Luke 4.14-21
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘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 favour.’ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
----------
One of my favourite parts of a communion service is when we share The Peace with one another. We wish upon each other God’s peace, and I usually say, ‘my brothers and Sisters, the Peace of the Lord be always with you, and everybody responds, ‘and also with you’ (or ‘and with thy spirit’). It is a time when we show that we are united as a congregation, a time when we share in God’s reconciling love for each other. We are united together in that we are forgiven and loved and looked upon with delight by God our Father, and share the bond of brotherly and sisterly love. But we are not only united here with our own congregation as ‘The Peace’ is something that is done in most Anglican churches where there is communion, every Sunday throughout the world.
When Jewish people greet each other, they use the word, Shalom, which means Peace. But it means more than that; it also means Harmony, wholeness and completeness. Shalom has a future aspect to it as well, It is more than just a hope, it is the promise that one day there will be complete peace everywhere. Isaiah the prophet, whom Jesus reads out today says in a very interesting passage what this could look like for the created order, if nothing else, it’s a powerful metaphor of what this ‘shalom’ is:
“The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” This is an image of the peace that God brings, this is Shalom peace.
This week has been a week of prayer for Christian unity, where Christians all over the world are United in the promise that God will be faithful to his covenant and being peace and justice and righteousness, his ‘Shalom’ to the world. We unite around this promise and this hope. We unite because this is what Jesus has done for us.
In today’s reading Jesus is in the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus says that he is the fulfilment of that promise of peace, he is the one though whom it will come. He is handed the scroll from the prophet Isaiah and says this;
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
Because he has anointed me
To proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
And recovery of sight for the blind,
To set the oppressed free,
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour”
Jesus said this in a context that was basically sectarian. I’ve spoken before about how the Jews were under Roman occupation. But the Jews themselves were full of divisions. Some were in cahoots with the Romans, there were radical zealots who wanted to create an uprising (we’d call them terrorists or insurgents in our day and age) and there we those who ‘carried on’ living under the regime, making the best of it. There were the ultra-conservatives, the pharisees, and the liberals, the Sadducees. All these different factions, with their own ideas and agendas of how God will save his people.
But most of them seemed united in one thing, they knew that when God brought his salvation, his peace, it would be at the end of a sword; much like how the Romans enforced their own brand of peace in fact.
We know though that Jesus didn’t come to create some earthly kingdom, but rather the kingdom of God in the hearts and minds of all people Jew and Gentile alike. One writer (bishop Ryle) puts it wonderfully
‘[The victory of Christ was] not to be over worldly enemies but over sin. His redemption was not to be from the power of Rome but from the power of the devil and the world.’ In other words, Jesus came to sort out our hearts, our souls and our minds, that we turn away from all that is wrong and turn towards the source of all goodness, him himself. He wanted us to look beyond ourselves and our own needs and look to others and their needs.
This goes beyond politics, beyond race, beyond colour, beyond national boundaries, beyond every possible barrier that people can put in place. And this is why Christians throughout the world can be united. We are all united because that salvation that Christ offers is open to all, and people all over the world have received it for the past two thousand years.
Jesus’ hearers though, didn’t like this idea. They didn’t like this idea that ‘other people’ would receive salvation. They didn’t like the idea that they themselves weren’t the special ones, the ones who told by God that they were his chosen people as far back as the book of Exodus, the second book of the bible. Later on in the chapter, we see this plainly. Jesus says this to the people gathered around him:
‘But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon [in other words, a gentile, not a Jew]. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian [again, a gentile, not a Jew] .” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.’
Jesus is using these examples as a judgement on those who are present, to show them just how little they know about God and what his reconciling love means. Jesus wants us all united, no matter where we are in the world. United in him, in his reconciling love for us, a love that goes beyond all possible boundaries that we could put before us and our fellow human beings.
What happens here in this place today is profoundly spiritual, and we are connected spiritually with every other Church in the world. Two years ago, when I was still a curate, I and a group of other clergy from our diocese had the privilege of going to the Diocese of Lahore in Pakistan and stay with the bishop there, bishop Irfan Jameel. Over about eight days he showed us the work the church was doing around the diocese, funding schools, and providing education at a much lower price than the market rate so that poor people could send their children to school. There was also A Mechanic shop that helped older teenagers gain a life skill and build them up in their faith in Christ. And every Sunday. There they worship in gated compounds with armed guards. It’s dangerous to be a Christian in Pakistan. There was a bomb blast near a church in Lahore a few days ago, not too far from a church where I preached a sermon when I was there. That brought it home for me; how lucky we are to worship in safety.
So, my invitation today is to remember the worldwide church in our prayers. Let’s remember to give thanks to God that we are united in our faith in Christ with so many brothers and sisters throughout the world. Let us commit to pray for them; there is an organisation called ‘Open Doors’ and they keep a ‘watch’ on what Christians are experiencing all over the world. My invitation is to go on that website and pick a country to pray for, pray for its people, and pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ, that they may be kept safe from persecution and are able to worship the one who saves us boldly and without fear.
Amen.