“Going home.” Just two words,
just three syllables, but what a range of emotions the words “going home” can
stir up, especially if we’ve been away for a while. (And as I say this, I
realize my 40th anniv high school reunion comes up in the
fall…..part of my looks forward to going home, and part of me really doesn’t.) For those returning from military service,
going home means family welcoming them back.
For those who’ve moved far from home, going home may mean reconnecting
with the scenes and memories of childhood. For many, the word “home” brings up feelings
of being safe and loved and cared for. Simon
and Garfunkel’s song “Homeward Bound” may stir up some memories of our own
homes:
“Homeward bound, I
wish I was homeward bound
Home where my thought’s escapin’, home where my music’s playin’,
Home where my thought’s escapin’, home where my music’s playin’,
Home where my love
lies waiting silently for me…..”
For some, though, the phrase “going home” brings up
memories, not of safety, but of anxiety, even terror. If we grew up around violence or other abuse,
going home may trigger traumatic memories, memories of fear and pain and
anger. The traumatic places of our childhood
may trigger us to hyperventilate and break out in a cold sweat. On the other hand, going home may bring
healing, as we see that the people and places that brought us terror as a child
no longer have the power to hurt us as adults – the people who frightened us as
children, who at the time seemed ten feet tall, we now see on our level, as
fellow adults, older and perhaps wiser, or perhaps not. We may find that the encounters that
terrified us and that are forever seared into our memories, have completely
fallen off the radar of those who intimidated us – they may not remember their
actions, even though we can never forget.
On the other hand, regardless whether our memories of home
are fond or fearful, as the title of a book from Tom Wolfe states, “you can’t
go home again.” Oh, you can travel to
your hometown, return to a geographical location. But you won’t find it as you left it. Time’s marched on, and people have moved on,
and likely some places have changed. Perhaps
the general store where as a child you bought penny candy is now a check
cashing place or a pawnshop. Perhaps
some land that years ago had been woods or open fields that you played in as a
child now carries new housing developments – in the words of the song, they
paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Perhaps the roads have changed – the two-lane
road that used to be a major transportation artery has been bypassed by a new
four-lane highway, and so traffic that used to run through town, bringing
shoppers and tourists, is now routed around town, and local businesses suffer
the loss of traffic. Perhaps the church
building where you attended worship faithfully as a child is now being used by
a congregation of another denomination, or even another faith – or has been
converted to secular use, perhaps as an antiques store or a performing arts
space or loft apartments. And even if
some of the stores and businesses remain the same, the people behind the
counter, that used to know you, are gone, and new people are there who don’t
know you from a can of paint – they’re perfectly polite, but they’re strangers
to you, and you to them. And you’ve
changed as well – you’re not the person you were when you left. You have more years behind you, more life experience,
for good and bad. You may recognize
people you knew growing up and they may recognize you, but they will likely relate
to you as the person you were, not the person you are now. Our memories of home are often fixed, static,
frozen in time, but the realities of home have moved on, have changed, for good
or bad.
Going home……in our reading from Luke’s gospel, Jesus traveled
to his hometown, went home – it was quite a memorable visit. So much happened in this one visit that we
will take two weeks to unpack it, and so we will be reading about this one hometown
visit not only today but next Sunday as well.
From forty days in the wilderness,
Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth. Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph settled
after the birth in Bethlehem and the flight as refugees to Egypt. Nazareth, where Joseph worked as a carpenter
– the actual Greek word, tekton, is
broader, referring to a builder, a general craftsman, mostly used to describe
woodworkers, but in some contexts could also refer to stonemasons – from the
Greek word tekton comes our word
architect.
Jesus was the local carpenter, builder, fix-it guy. His neighbors in Nazareth had watched him
grow up, probably had bought tables and chairs from his family or brought Jesus
items to fix or mend. Jesus had been
away for just a short while – he went to John the Baptist to be baptized, and
spent 40 days in the wilderness, and then he began his ministry, and word
spread of all that he did and taught. But
he hadn’t been away that long….so Nazareth would have been as it was when he
left. After preaching and healing in
Capernaum and other nearby villages, Jesus somehow felt it was time for him to
be going home. When he returned to
Nazareth, people expected Jesus to fit into his usual role as the local
carpenter, building, fix-it guy, to do what he’d done for the past 30 years. But while Nazareth was the same as always,
Jesus was not. Jesus had been through transformative
experiences – the baptism by John – with the spirit coming on Jesus like a dove
and God’s voice from heaven calling Jesus “beloved Son, with whom I am well
pleased” - and the temptation in the wilderness – and Jesus had no intention of
going back to making tables and chairs. Jesus
knew that God had called him to something greater. Nazareth was much the same as it had ever
been, but Jesus was not. The Jesus who
was coming home to Nazareth after his baptism and time of trial was very
different from the Jesus who had left Nazareth just a few short weeks or months
before.
So Jesus came home, and went to the local synagogue. He stood up to read the text for the day, from
the prophet Isaiah, and what he read was a description of a prophet Isaiah
bringing good news to a desolated people, in its original setting the prophet
bringing good news to the Judean refugees who had returned from Babylon – and
let’s hear 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."
