On A Mission

I believe it was in the 1990’s that it seemingly became fashionable for corporations to prepare mission statements. Perhaps with large corporations diversifying into various lines of commerce, there was a sense that they were losing focus. Stephen R. Covey, author of the book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” is quoted as saying “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” In preparing mission statements, companies would ask themselves, “What business are we in?” For example, here is the mission statement of the McDonald’s fast food chain: "McDonald's vision is to be the world's best quick service restaurant experience. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness, and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile." These statements often tried to express the core of what the company was about, but broad enough to allow adaptation to a changing business environment. For example, a company whose mission statement reads, “We make top quality buggy whips” probably would no longer be in business. But if the same company said, “we make the top quality accessories for transportation, so our customers can get where they want to go with speed, comfort, and style,” their vision could adapt to the transition from the horse and buggy era to the automobile era, and could include accessories for trains and other forms of mass transit as well – the focus is the general category of “accessories for transportation,” not the specific product of “buggy whips.”

In our Gospel reading (Luke 4:14-21) today, we catch a glimpse of Jesus early in his ministry. Having preached in Galilee and the surrounding country, he had begun to build a reputation as one worth listening to. In today’s Gospel, he comes home, preaching in his hometown synagogue. The text he chooses, from Isaiah 61, is not random – in fact, in Luke’s gospel, this text serves as Jesus’ mission statement, the foundation for his self-understanding of his ministry.

The Isaiah text quoted by Jesus comes from a time after the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon. After decades in exile, they are finally home at last – but “home” is the charred, crumbling remnants of a temple surrounded by a city in ruins. Our Old Testament reading from Nehemiah 8 tells of a time immediately after the return from exile, when the people, having been in exile amid hostile foreigners for so long, eager to reconnect to their roots and their faith and starving for a word from the Lord, prevailed upon Ezra to read from the book of Moses. And so Ezra read from Moses, we’re told, with interpretation, giving the sense, so that the people understood the reading. But the Isaiah text quoted by Jesus comes at a later time, when the initial burst of energy among the returnees from exile began to wane. They needed to rebuild all over again, and they became discouraged, both at the magnitude of the task before them and by opposition from surrounding tribes. And so the Isaiah text is a word of hope, a word of good news to people needing to hear good news.

We’re told that in Jesus’ day, while the text was read in Hebrew, the people spoke Aramaic – a dialect of Hebrew, but different enough that some may not have understood the text as it was read. In our context we might think of the differences between the Pennsylvania Dutch spoken in Berks and Lehigh and Lancaster counties, which my father’s parents spoke, and the High German in which our older church records are recorded. And so it was customary for the rabbi to interpret the text to his listeners, just as Ezra interpreted the law of Moses in our Old Testament reading. This may be where the tradition of preaching a sermon originated. We’re told that Jesus’ reading caught the attention of the congregation, so that all eyes were focused intently on him – no bored, half-asleep, slack-jawed, dead-fish stares from the congregation that day. And in our Gospel reading, after Jesus read out the text – significantly, omitting a line about “the day of vengeance of our Lord” – vengeance wasn’t part of his mission - he gave his interpretation, his sermon – one short sentence – “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Some translations say, “has been fulfilled in your ears” or “has been fulfilled even as you heard it being read.” Of course, his listeners had to wonder, “what does he mean? Fulfilled how? What has changed just now, as we heard Jesus reading?” Some foreshadowing – in our reading next week, Jesus will go on to tell them what he means, and the congregation that started out speaking well of him will try to throw him off a cliff.

For Luke, the Isaiah text – and let me quote it again: “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.” This text defines how Luke saw Jesus’ mission. It sets the context for the rest of the Gospel, and indeed also for much of the book of Acts, which Luke wrote as a sort of sequel to his Gospel. More than the other Gospels, in Luke there is concern for the poor, for the oppressed, for those in captivity to societal forces beyond their control, for those on the margins of society. For example, in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, the first beatitude says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. In Luke 6, the parallel passage from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain just says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.” And it’s followed up in a few verses by the words, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” So for Luke, this verse from Isaiah on which Jesus preached is foundational, absolutely key to understanding what Jesus was about. Let me say a word about that final phrase – the year of the Lord’s favor. This refers to the year of Jubilee, set forth in Leviticus 25:10, where every 50th year, the trumpet was to be sounded, and the people were to proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof – and if that last phrase sounds familiar, it’s the quote on the Liberty Bell. Any land that had been sold over the past 50 years was to return to its former owner, and the people were not to work the soil, but to live on whatever the land brought forth on its own. This concept, which we don’t know if it was ever actually implemented, was set forth in order to prevent the rich from scooping up too much wealth from the poor, and to be sure that no person or no family or no tribe would be in perpetual bondage to another. In this day of huge disparities between rich and poor, maybe it’s time to proclaim a year of Jubilee.

What does this text from Isaiah mean to us, here at Emanuel, where our name proclaims that God is with us? To us here at Emanuel who are Christ’s body, His arms and legs and hands and feet in the world today? This text that was Jesus’ mission can be our mission as well. For we are anointed – by our baptism, by the Spirit of the Lord within us, to proclaim good news to the poor – here in Bridesburg, and through our support of the Conference and wider church, to the world. For here in Bridesburg, as there were in the Nazareth of Jesus’ time, as we seek each week forgiveness and freedom from our own sinfulness and brokenness and from the world’s sin and brokenness that bears down on us all, all around us there are captives to be released, blind seeking to see, oppressed to be set free – set free from their own bondage to sin, set free from society’s oppression, from forces beyond their control - a community yearning for a proclamation of God’s favor.
But we’re just a little church. How can we hope to take all this on? It is here that our reading from I Corinthians 12 is helpful. We are one part of the body of Christ, and each of us is one member in the body of Christ. We can’t do everything – and we’re not asked to. But we’re asked to do something – to do something for Christ in our personal lives, our professional lives, our lives as members of the congregation, our lives out in the community. And other members of Christ’s body will be active as well – and we must always be mindful of our need for each other.

When I get discouraged at the magnitude of the task God has set before us, I’m reminded of a prayer attributed to Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, gunned down while saying Mass.
It helps now and then to step back and take the long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not Master Builders, ministers, not Messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

So may the words of Isaiah 61 be fulfilled, not only in our hearing, but in our speaking and our doing. May we here at Emanuel be prophets of God’s good news, here in Bridesburg, in Philadelphia, and through our partnerships with other Christians, to the ends of the earth