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St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
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Epiphany 3 C - The Body of Christ
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10
Psalm 19
I Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21
When I was a priest in the Diocese of Quebec I took a trip with my Bishop and a layperson to go visit the Diocese of the Southern Philippines for a month. We were in the process of forming a companion diocese relationship with them. It was a very interesting trip. We were definitely roughing it for most of the time. We visited much of the island of Mindanao which is the most dangerous part of the Philippines. There is a lot violence due to a separatist region and unfortunately much of the division is along religious lines pitting separatist Muslims against the Christian majority. Added to the mix were anarchists and bandits, pirates and kidnappers. It seemed that every place which we visited had just had a terrorist bomb go off, or else a bombing happened not long after we left. We stayed in one small hotel in Davao which had a small disco on the roof. The sign at the entrance to the disco said: "No wearing of sleeveless. No bare feet. No carrying of deadly weapon."
In the midst of this cauldron of struggle and violence were regular people simply trying to survive and to look after their families. I was fortunate to meet quite a few of the clergy of that diocese because they had planned a clergy conference to coincide with our visit. What a dedicated group they were. We listened to some of their stories.
Among them was a young and extremely intelligent priest whose name was Aying. He had the brights to just about write his own ticket. His father had been a successful lawyer who had been assassinated many years before. Aying's goal had been to get out of Mindanao - even to get out of the Philippines to try to live a better life.
God seemed to have other plans for him. He left home, went to Manila and started his escape through academia. It wasn't long before he was missing his home town and his own people in the South. At the same time he felt called into the Church. His desire had been to escape the poverty and violence of the South. The call he later felt was to return and reach out in service to those who were still trapped in the violence. Aying studied theology and then returned as a priest to his own people.
Returning is one of the themes of our readings today. The Old Testament lesson is set just after the children of Israel have returned to Jerusalem from their long exile in Babylon. They had the shreds of their faith left, but they did not have an identity as a people. Ezra is reading from the book of the laws of Moses which had recently been recovered and when he read it the people wept. But their governor, Nehemiah and Ezra tell the people that the day is holy to the Lord and that they are to celebrate. They are once again forming as a community around a liturgy and around their holy scriptures, just as we gather week by week in the same way. They are to celebrate with a feast, just as we do liturgically. And they are to share their feast with those who have nothing.
Today's story of Jesus is one about returning as well. Jesus has just returned to his home town after having his initial ministry in Capernaum in Galilee . The rumours of all that he had done would have preceded his return. Here was the local boy who had made good. The custom was that the president of the local synagogue would invite the learned among them to read the scripture and to preach. And so Jesus is invited to do so.
In many ways this is Jesus' inaugural speech. And the lesson he chooses is the one from Isaiah which announces the Jubilee: the year of God's favour, when the captives would be released, the oppressed would go free, the blind would see and good news would be preached to the poor.
It reminds me of the Mission Impossible series when at the beginning of each show Ethan Hunt gets a new message describing the mission that he and his team will have to accomplish. The tape always ended with "This message will self-destruct in 3 seconds" and a little puff of smoke would go up as you could see the cogs whirring in Ethan's mind as he was already figuring out how they were going to accomplish the impossible.
In Jesus' case the scroll didn't go up in a puff of smoke, but Jesus showed even more confidence in his mission than does Ethan, because he begins with the words, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor..." and all the rest. Jesus knows that it is the Spirit which is calling him and equipping him to do his mission. His mission would indeed be impossible without God's spirit enabling him.
That same spirit is the one who called Aying back to his community to proclaim release to the oppressed and the poor. That same spirit is the one who calls each of us to be in community together, and to be a community with a mission. And that mission is the one which we see Jesus doing: reaching out with Good news to the poor, the oppressed and the blind. Amen.
