3 Epiphany Yr C Jan 27 2013

Jesus proclaims from the prophet Isaiah, "God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God’s year to act!” Have you ever had that experience when you say something and those with whom you are speaking look at you like you have three heads? Or they fall silent and everyone gets nervous and then someone laughs, and no one knows what to say? Happens to me all the time, and it happened to Jesus in this story. The room fell silent and I'm sure it says somewhere that they all thought he was a crazy man. Most of them grew up with Jesus, or were parents of the kids he grew up with, or they were relatives. I'm sure they were thinking to themselves, did he just say what we think he just said? Isn't he just Joseph and Mary's son? Did he really say what we think he just said?

What did Jesus just say? With his life, Jesus is saying, God is acting right here, right now. Jesus is saying God's promises are not out in the future, they are right now. Jesus is saying, God is with you in the the flesh. Jesus is saying, what is important is what we do right now. Jesus is saying, you are forgiven, you are free, you can see. Jesus is saying, love wins, this good news changes you and changes the world.

You see, we are captive to our ways of thinking, our idolatries, our fears, our expectations about the way things ought to be. The people listening to Jesus in the synagogue that day expected Jesus to be a certain way. They knew he was the teenager who had scared his mother to death when he stayed back in the temple when Mary and Joseph had taken him there for the passover. They expected him to be that child, that boy, that man who they thought they knew so well. But Jesus was acting outside of their expectations. Jesus was saying to them that God is accessible to them right here, right now, right in this community.

This new thing that happens with Jesus is God with us. Emmanuel. That is why we read this story during the season of Epiphany, the season that we rest in the part of the story about incarnation, God in the flesh. It's hard for us to imagine, because you and I are so familiar with Jesus. For the Jews before Jesus, God was always contained. God was carried from place to place in the ark of covenant, and then God was in the temple in the holy of holies. And the stories of God were fearsome.

So this message that Jesus is bearing, the message that God who is the creator of all that is seen and unseen, is here among us, and that Jesus in some way embodies God's real presence, is a world altering claim. The silence must have been deafening. So how does that make things different?

To be honest, I'm not quite sure. I too, am silenced by this amazing news that God is with us in Jesus. But I think it has something to do with how we see each other. I think it has something to do with how we treat each other. I think it has something to do with life and it's value. I think God comes to us to show us the way because we are God's beloved, and yet somehow we keep making a mess of things.

And I think that that's where the truth is, somewhere in the mess and muck of life. Because no matter how much we mess things up, God continues to love us. No matter how poor we believe we are, poor in spirit, poor in friendship, poor in how much money we have, poor in skills, the good news is that God continues to love us and count us worthy. No matter how much we continue to be captive by greed, no matter how much we continue to be captive by power, no matter how much we continue to be captive by the need to acquire, no matter how much we continue to be captive by the need to be at the center of attention, no matter how much we continue to be captive by the need to please others, God sets us free. No matter how tight we keep our eyes closed to the the needs of our neighbors, no matter how tight we keep our eyes closed to others who are different from us, no matter how tight we keep our eyes closed to those who can't afford to pay the rent, or pay for health care, no matter how tight we keep our eyes closed, we are forgiven.

So that's it really, that's all I know. God loves us, no matter what, God sets us free to love ourselves and to love others, Jesus walks with us in this life to show us how to keep loving even in the mess of our lives. We don't have to have it all together before we are worthy to be loved. And that is transformational. The reality of God's love is in the present, in our midst. It is made known to us in the breaking of bread and in the prayers. It is made known to us in the people who we gather together with each Sunday right here, and it is made know to us in the people with whom we share our meals and our homes and our communities. The reality of God's love is in the present, and it is made known to us in forgiveness, God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others. The reality of God's love is in the present, and it is made known to us in the messiness of our lives. The reality is that Love wins.