St.Luke 4: 
Why come to church ?
St Giles’ 24th January 2010
Why are you here this morning ?
Why do you come to church ?
I’d just like you to stop and think for a moment and wonder: “If I had to explain to someone else, to write down on a questionnaire - “why am I in church this morning ?” – what would you say ?”
It’s important to ask ourselves that question every so often, both because it is so easy as Christians to get into a rut about coming to church and also because, if we are serious about hoping that other people will come and join us in worship, we may need to think about what we do when we are here on a Sunday ! What are we here for ?
We have just read together one of the most important passages in Luke’s Gospel. It is sometimes known as the ‘Nazareth Manfesto’. (That’s an interesting phrase for us to hear at the beginning of this election year…we might come back to it.)
The way Luke writes his Gospel, this is Jesus’ first chance to explain his mission. This is what Jesus thought he was about. This is what Jesus meant when he talked about being anointed by God, being the Messiah. And he gives this little sermon in his home town to his own people. Interesting how it is possible to say a lot in a few words ! Whatever ! In the light of all this, if we want to call ourselves disciples of Jesus, we must pay really serious attention to this little sermon.
On another day, there are all sorts of things we could say about this story. The historians tell us that this is the first written account of a synagogue service. Jesus has gone to his home synagogue – note that this was his regular custom – and he has been invited to read. I gather that there was already a lectionary, a set order of readings, but it looks as if Jesus specially asked for this particular scroll to be given to him to read. He knows what he wants to say.
And after the Bible had been read, there was a sermon. And Jesus had been invited to speak. “This is Mary’s boy. This is one of ours. But there is already much talk about him – miracles, strange preaching, rumours – what will he say ?” You can feel the anticipation.
And Jesus reads one of the great messianic prophecies, from the book of Isaiah. This is what God’s servant will do when he comes to bring God’s reign on earth. This is the Kingdom of God.
A good little group of us went to hear Bishop Tom on Thursday introduce the ‘Big Read’. As you’ll have seen in the pew sheet for several weeks now, in Lent (and after) we are going to be reading Luke’s Gospel together. This is the ‘Big Read’. Almost all the churches in the North East are taking part. There will be more information soon about our study book, reading groups and so on… But Bishop Tom asked us a very good question: “What does it look like when God is in charge, when God is running the world ?” And he said, it looks like what Jesus says in Luke chapter 4.
We’ll come on to that in a minute, because it is the main point of this morning’ sermon – “what is God up to ?” – but I just want to pause on this little phrase, ‘the Kingdom of God’, God’s rule.
This is a hard time to be asking the question, “What does it look like when God is in charge ?”, because when we look across the Atlantic, it does not look as if God is in charge. Here’s a country, Haiti, already at the bottom of the heap, which has been hammered. Years ago, we had a friend who worked as an educational missionary on Haiti, and the stories he told about the grinding poverty were heart-breaking - and this on an island not far from the richest countries on the planet. And these poor people have just suffered a terrible “act of God”, as the insurance people say. Is this what God’s Kingdom looks like ?
Clergy always says – for very good reasons – when asked the “where is God question ?”, that they have no answers. There are no easy answers though there are things that can be said. But I just wanted us to note this morning how Jesus talks about God’s Kingdom. Did you notice that it is all in the language of putting right something that has gone wrong ?
The Jewish-Christian way of talking about the world is to say it is primarily “good”, but that something has gone seriously wrong and that God is now involved in a major rescue effort. Put simply: God makes a good world and then makes good the world that has gone wrong, but appears not to stop the world going wrong. We might think about the “whys” of that another day…
Back to Jesus in the synagogue. How does Jesus see God’s Kingdom ?
Jesus believed in and delivered:
- “good news to the poor”;
- “freedom to captives, including those enslaved by sin”;
- “giving the blind back their sight”;
- “healing of the broken-hearted”.
[Repeat.]
I’ve just taken some short-cuts in that summary and I need to explain them to you, before we move on.
Contrary to what some people say about it, the Bible is a wonderfully holistic book. It does not just talk about the spiritual or the physical; it almost always talks of the two together and at the same time.
So when Jesus talked of bringing good news to the poor, he meant both the poor who had no food, shabby homes, ragged clothes and also those who are ‘poor in spirit’, who are at the bottom of the heap, practically and spiritually.
So when Jesus talked of setting captives free (literally the word means prisoners of war) he partly meant setting free those who are illegally imprisoned but the text also uses the word that Christians came to understand as meaning forgiveness. It was a word that grew in meaning as it was lived out. These were prisoners to sin.
So when Jesus talked about giving sight to the blind, he meant both healing the blind and also helping the spiritually blind to see.
So when Jesus talked of ‘healing the broken-hearted’ he meant both those who had been broken by the hardships of life and those who were heart-broken by their own wrong-doing.
Jesus was always a “both-and” person.
And this is because life is always “both-and”. The news this week from Edlington has been truly terrible. How can children become so corrupted ?
And our society is rubbish at thinking about this. Some people simply blame the children and the parents: “they are monsters, they are not like the rest of us, they are just evil”. Good old-fashioned sin – but over there, amongst them.
Conversely, some people seem to be unable to talk about sin, except to blame the social workers or the government. “If only the social workers had intervened, or the government had given more money ?” “It all happened because this was a disadvantaged family let down by others.” No sin.
But it is “both-and”. The behaviour of these boys was the product of very dysfunctional home – “toxic” one of the defence lawyers called it. And it surely was a poisonous atmosphere to grow up in. But it was poisonous partly because it was morally corrupt: lots of alcohol, soft drugs, pornography, graphic horror movies. All of these things are made a joke of in society. Many of them are legal. We don’t have a moral compass which helps us to say: “This is wrong, it is unhelpful, we should as a society just stop doing it.” Because we don’t quite know what is right or wrong any more, or how to balance moral judgements with individual freedom.
And also, people can still choose. You and I could go to families very near here who are really struggling, poor, but where there is not moral and emotional chaos, where the parents make choices to give their kids a good start in life.
Sin is real and the renewal of communities does not just require – though it at least requires – work, decent housing and good schooling. It also requires spiritual renewal: forgiveness, moral strength, justice, compassion.
So how does all this connect back to the question I asked you at the beginning of this sermon: “why are you in church this morning ?”
I want to suggest that Jesus’ manifesto in Nazareth is why we are in church this morning.
I wonder what you might say back to me. Surely Alan, we are here first to worship God ? And also to meet with each other, to be encouraged. Yes to all of that. And especially yes to being together to worship God. That is almost an end in itself. Almost. Almost. Because if worship, if being in the presence of God, is not transforming who we are, how we live, then it is not true worship. Because true worship brings us into the presence of the God whose Kingdom is full of places where the poor, the prisoner, the broken-hearted, the blind, are all set free. That is what God is already doing in this world. Our task is to join in.
This is going to be a significant year both for our country and, on a smaller scale, our own church. I want to suggest to you, as we settle into the long steady slog of the year and get ready to face the choices and challenges coming at us, that we keep returning to Jesus’ manifesto in Nazareth, with its clear priorities and its passionate balance of physical and spiritual. And use that as the test for what the politicians will say to us, for what we do together as a church and for how we are, each of us individually, as disciples of Christ.
Amen.
