We Have Been Anointed

 Luke 4:14-21 January 26, 2025 Epiphany 3

 

I just want to remind people that I don’t pick out

these scripture readings myself.

These were chosen by a committee

in the 1970s and 80’s.

And sometimes I think they made weird choices

that are wrong for the day.

and sometimes it’s kind of spooky how well

it coordinates with current events

and challenges your preachers to

to not get complacent. This is one of the spooky times.

 

So this is Jesus first sermon.

This is kind of a two-parter scripture wise.

Next week we’ll talk about the reaction of

Jesus home community that he was preaching to.

Which is very interesting.

This week, we focus on the scripture he read

and the very short sermon he preached.

 

This is the beginning of Jesus ministry,

the first thing he does after his baptism.

He does some preaching stints around Galilee.

He goes into Nazareth, his hometown,

where his old friends and family would be.

And he reads this scripture.

 

It’s basically Jesus’ inaugural address.

Jesus is setting up vision statement for his ministry.

and the ideal of what his church should be.

 

If we were going to choose

one thing from the Old Testament to read

to epitomize Jesus’ ministry what would it be?

  

Some might say the story of

Adam and Eve and the serpent,

maybe the 10 commandments,

the story of Moses and the Exodus,

Abraham and Sarah, one of the psalms

there are a lot of options to choose from.

 

But Luke, the writer of one of only four gospels we have,

chooses to highlight this one reading.

It’s from Isaiah 61

 

The one that Jesus reads

he “has been anointed to

bring good news to the poor.

release to the captives

recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to proclaim the Year of the Lord’s Favor.”

 

That was the scripture reading.

This is the vision statement for the gospel.

Maybe not what the people were expecting.

Maybe not what we would expect.

Good news to the poor?

When we think about what Christianity has been

and what the most vocal portion of Christianity has become.

This might seem as far from it as you can get.

For a very long time, Christianity has been used to

prop up and defend the powerful and the wealthy.

And the fear of retribution or loss of funding has

made the Christian Church complicit in many

of the saddest  moments of our history.

  

The Church of Christ has been silent

or has been used to support the ruling class, 

brutal politics, war, economic exploitation, slavery, and genocide.

Our own Martin Luther used his theology

to support the government’s harsh treatment and

slaughter of the poor during the peasants revolt of 1525.

 

And as we’ll learn more in the class on Bonhoeffer,

the church in Germany and around the world was

either silent about the persecution of Jews in Europe

by the Nazis or supported it personally and vocally.

 

Historically, we have not followed Jesus vision statement

that he puts forward in this gospel.

 

And you know the church today is not doing

such a bang up job of being good news to the poor.

At best, churches and pastors and bishops are silent. 

Afraid to speak up because of reactions or retributions.

 

At worst, some churches have encouraged the terrible

treatment of the poor and oppressed and homeless.

The hate and vitriol against gay, lesbian, and transgender people

has been led by parts of the Christian church.

The prosperity Gospel that’s sold in many

mega churches in the US has presented poverty

as a personal, moral failing and not a societal problem.

Much of the hew and cry for the deportation of 

undocumented immigrants has come from the segments of the Christian church.

 

Lots of churches and leaders, including our own in the ELCA,

make a kind of statement when they sit on the sidelines

and remain silent about these things.

Or just make generic, mealy mouthed statements

about getting along with one another and agreeing to disagree.

  

Many times when churches or leaders do speak up

When we talk about poverty and justice and immigrants,

other leaders or people inside and outside the church

say that churches shouldn’t be involved in politics.

When these things come up,

we’re  supposed to be focused only on spiritual things,

on heaven and hell and not the things of this world.

But is that really what we’re supposed to do?

 

I think that Jesus’s vision today in his sermon

and at the beginning of his ministry is pretty clear:

Good news to the poor.

Sight to the blind. 

Release to the captives.

Help the oppressed go free.

That sounds like the things of this world to me.

 

That sounds pretty political.

It doesn’t sound ethereal or spiritual.

