others, while justice is returning that which belongs to others to them. In simpler terms, charity is scraps from the table, and justice is being invited to the table.” Certainly meeting the needs of others is an essential first step. Making sure that all are invited to the table is how we will recognize the reliability of the accounts we have been taught about the Love of God through Jesus.

← Back to sermons page