I’ve heard it said that every preacher throughout their life really only has a handful of sermons that they preach over and over again.
No matter how different the scripture text before them or the crisis confronting the community or the ordinariness of a moment – when a holy word is called for – in the end the preacher returns to one of those two or three core messages. Sure – they might use different stories, illustrations, characters – the sermon might be shorter or longer – but the same point keeps on coming back nonetheless.
This past week, as a nation we inaugurated Trump for a second go-around as president. We witnessed a cascade of words from him in rallies, at the inauguration, and in dozens of executive orders. Inaugurations, in all their pomp and circumstance, are about displaying the power and importance of the office.
And in Trump’s many words this week – we heard his understanding of power and his vision for the world. Yet again we heard him preach his one core sermon:
Self-interest is the end-all-be all. Me-first. America-first. Blame and demonize the vulnerable to stoke fear and inflate yourself. The earth is a playground to be exploited to death for money and acquisition. Power comes through threats and violence and money.
And what makes this moment in our public life feel especially precarious, especially terrifying, is the genuine economic, political and military power to make into reality these words spoken and signed off on by the president. But power is never static – it is given and received – a living conversation we’re all involved in. We’re all responsible to keep one another safe, care for one another, to confront and restrain when power is used irresponsibly or for evil.
Right before our gospel text from Luke, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil. Jesus resisted the temptations of economic greed, political domination, and the blasphemy of worshiping self over God.
And immediately after this wilderness testing, Jesus, “filled with the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14) sets off to teach in the area synagogues.
When he gets to his hometown of Nazareth we hear what he has to say.
It must have been a sabbath day as ordinary as any other. Gathered in the synagogue, there must have been the usual village characters and family groups. And Jesus, as a faithful Jew, like normal, is there.
He stands to read scripture and is handed the scroll of Isaiah and right in this moment he begins to preach what will be his one sermon for the rest of his life. Of all the many passages from Isaiah he could have unrolled that scroll to..and of all the various topics he could have riffed on for that ordinary sabbath day at the very beginning of his ministry, he chose one particular text – from Isaiah 61.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me, To preach good news to the poor, God has sent me.”
The rest of Jesus’ life will be spent preaching, proclaiming, embodying this good news to the poor and liberation to the captive and oppressed.
Good news for the poor is what Jesus is all about as God’s beloved Son.
This is Jesus’ sermon that he will repeat again and again as he teaches and preaches and heals and shares food and is tortured and murdered and raised from the dead by the power of God’s love.
Jesus, when he reads from this scroll in Isaiah – announces that he is a good-news bringer, an evangelist, because the power of the Spirit of God is upon him, and God’s Spirit has always been a liberating, up-ending, freeing and creating Spirit since She first hovered over the waters at creation’s beginning.
And God, as the prophets always point to, Jesus included, is a God who is on the side of the oppressed, the underdog, the sick, and struggling.
Jesus, of course is reading this scripture to the synagogue gathered in Nazareth, but more than that he is preaching and bringing wholeness to each person and community that has known poverty and oppression.
The “poor,” or ptokos in Greek – is an expansive term, broader than just economic poverty, bringing to mind all sorts of people of dishonorable status, people whose reality is determined by the exclusion of others and the social system that casts them aside.
“The good news to the poor” that Jesus brings is a thundering message of disruption to the whole order that justifies the poverty of the many for the wealth of the few, that legitimizes the captivity and oppression of some bodies as normal and justifiable for the functioning of society.
In this past week when we’ve heard and read so many words trying to inscribe hate into policy, Jesus first inaugural address continues to bring us good news today.
And that’s because Jesus’ one and only sermon isn’t over, all of us are invited to be a part of it. When Jesus sat down, with the eyes of everyone there upon him, his midrash on the scripture he’d just read was a simple one:
“Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The words of good news and liberation are words for the present.
I don’t know what the coming week or year or four years will hold… for this church, or for our community here in North Carolina or our country or world. But I know that when we draw close to the wily Spirit of God…that Spirit will draw us close to those who are hurting, because this is where God’s liberation and healing and salvation happens.
There are immigrant communities who are hurting and scared right now. There are people waiting in other countries who’ve waited for years and years to get out of a refugee camp who are grieving right now. There are trans folks who are terrified to live their life right now.
We as a church, a beloved community, must embody good news, as Jesus has modeled for us.
The good news of Jesus is always good news that lands in our own lives. We have to hear it and receive it and celebrate that God wants to bring liberation in its multifaceted glory to our peculiar corners of the human experience. Wherever you are hurting and struggling – that’s where Jesus will walk with you toward wholeness.
Wherever your neighbor – seen begging for money or out of sight living in their car or hidden in a warehouse shipping your online purchases – is struggling to make ends meet – God’s good news is that person, that family, living with dignity.
As our country officially pulls out of global climate change efforts, spend some time with Jesus in the wilderness corners right here close to home – getting to know our local watersheds… and the ways that environmental, social, and economic justice always flow together.
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement scales up to tear people by military force out of communities including our own – remember that Jesus’ first sermon is not over and that the Spirit of God still empowers all of us to protect the vulnerable and fulfill that charge to work towards God’s beloved community where there are no captives, detaineses or deportees.
In these coming weeks of too many hateful words, too many stories of disruption and despair, remember that you too are a preacher.
Remember that you follow the Preacher that really only has one Sermon to preach.
Jesus stood up to read because the Spirit of the Lord was upon him. May you too, feel the Spirit of the Lord upon you…moving you to those places and people where God’s liberating love remains powerfully good news.