That sounds like someone’s status quo will be disrupted

That sounds like someone’s gonna get a nasty letter.

It sounds like something real is supposed to happen.

 

Now I have to bring up this sermon given at the

National Prayer service for the inauguration

of the president this week.

I wasn’t going to, really.

But the scripture is kind of begging for it.

I am glad that I’m in a church 

where I can talk about it

because lots of my colleagues are not.

 

This sermon was given by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.

It was given at the Washington National Cathedral.

Her church, basically. It was a lovely, appropriate sermon,

about unity, and the importance of humility, honesty,

honoring the dignity of all people.

Stuff we kind of talk about all the time.

 

At the end, she asked the president directly to have mercy.

That’s it.

Have mercy for Transgender people who are scared.

Have mercy on the people who pick our crops and

clean our office buildings who might be fleeing

war zones and persecution. who are scared.

She asked the president – the most powerful person in our country—

to be merciful to some of the least powerful people in our country.

A rather innocuous request from a pastor if I heard one.

But, of course, it’s not just about what’s said,

it’s about the context its said in.

And this was very courageous of the bishop.

 

Well, some people lost their minds.

The president was offended and asked for an apology

calling her a “so-called bishop”.

And certain people from congress passed a resolution

stating that the sermon was a display of “political activism

and condemned its distorted message.”

 

But more concerning to me was the response of

church people who are furious over it.

calling the bishop a “crazy woman” and a “witch” and a “God hater”

One pastor accused the bishop of the “Sin of Empathy.” 

I am not kidding

This is a thing in certain portions of the church.

“The sin of compassion and empathy”

 

I’ll talk more about people’s reactions next week,

when we hear about how the people of Jesus home town

tried to throw him off a cliff.

But today, I just want to say that these people

who condemned this were not offended by

the Bishop and her preaching.

They are offended by Jesus.

They should actually read the sermon on the mount

and see what kind of resolution gets passed in congress.

 

Shane Claibourne is an Evangelical theologian he wrote

yesterday about this moment in our history

in an article he called “a collision of two Christianities”

He said there have been two different versions of

Christianity in our country and our world for centuries.

Two very different versions of how to follow Christ.

One that tries to follow Jesus teachings and example and

one that uses Jesus as a tool for personal and political power.

 

He comes to this conclusion:

The word “Christian” means “Christ-like.” 
If it doesn’t look like Jesus, and it doesn’t sound like Jesus … let’s not call it Christianity.
If it’s not about love and mercy … let’s not call it Christianity.
If it’s not good news to the poor …  let’s not call it Christianity.
If it’s not about welcoming the stranger … let’s not call it Christianity. 

 
Jesus has given us a vision.

In his parables and the way he treated others, he gives us a vision.

In the way he lived and the way he died, he gave us a vision.

He gives us a vision in this sermon.

God has anointed him and therefore anointed us

to bring good news to the poor,

to give sight to the blind,

to give release to the captives

and let the oppressed go free.

 

This is what it is to carry the name Christian.

This is what it is to be like Christ.

Let these words be fulfilled in us

every time we hear them.

They Have No Wine

 John 2: 1-11

Epiphany 2 January 19, 2025

Wedding at Cana
Oleksandr Antonyuk

 

Weddings are supposed to be joyful occasions, right?

As a pastor, I’ve been to some great and festive weddings

and I’ve been to some that were

kind of morose and sad.  Sometimes I knew why,

but sometimes it was hard to say.

 

In Jesus time, wedding celebrations lasted for days

weddings were supposed to be a joyful,

happy celebrations just like now.

And a lot of the joy depended a lot on the consumption of wine.

 

We as a society drink a lot of wine now.

We share it in social situations.

Some people drink it alone.

For many people it has become a serious problem.

But in Jesus time, they drank a lot more wine than we do.

Water wasn’t always safe,

and there weren’t as many beverage options.

The fermentation of wine made it resistant to

mold and bacteria and other nasty things.

So people drank a lot of wine. A lot.

 

I read somewhere that in the 1^st century,

The city of Rome alone,

drank 25 million gallons of wine per year.

