January 26, 2025, His Mission Is Our Mission, Luke 4:14-21 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ January 27, 2025 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

Jesus was invited to read from the Scriptures in the synagogue in his home town. He opened up the scroll that is handed to him, the writings of the prophet Isaiah. he chooses a passage to read. And the reading began with these words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

The Hebrew Bible hadn’t been divided up into chapter and verse yet in those days; that didn’t happen until the 13th century. But now, in our day, we can say that Jesus was reading from Isaiah chapter 61, beginning at the first verse, just as MaryEllen might read that same passage, or Jeremy, or Carroll, or Lucille. But there was something new happening on that day when Jesus opened the scroll to read, because when Jesus read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” he wasn’t just reciting the words of the prophet. He was talking about himself. In that very moment, he was claiming this passage for himself, claiming the pronoun “me,” claiming in himself the anointing of the Spirit, claiming for himself the mission that Isaiah had set down in his writing: to speak good news to the poor, to proclaim release to those in captivity, and not only to proclaim release but to open the bars of their prison and set them free, to restore sight to the blind, and to pronounce the love and goodwill of God.

On that Sabbath day, for the first time since Isaiah had written those words, someone was stepping into them, putting them on like a royal robe, and saying, for all to hear, “These words belong to me.” “Today,” Jesus said to his friends and family and neighbors, “this very day, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” “This is why I am here,” he was telling them. “This is who the Lord God sent me to be and this is what the Lord God sent me to do.” Isaiah’s words, it turned out, were the mission statement of God’s anointed one, the Son of Man, and the Son of God. And from that moment on, that mission was at the heart of everything Jesus did or said.

And we can see the outworking of that in the way people responded to Jesus. The powerful and the rich and the well-respected, for the most part, found Jesus increasingly irritating and annoying. Eventually they found him threatening to everything they took for granted: their laws and traditions, and their social and political alliances. It was the poor and the sick, the blind and the lame, the hungry and the outcast and the rejected – they were the ones who flocked to Jesus by the hundreds and by the thousands, so many that sometimes Jesus was in danger of being crushed by the sheer multitude of needy souls. Because they knew – even if maybe they couldn’t have put it in so many words – they knew that Jesus was anointed by God’s Holy Spirit to bring light and hope into the darkness and hopelessness of their lives. That was his mission. That was his heart. That was the work he was sent to do. They knew it. They knew, beyond all their expectations, beyond all earthly logic, that they were the people that Jesus was sent, by God, to rescue and to heal and to lift up.

And here’s the thing: if it was the mission of Jesus Christ to proclaim good news to the poor and healing for the sick and freedom for those in captivity and the proclamation of God’s favor to all those who are un-favored by the world, then that means that is our mission as well.

The Epistle readings for the last couple of weeks have been from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, all about the variety of gifts that the Spirit has poured out on God’s people. We are all different, all unique, each of us anointed by the Spirit in accordance with the way we were created by God: givers and healers and servers and organizers and teachers and helpers, and on and on, according to the marvelous variety of God’s creative imagination, and the wonderful working of his skill to weave us together into a body that works for the building up of every part. That’s the Church.

But in all our beautiful variety and uniqueness and individual gifting, every one of us exists in Jesus Christ. We all belong to him. We all have our being in him. Every one of us was called by Jesus Christ; every one of us was forgiven by Jesus Christ; each and every one of us received new life in and through him. We are his and he has made his home in us by the indwelling of his Holy Spirit. We have the mind of Christ. And we have the heart of Christ. And what all that means is that for us, who are members of His body, the Church, his anointing and his mission are our anointing and our mission.

And if we wonder whether that is true, we don’t have to look any further than Matthew Chapter 25, where Jesus told a parable about the Day of Judgment, when every man and woman and child will have to answer one question: how did we treat the last and the least among us, who are the brothers and sisters of Christ himself? Because if they are his brothers and sisters, they are our brothers and sisters as well.

The Episcopal Church found ourselves in the news this past week when one of our Bishops, Bishop Marian Edgar Budde of Washington D.C., addressed the President of the United States in a sermon during an interfaith Service of Prayer at the National Cathedral. At the end of her sermon, which was based on the Sermon on the Mount, Bishop Mariann implored the new President to remember the people in our nation who are on the margins of society, many of whom are afraid for their lives and the lives of their families in this time of transition and upheaval. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she said. “There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals…We all were once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak truth to one another in love, walk humbly with God, for the Good of all people, of all people in this nation and the world.”

As there always is, there was a variety of reactions to the Bishop’s words. A lot of people applauded the Bishop for her words. Others took offense. Some condemned her in fairly strong terms – there were lots of different opinions on whether or not it was appropriate for her to speak the way she did. But the truth is that Bishop Mariann was obeying the mission of Jesus Christ, to speak up for those whose voices are not being heard. Because his mission belongs to every one of us, to every member of his Church who wants to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

The last and the least: the poor and the immigrant, the elderly and the mentally ill, the homeless and the addict, these are the brothers and sisters of Jesus. And that means they are our brothers and sisters as well. As members of his Body we can say, “He has sent us 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.” As the body of Christ, we have the anointing of the Holy Spirit for his mission of grace and mercy and compassion. Inn Christ, we have been sent out to proclaim the good news of God’s favor on the disfavored and despised and downtrodden. +