sermons

Luke 4:14-21

It is exceedingly rare for a sermon – an actual sermon preached by a clergy person in a worship service – to make the news, not to mention go viral. But that happened Tuesday of this week, January 21^st. You can view that sermon here on the NPR website:

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/21/nx-s1-5270031/bishop-mariann-edgar-budde-confronts-trump-in-sermon

The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C., preached the sermon. Her text was the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew 7:24-27. Budde explored what it might take for a group, a people, or a nation to have a foundation so firm that storms and floods cannot destroy it. Unity, she said, is what we as a nation need in order to be “founded on a rock.” She listed three foundations for unity:

Honoring the inherent dignity of every human being
Honesty
Humility

The sermon made news because sitting in the front pew of the National Cathedral were the newly inaugurated President of the United States and his wife. At the close of her sermon, Budde addressed the President directly, asking for mercy for those who are frightened, those who fear for their lives or their livelihood or their human dignity. She specifically listed the LGBTQ+ community, the undocumented people who work in our fields and a myriad of other jobs and who are not criminals but are good, tax-paying neighbors, and the children who fear their parents will be whisked away. Later, the new President responded in social media with several diatribes about Budde’s qualifications and demeaner. Both of which are impeccable, by the way.

Budde did not select as her text Luke 4:14-21, this coming Sunday’s lectionary gospel passage. However, she relied on it; she lived it. In that passage, Jesus is fresh from his time of discernment and temptation in the wilderness. He enters the synagogue in his hometown, Nazareth, and someone hands him the Isaiah scroll. He reads from it:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” ²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

There are a handful of Scripture passages which, in my humble opinion, are central, crucial, definitive in revealing who and what Jesus was about. That means they also tell those of us who claim to be his followers what we are to be about. At the top of my list are the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-7:29), the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), and this passage, Luke 4:14-21. More clearly and explicitly than any other passage, these verses in Luke 4 define Jesus’ purpose and set forth his mission statement.

Jesus doesn’t leave much ambiguity about this mission statement. Certainly, we could quibble about what exactly he means by the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed. We could argue whether it’s just the economically impoverished that will receive the good news, or the poor in spirit as well. Captives would certainly include slaves and political prisoners, but does it also include prisoners of depression, or addiction, or lost hope? Or prisoners of their pursuit of what our culture defines as success? Does the oppressed mean those denied political power, or does it include those struggling with wounds to the soul? Does blindness include the failure to comprehend, whether or not you have 20/20 vision?

I’m inclined to believe Jesus had in mind every sort of blindness, captivity, oppression and poverty we can imagine, and then some. The text in Isaiah refers to “the year of the Lord’s favor,” God’s jubilee, when according to ancient Jewish tradition, all debts are wiped out and the people and the land are set free to start over. The year of the Lord’s favor – jubilee – is when everyone gets to start on a level playing field, in every way: personally, politically, economically, physically.

So here’s the million dollar question: If we who are the church are the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-31a), then who, now, is being sent to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free? Who, now, is anointed?

If you claim to follow Jesus, then you are. Your church is. The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde took up that calling on Tuesday and went viral. Now it’s our turn.

Mark 9:2-9

The event in the life of Christ that we call the Transfiguration is one of those stories drenched with meaning and truth, and we aren’t supposed to get distracted by whether it’s a factual account of an historical moment. If you get stuck on that question, you’ll miss the good stuff.

We hear the story every Transfiguration Sunday. Jesus leads Peter, John, and James up on a mountain by themselves. There, he is “transfigured,” but Mark doesn’t tell us what that looks like except that his clothes become dazzling white. Two other figures appear – Moses the lawgiver and the prophet Elijah. Peter’s response is, “Let’s build houses! Let’s stay here!” That’s often our inclination when we’ve had a spiritual high, a mountaintop experience. But we see Jesus leave the mountain to pick up his everyday life and his ministry of healing.

There are, indeed, mountaintop experiences that change us forever. Besides those momentary spiritual highs, however, there is the long and sometimes difficult climb of the life of faith. Most people realize marriage is work; experts describe it as a daily commitment, not just a one-time decision. As one writer says, “Every day you wake up you must decide to commit to your spouse for better or for worse.” It’s the same with the daily decision to follow Jesus, the decision to put one foot in front of the other on the path of faith.

There’s a reason Transfiguration Sunday is the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. I’ve often thought of Lent as a reset button. You lose focus, you lose your way on the path, you find yourself more distant from God than you want to be. Time for a reset. For centuries, Lent has been the season when we focus with new energy on the process of transfiguration that happens over the lifetime of a person of faith; it’s a season of practice, of training. Maybe “training” doesn’t have the sparkle of a mountaintop moment but as Cornelius Plantinga writes, “Spiritual exercise is like jogging. You often do it gladly. But you are no hypocrite if you jog even when you don’t feel like it.”

Just before Jesus heads down the hill, we hear the voice of God. God says, “Listen to him.” Listen to Jesus. I like the fact that God doesn’t say, “Become exactly like Jesus,” or “Take up your cross.” Just, “Listen to him.” That’s probably something I can do. Listening to Jesus in Scripture seems like an obvious place to start. When we listen to Jesus in Scripture, we’ll hear, “Peace be with you.” “I will give you rest.” “Take heart … do not be afraid.” We’ll hear that we will keep our heart only by giving our heart away, that we will find ourselves only by losing ourselves in love, and that we will be saved together, not in separation. We’ll hear that loving our neighbors as ourselves is the most important way we can love God.

And if we strive to love our neighbors as Jesus tells us, we will listen to our neighbors, as well. The 14th century Persian poet Hafiz wrote:
Everyone
Is God speaking
Why not be polite and
Listen to
Him?

God speaks to us again and again through the stories of other people, through our loved ones, through the person whose life is utterly different from yours or mine, and through people whose stories and experiences we might prefer not to hear. Some say that listening is the first duty of love; others say that listening is love. Listening tells someone that he or she matters, and that we are willing to risk being changed by what they say. One definition of communication is “opening yourself to change,” because if you really hear the other person, it means that you are allowing what the person says to impact you, to touch you, to change the way you think and feel and act. In other words, listening transfigures us.

The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope. We aren’t stuck with the way things are. You aren’t stuck with the way things are. Things can change, the world can change, we can change. This is the very purpose of the life of faith.

I think I just chose my focus, my training and practice for Lent this year: listen.

Solvitur Ambulando

Putting one foot in front of the other on the path of faith

Jesus’ Mission Statement (and ours)

Listen