And then Jesus sat down, and everyone looked at him
expectantly. And Jesus said, “Today this
scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
In effect, at least as Luke tells the story, these words are
in effect Jesus’ mission statement, his inaugural address as he begins his
mission. Jesus connects his mission to
these ancient promises that were made to the refugees returning from Babylon,
these ancient promises that still sustained the Jewish people under Roman
occupation. Jesus uses the ancient
prophecies to bring message of good news to the people in the here and now of
his day …..and he’s not just making a general proclamation of goodwill to
everybody, but lifting up particular categories of people who desperately need
to hear good news – the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed, those in
need of the Lord’s favor. He’s very
explicitly saying that these lives, overlooked by most, matter in the eyes of
God. These lives matter. Now, all lives matters in the eyes of God – Jesus says
elsewhere that a sparrow cannot fall without God’s notice, how much less can a
human being suffer without God’s notice – but the poor, the captives, the
blind, and the oppressed are the ones who were ignored by the society of his
day – and so it was their lives that Jesus felt compelled to lift up. In so doing, Jesus was living out the words
of his mother Mary in the Magnificat, when she spoke of pulling down the mighty
from their thrones and lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good
things and sending the rich away empty.
He had learned these words at his mother’s knee, and now he was living
them out. It’s notable that in Isaiah, the
words about “the year of the Lord’s favor” are immediately followed by the
words “and the day of vengeance of our God” – but Jesus left off those
words. Proclaiming the Lord’s favor was
Jesus’ mission; proclaiming God’s vengeance evidently was not.
There’s that phrase “the year of the Lord’s favor”. That phrase had a specific meaning for the
Jewish people – it was the year of Jubilee described in Leviticus 25, when
every fifty years, all debts were to be cancelled and all land lost to debt
returned to the original owners, when slaves were to be freed, when the people
were to sound the trumpet and “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the
inhabitants thereof” – and if those words sound familiar, it’s because they’re
inscribed on the Liberty Bell downtown at Independence Mall, and we hope the
Liberty Bell will reopen tomorrow if it hasn’t already. Scholars cannot tell us whether Israel consistently
carried out this radical vision of restoration . One scholar states that the Talmud, a
compendium of rabbinic commentary on the Old Testament scriptures, points to
two Jubilees, one at the beginning of the prophetic ministry of Ezekiel, and
one during the reign of King Josiah.[1] But the Jubilee year, this year of the Lord’s
favor, when debts were to be cancelled and slaves and captives freed, was Jesus’
vision for society, not just very fifty years, but every day. And indeed, the Jubilee year, the year of the
Lord’s favor, is good news – good news for the poor, for captives, for those in
debt. It wasn’t good news for everyone,
though. For those who collect on debt
and for slave owners, this would not have been good news – it would have meant writing
off assets and taking losses. And that is why the passage specifically
speaks of preaching good news to the poor.
Jesus told the folks in his hometown synagogue, “Today these
words have been fulfilled in your hearing.”
What did Jesus mean by that?
Jesus was saying that he himself was the fulfillment of these
words. The Spirit was upon him, had come
upon him at his baptism, and he was anointed for the mission described in the
words from Isaiah he had just read. While
the Jubilee as described in Leviticus is primarily economic, Jesus’ vision of
the kingdom of God broadened the vision of Jubilee – one of release from debt and slavery – to
include spiritual dimensions. Jesus himself would preach good news to the materially
and spiritually poor, proclaim release to those in demonic captivity, restore
sight to the physically and spiritually blind, through his healings and his
companionship let those oppressed by sickness and exclusion go free. Jesus himself would teach his followers to
pray, as we will in a few minutes, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors.”
I’ll ask us a question that I’ll be repeating next week as
well when we hear the rest of this story, a question I’ve often asked this
congregation and myself because it helps our understanding – where do we find
ourselves in this story? Where do we
find ourselves in the passage from Isaiah which Jesus read? Some
of us aren’t sure where our next meal is coming from – in fact, that next meal
may very well be coming by way of this congregation - and can relate very
directly to the poor of whom Jesus spoke.
Others of us may be more comfortable in an economic sense, but have
other unmet needs – for basic safety, for security, for companionship, for
love. We may find ourselves in various
forms of bondage. We may feel
economically bound to an abusive employer that we hate, but we can’t find the
time for a job search and can’t afford to miss a paycheck. We may feel bound to an abusive
relationship. We may be bound to
self-destructive behavior by any number of addictions or compulsions. We may experience loss of physical eyesight,
or we may experience a kind of spiritual blindness to possibilities for God’s
grace that exist beyond our limited experience of life. For
all who can relate to Jesus’ words in these ways, Jesus offers good news. Even
those who don’t experience these needs – and I’m thinking of the rich and
powerful, the movers and shakers of our society – can be liberated by Jesus
from idolatry to wealth and power and the isolation from others these
idolatries bring. And if Jesus has fed
us, freed us, healed us, we too can give testimony, and bring good news to
others.
Jesus read Isaiah’s ancient promises of good news to the
poor, and told his hometown synagogue that “today these words have been
fulfilled in your hearing.” May these
promises of God be fulfilled in our lives as well, and in the lives of our
neighbors. Amen.
[1] R
C Young, “The Talmud’s Two Jubilees and Their Relevance To The Date Of The
Exodus, Westminster Theological Journal 68 (2006), pp 71-83, http://www.rcyoung.org/articles/jubilee.pdf
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