Wine was a part of everyday life.

 

Good hospitality dictated that if you had a wedding,

you would have wine. Enough wine for your

guests to drink for the duration of the time

you wanted them there. If you had a

good wedding it meant you were a good host

and the couple would have a good marriage.

 

Running out of wine was a big faux pas.

It was a bad omen for the couple and their future.

It was a bad mark of shame on the family.

Everyone would remember them

as the people who didn’t have enough wine

to share with their guests.

 

I give you this introduction about wine,

to tell you that this story is not about wine.

And it’s not about weddings either.

In the gospel of John, things aren’t what

they mean on the surface.

Everything is a sign of something else.

 

And this miracle is not about wine.

It’s about what that wine represented

to those wedding guests.

It’s about joy, about treating others well.

It’s about a hopeful future.

It’s about abundance over scarcity,

and how Jesus brings those things

to our life and to our world,

and into desperate,

impossible situations that seem hopeless.

 

The first person to notice that they were

running out of wine was Jesus mother.

 

Interesting side note:

Jesus mother was never called

by her name in John’s gospel.

She’s only referred to as “Jesus mother”.

And Jesus only refers to her directly twice –

Here at the wedding and later at the cross—

And he calls her “Woman”, which is not as harsh

in their culture as it sounds in ours.

 

So Jesus mother is the first to notice

this big approaching wedding faux pas.

This approaching shame for the entire wedding family.

Maybe she noticed the looks on the waiter’s faces,

maybe someone said something.

Maybe she noticed some of the guests

going away with empty cups.

Maybe mothers just have this uncanny ability

to tell when something is going wrong.

 

So she tells Jesus “they have no wine”

Which is a really prophetic statement.

when you think about it.

 

Prophets don’t necessarily predict the future.

They are the ones who tell it like it is.

They share the hard truths with

the people and those in power.

 

Sometimes in the middle of the festivities,

someone has to be the party-pooper

and point out that the celebration

is about to end if something doesn’t change.

Sometimes that has to be us.

 

Sometimes we have to say, “They have no wine.”

Remembering that this story is not about wine.

We have to be the ones to say that the guests

aren’t being treated well.

That the abundance that some might be experiencing

hasn’t trickled down to everyone.

That some people aren’t able to feel joy.

That some people’s future is looking bleak.

 

Sometimes someone has to point out

that they have no wine.

They have no money. They have no healthcare.

They have no housing. They have no water.

They have no food.

They have no hope for a better tomorrow.

And this is bringing shame on the entire country.

 

I think that a lot of preachers and church people

can identify with Mary here in this story.

Church people exist, for the most part, in the US

in middle and upper class societies.

We live among people who can

retreat to their own celebrations

and parties and can focus exclusively on their own

well-being and whether they’re having a good time.

 

Sometimes our role as Christians is to point out the

horrible scarcity, right there in the middle of the party

that no one around wants to hear about.

 

We live in Hilton Head, one of the wealthiest

places in the United States.

It’s a place of great beauty and comfort for lots of people

like us who have chosen to make their homes here.

 

But there is also great need and crippling

poverty here. Much of it due to oppressive

practices and rules that have kept generations

of native people in difficult situations.

And some due to neglect and a lack of

infrastructure to care for people.

 

So many people live comfortably behind

gated communities and close their eyes to any of this.

And then, other people, because of their faith,

have dared to look and to notice, and to act.

People like Charlotte Heinrichs,

a member of this congregation

who our fellowship hall is named after,

who started the Deep Well Project.

She wasn’t afraid to get up

in the middle of everyone’s parties and say,

“They have no wine.”

 

And this week we remember Martin Luther King Jr.

His legacy was his ability to be that prophet

like Jesus mother. To call out in the middle

of people’s parties, that there was not wine

for everyone.

In 1967, his gave a speech called “the Two Americas”

and I think it’s still very relevant today.

 

Every city in our country

has this kind of dualism, this schizophrenia,

split at so many parts, and so every city

ends up being two cities rather than one.

