single persons, people
of all races and families
of every kind.
Sunday
Service:
Holy Eucharist
at 9:30 am
Child care is available
Church of Our
Saviour
191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094
Tel: 201-863-1449
Fax: 201-863-1474
Mark A. Lewis,
Vicar
MLewis@secaucus.org
Dorothy Fowlkes
Pastoral Associate
This page revised 24
Jan 01
http://www.secaucus.org/
oursaviour
The Church of
Our Saviour
in the Town of Secaucus, New Jersey
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Good
News!
Reflections on the
gospel for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany
21 January 2001 at St Matthew's Church (ELCA),
Secaucus
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Nehemiah 8:2-10 / Psalm 113
Corinthians 12:12-27 / Luke
4:14-21
Today's gospel is just half of the story told in Luke's gospel. The pretty half. After he finished reading from Isaiah, everyone was very warm and fuzzy. The verse that follows where today's reading leaves off says "All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth."
But then he goes on and gets pretty blunt pointing out just exactly how much God loves various kinds of people who are quite different from his listeners. How God is deeply concerned with people who have curious habits and obvious problems and eccentric ideas. And Jesus' old neighbors rise up and chase him out of town. They even try to throw him off a cliff. What happened? He obviously touched on a sore spot in the community.
You'll get the details in next week's gospel reading. But, essentially, Jesus set up the audience by reading from Isaiah about God's good news to the poor and the oppressed. Then he rolls out a list of the poor and oppressed and the people of Nazareth don't see themselves on it. They see foreigners and dirty people and wrongheaded people.
"You know," Jesus says, "God doesn't have any extra-special affection for nice church folks. The real good news is for broken people."
"Well, then, what about me?" the congregation wonders. "Why am I spending all this time here in the synagogue?"
And I think the same question arises in us. What about me? When you look at the whole world, none of us are poor. Is there good news for us? We aren't imprisoned, exiled, or oppressed in the usual ways. What do we get out of the year of the Lord's favor?
The trick -- and the congregation at Nazareth didn't catch on to this one -- is to recognize ourselves in Jesus' quotation from the prophet. To think "us" instead of "them" when we hear about the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed. The Christian Church has really done very little better than any other faith community in history when it comes to that.
We spend so much energy drawing lines and deciding who's in and who's out -- who is a good enough member of the Body of Christ and who isn't -- that we fool ourselves into thinking that God is the source of exclusion. That we are doing God's work when we put people into categories. Of course the inevitable outcome is that we trap ourselves in categories, too. And then we lose the point of the Good News. Jesus didn't tell those folks that God loves other people more than they are loved. They told them that themselves.
The Bible tells us that God really sticks by people in need. But scripture never says that God puts reasonably happy and comfortable people in second place when it comes to divine love. No, that kind of exclusion comes from inside us. The conversion, the new birth that Jesus calls us to is a life in which the "us" versus "them" way of thinking falls apart. When that happens -- when we're all just "us" -- then whatever promises God holds out will sound like promises for everybody. When we see how connected we all are, then we don't have to get defensive when God sends out grace and favor on the poor and the blind. Because we are the poor and the blind, and so are the people we love and the people who love us.
Christ's Body is one with many members. The eye can't say to the hand I don't need you. Nor the hand to the foot: I think I'd be better off without you. Bodies are one. Christ's Body, certainly, aches to be one. But we're a long way off from the day when the people of God see our connections better than we see our divisions. But the work before us as God's own children, Jesus says, is the work of learning to see how profoundly we are all in this life together. When we see the strengths and weaknesses in ourselves as clearly as we see the same in others -- well, then we can hear God's good news in a whole new way. If it's for everybody -- really everybody -- then it has to be for me, too.
That's a much stronger place to be in. When we learn to identify with all God's people without reservation, then we, too, will be poor and outcast. And then we, too, won't be jealous or mad when God's love pours out richly in any direction. I think we'll just be fascinated by God's baffling generosity and compassion.
I'm here today -- and Pastor Moser was over at the Church of Our Saviour -- because of our Call to Common Mission. In case you don't know, that's an agreement between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church at the national level to do what our own two Secaucus congregations have done pretty well for a long time. To work together as parts of the same Body of Christ. To identify with each other. To depend on each other. And to proclaim that a blessing on one of us is a blessing for both of us.
The chance before us is the same one Jesus laid before the synagogue in Nazareth: If you can get beyond "us" and "them" you will see how deeply God loves us all. And the dream before us is an even greater opportunity to show the people in the streets of our town a slightly better picture of what the Kingdom of God will be like when it breaks through all over the world.
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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