Third Sunday after Epiphany

“Do not weep … rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!”

When Ezra read from the Law after returning from Babylon as a priest-scribe, the people who had been left behind in the exile, the nobodies that weren’t worth taking captive, wept at hearing these words. The text suggests the words of the Law disheartened them as they realized how far they were from what God expected. But the great words of good news, “Do not weep…rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength” are words of great comfort and encouragement; God is almighty, but also compassionate.

Today’s gospel from Luke seems to parallel the Old Testament text with Jesus as proclaiming from Isaiah

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captivesand recovery of sight to the blind,to let the oppressed go free,and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

Proclaiming that this has been fulfilled in the hearing suggests Jesus was revealing that he was the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, and laying out the nature of his mission. In short, Jesus was proclaiming himself the Christ, the Anointed One. Jesus’ ministry, then, was to one that welcomed the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. But rather than interpreting this as a political mission of social justice, it was theological in that Jesus’ goal was not to end the plight of the poor, heal blind people, and free those in jails, but to reveal something unexpected about the nature of God and God’s relationship to humanity; however, this is not to suggest that corporal works of mercy are not important. These works do more than meet a physical need, they meet the greater need to experience a love that begins with a human touch but leads to a divine one.

God becoming human is at the heart of all Christian understandings of true evangelization.  Because of this central truth, what we, purveyors of Good News must accept, is that meeting the immediate need of the one who seeks our help is the Good News of the gospel.  The power of Christ to change lives is betrayed when we expect conversion as the end product of our help.  As evangelical Christians (there really is no other type, I suppose), the Good News is that true salvation does not lie at the conclusion of a tract, a testimonial, or a creed; it lies at the bottom of a bowl of soup.

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—Fr. Todd

Epiphany

God in Humanity Made Manifest

     Epiphany means "manifestation", a revealing, an illumination, which is precisely how we experience the jubilation of Israel experiencing the fulfillment of Isaiah 40.  Today’s passage of Isaiah is the joyful song of those who have returned from exile and whose reinvigorated relationship with God serves as a beacon for "the nations" which signifies the non-Jewish peoples.  The God who has delivered Israel in an act of great salvation becomes, for Christians, the sign of God's supreme act of salvation that saves not only the people of Israel but the world.  Paul's epistle picks up this theme in "the mystery made manifest" and the notion of the Gentiles being "coheirs, members of the same body".  In the Gospel, we have the ultimate revelation of God's salvation in the form of Jesus' birth, being announced to Gentiles, who then come to worship the Christ child; again mirroring the idea expressed in Isaiah that "Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance."  This king has qualities of the Davidic kingship of justice and concern for the poor contrasted with the megalomaniac paranoia of King Herod.  These are a few important ideas developed in today's readings, I think.

     It strikes me that God's revelation over time has been expansive, with first the Jewish people, and then to the Gentiles.  Rather than simply lavishing all His attention on his "chosen", we come to see that his chosen play an essential role in salvation history. It is a God of great inclusion rather than exclusion, yet so much of what we see in Christianity today seeks to privatize God, sets up laws of access, decides who's "in communion" and who isn't, and in doing so goes against God's essential movement to embrace all of humanity, all of humanity.  Too often we Christians promulgate doctrines that attempt to put a legal tabernacle around God and deny anyone access except through priests who have the stamp of approval from the corporate office; perhaps chaos isn't so much a sign of evil in the world as the facade of unity that is really uniformity. 

     When we make decisions as a faith community that defines ourselves over and against those who are not-like-us, we attempt feebly to limit the Spirit.  When we reach across denominational and even religious boundaries to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit, and of Christ, in those not-like-us, we act most in concert with God whose saving act in Christ is for "the nations", not "the nation." It is shameful that those who most need God's love and salvation are often handed literature rather than a hug, a dismissive tone rather than a place at the table.  In a modification of St. Francis's admonition, we need to go out and preach the Good News by being good news.