There are two Americas. And I use this subject because

there are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful.

And, in a sense, this America is overflowing

with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity.

This America is the habitat of millions of people

who have food and material necessities for their bodies;

and culture and education for their minds; and freedom

and human dignity for their spirits. In this America,

millions of people experience every day the opportunity

of having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

in all of their dimensions.

And in this America millions of young

people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.

 

But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America.

This other America has a daily ugliness about it

that constantly transforms

the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair.

In this America millions of work-starved men

walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist.

In this America millions of people find themselves

living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums.

In this America people are poor by the millions.

They find themselves perishing on a

lonely island of poverty in the midst

of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

 

That was more than 50 years ago and the situation in the US

has not really improved. In many ways, it’s gotten worse.

 

On the day we remember Martin Luther King,

we’re installing an administration that seems

intent on rolling back many of the ideals that

Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life to institute.

 

We live in the same two Americas that

Dr. King was talking about.

The middle class is largely disappearing.

 

The simple dream of home ownership is

out of reach for most young people.

So many people are drowning in debt.

The number one cause of bankruptcies in

the US is medical debt.

The federal government has not

raised the minimum wage since 2009.

Meaning someone working full time,

can still make less than $300 a week.

 

66 % of the wealth in the US is owned by 10% of the

richest families and corporations.

And the government in all its branches

has apparently been for sale to

the highest bidder for a very long time.

 

I don’t want to spoil the party,

but I feel like this country

is running out of wine.

 

Back to Jesus mother, the prophet.

I think there are some lessons in this story

about how to act as people of faith when

it seems that the party is about to go badly.

 

She tells Jesus, “they have no wine”

For some reason, Jesus seems very apprehensive

to help out. I don’t know what to make of that

theologically, but I understand how Jesus mother

must have felt at that point because

I’ve been feeling that way too.

 

Sometimes this prophecy and screaming out

into the wilderness seems futile.

It gets frustrating. It seems like

God is just not responding.

 

But Jesus mother is persistent.

Jesus says to her, “what concern is it to you and me?”

and “the time isn’t right yet”

and all the things that other people seem to say

to prophets throughout the ages.

But Jesus mother keeps at it.

She does not cave in and take no for an answer.

She doesn’t care if Jesus is not ready.

 

There isn’t any dialogue to explain

Jesus’ change of heart.

she probably stared Jesus down with that

stare that is really a dare.

Maybe only Jesus mother can do that to him.

 

But we can do what she does here:

She trusts Jesus ability to solve this problem.

And she is persistent with her plea.

We can be persistent with our prayers.

And we can trust that our savior will act.

We don’t know when, but we know that it will happen.

 

And when she sees that Jesus is ready to act,

she tells the servants  “do whatever Jesus tells you”.

And when the time is ripe to do something,

we can do the same.

We can do whatever Jesus tells us to do.

 

And what he tells them to do is not an easy task.

Even though it sounds simple and only takes one line.

This is hard stuff. “Fill the jars with water.”

There’s no hose out back. No running water.

Those water jars were big and heavy without water

and they must have weighed

a ton with the water in them and there were six of them.

But faith in Jesus ability is contagious.

It can give us strength to do what we

didn’t think we could do and help in ways

that we didn’t think we would be able to.

We can do what Jesus tells us to do.

 

And then, the jars came back

and the miracle did happen.

They were filled with wine. The party was saved.

And it was not just any wine.

It was the best wine. The wine so good that the wedding

coordinator was shocked.

“How is it that you kept the best wine to the end?” 

They said.

 

Remember, this story isn’t about the wine.

 

As people of faith, we keep this hope in us.

Jesus is inviting us to right now,

to act in trust even when the ending

doesn’t seem clear for us.

Even when the wine is running out,

and it seems like the wedding party might

have a sad and shameful ending.

 

We are called to notice the pain in the world,

to be prophetic in our words,

to be persistent in our prayers,

when the time is ripe,

to do what Jesus tells us to do,

and to have hope that the

best that God has to give

is still to come.