Do not despair

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

All the people of Israel gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the LORD had give to Israel. Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. Then Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.

Psalm 19

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims its maker’s handiwork. One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another. Although they have no words of language, and their voices are not heard, their sound has gone out into all lands, and their message to the ends of the world, where God has pitched a tent for the sun. It comes forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber; it rejoices like a champion to run its course. It goes forth from the uttermost edge of the heavens and runs about to the end of it again; nothing is hidden from its burning heat.  The teaching of the LORD is perfect and revives the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure and gives wisdom to the simple. The statutes of the LORD are just and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the LORD is clear and gives light to the  eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean and endures forever; the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fun gold, sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb. By them also is your servant enlightened, and in keeping them there is great reward. Who can detect one’s own offenses? Cleanse me from my secret faults. Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me; then shall I be whole and sound, and innocent of a great offense. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sights, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the Body. But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hands, “I have no need of you,” nor again the hands to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but members may have the same care for each other. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But strive for the greater gifts.

Luke 4:14-21

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. They eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to then, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

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If Jesus has a mission statement in the Gospel of Luke, it would be this portion of the prophet Isaiah, which is our sending from worship for this liturgical year. And in good Lutheran fashion, we will look at it and ask two questions: What does this mean? How is this done? It's a good question to ask of any mission statement, we’re asking it of our own mission statement since our annual meeting last week. What exactly do the words we say mean, what is their context and connotation and the expectations that goes along with them? And when we have finally decided on a general idea of that, how in the world do we work with it?

We have a lot of social statements as a denomination. We organize conversations across the country every year, it seems, on topics of current events and culture and justice, like the 2009 statement on Human Sexuality, or the currently in-process statement on gender and violence, or the statements on the criminal justice system, the state of our relationship with the environment, the care of those with mental illness, advances in the study of genetics… The list goes on and on, and sometimes it seems we have said so much about so many big issues that our work on those issues must be done at last. Surely if we were going to say something about the way we care for people with HIV and AIDS, as our very first statement when we were first formed in the 1980’s, then we were going to make a point of doing something about legislation and providing safe space and helping people navigate the medical care system.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that was how this worked? If we could, like magic, say what we believe about something or somebody or the way things should be, and then it would just happen? That’s the picture we have of God from the book of Genesis, which does speak truth to the power our words have on the world and attitudes around us. But sometimes it takes a long time for those words about God to sink into our hearts in a way that actually changes how we deal with the rest of the world. Sometimes it takes generations, and then somebody goes on a power trip and it’s three steps forward, seven steps back, like King Solomon and his wives who worshiped other gods.

Take, for instance, the phrase “Make America Great Again.” Who's doing the making? What do we mean when we say “great”? And what got lost that we have to do it “again”? Some would say a return to the 1950s and glory days of post-war prosperity makes for a great America. Some would say putting slave labor back into circulation would certainly boost the economy, and looking at the for-profit prison system there is sure evidence that some folks are trying that route currently under a different name. Some would say America at her greatest is an America open to receiving the least of these, offering shelter and refuge for anyone fleeing persecution, with citizens giving up their comforts for the sake of bettering the lives of their neighbors, as we did when we rationed gas and women gave up their stockings for the war efforts. I know this is a loaded political statement, but it is precisely because such words have the power to stir our emotions that we have to pay attention to them. God created us as full human beings, emotional and compassionate and with free will, and all of the same stuff, earth and water and Spirit. When our words turn us against each other, we’ve got to be mindful of what exactly we are saying about who we are and where we place our trust.

Because in our reading from Nehemiah today, the prophet is talking to a people who have forgotten who they are and where they come from. They are hearing again the story of God’s love for them, of the liberation from Egypt, of the wandering in the wilderness, the turning away from God again and again only to be restored again and again. They are hearing the prophets’ words about selling the poor for a pair of sandals, of Israel being chosen as a light to the nations, of the many ways they have failed again and again to be that light. They are hearing, basically, how far we have fallen from God’s dream and purpose and mission for us. And in hearing this great and beautiful vision which they have so utterly forgotten, ignored, neglected, lost, they despair. They cry out. They have come together in worship and found only how wide is the chasm between earth and heaven.

Which brings us to look at Jesus’ first sermon text:

Good news to the poor. Who are the poor? How are we poor? Recovery of sight to the blind. Who’s really blind in what way? What vision do we need to live as God’s people in the world? Let the oppressed go free? Oppression hurts everyone involved, making us more or less than we were created to be, dividing people from each other based on measurements and expectations that are in no way life-giving to our eco-system. And what is this ‘year of the Lord’s favor’ that Isaiah is talking about? Have we angered God or lost God’s favor that we need to make a point of having a whole year of God’s favor?

And the really incredible part of this particular sermon that Jesus preaches his first time back home, the stunning and potentially dangerous thing, is that he said he had fulfilled that prophecy right then and there. What in the world does that even mean? It’s not like our social statements have solved all the problems we drafted and voted on statements for. But Jesus is the Son of the Living God, the One who we proclaim created the cosmos by speaking it into being, so he is actually endowed with the power and authority to, as they say in Star Trek, ‘make it so.’

What does this mean? Jesus has come to set the captives free. Whatever we are captive to. Anxiety. Illness. Expectations that just don’t fit us as we understand ourselves. Racism. Classism. Fear of the unknown. So much holds us back from full life together, and God has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ to break all the power these things ever claimed to hold over us. Not, perhaps, to ‘make us great again,’ but certainly to make us shine again, bearing the light of new life in all the dark places of our experience. We’ve hidden our light under a bushel for ages, in a lot of ways, where in other ways we’ve done a good job of being God’s people in this world. Only God can tell us when we’ve come closest to hitting that mark. 

Which is why the prophet Nehemiah tells the people not to despair. They’ve just gathered for worship and heard that they’re terrible, awful, no-good, very bad folks who might well deserve to be disowned by God, because they have forgotten the poor, have abused the alien in their midst, have neglected the hungry. But as they are convinced of their guilt, as they understand more fully how they have missed the mark, the prophet reminds them - and by extension reminds us - that the God we worship is also a God of mercy and compassion, of grace and forgiveness, of new life and resurrection. God is a God who never gives up on us, no matter how far we rebel or ignore or utterly despise God’s word or law or gifts. Run away from God for generations? You’ll still be welcomed back into God’s arms. Decide halfway through life that God is bogus and you’d rather serve something else with your time and effort? That won’t be ultimately as life-giving, but God still loves you like crazy. Think you’ve messed up too much and should just throw in the towel on the whole God thing because if there is a God there’s no way you’d be good enough to live in that heaven? Meet Jesus, if you please, and discover a God who is merciful and kind, slow to anger and abounding - ABOUNDING - in steadfast love. “Do not be grieved,” the prophet reminds us, “for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

Yeah, that’s the word. Joy. Last week Jesus turned water into wine so the party wouldn’t end before its time. This week, the joy of God is our strength, and God is setting the captives free, putting the Body back together again. We give God glory and honor for the signs and gifts we encounter all around us from day to day, in the mountains and trees and the power of snowstorms and the fragility of new buds on trees and the discovery of unknown planets in our own solar system. We give God glory for majesty and strength and beauty, and that very same God rejoices over us with singing, comes in the dirt to live beside us, goes to the cross for the sake of the joy set before him, encounters death, our own death, full-on, holding nothing back, so that we will never be separated from the love of God again. Do not despair. Jesus is here. The blind will see. The lame will dance. The lost are found. The lonely are loved. The sinner is saved. Every time. By the grace and the love of God, we who were once far off have been brought near, and every time we wander we will be brought near again and again. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.