The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY (Retired)
Today's Bible readings give us an interesting combination of themes. There is
the theme of holiness, developed through obedience to God's Law.
There's the theme of believers being different and separate from
non-believers. There's the theme of the Body of Christ,
made up of many members that work together, all being equally necessary to the
life and work of the Body. And there's the theme of the mission of Jesus,
which is still the mission of the church today...that theme can be expressed by
the idea of deliverance, which brings us right back to the Old
Testament theme of returning from Babylon to Israel, returning from pagan
lifestyles to a holy, godly lifestyle. All these themes are interwoven together,
making a unified whole.
The reading from the book of Nehemiah tells what happened after the people
who had returned from Babylon had made considerable progress in rebuilding the
Temple and the walls of the city of Jerusalem. They were called together in the
central square in front of the Temple, to hear God's Law read to them. The Law
of God would be the law of the nation of Israel; religion and law and the
culture would be one and the same thing. This was expressed in two ways:
everyone had a duty to become as holy as possible, and they would do this by
observing the Law...not by a lot of emotional carryings-on, but simply by being
good, repenting their sins, and taking care of one another as a way of
worshiping God. The basic idea was to re-create a replica of Eden in this new,
re-born land that their ancestors had been forced to leave many years ago. It
was to be a fresh start, living under God's rule and God's Law. The people who
lived according to the Law would be separate from the pagan nations around them.
They would have a different lifestyle, based on their obedience to the Law of
the ONE God, not the worship of many, many gods and goddesses. The spirit of
God's Law was to praise, respect and obey the one God, by taking care of one
another and also by caring for the earth. This was very different from the
lifestyle of pagan countries which worshiped mostly by fertility rites which
they hoped would bring good crops, and by enjoying the pleasures of things,
instead of the pleasure of the love of God.
Paul's letter to the church in Corinth makes it very clear that the members
of the church form the body of Christ here on earth, to carry on the work of
Christ who no longer lives bodily among us. Christ now has returned to his home
in heaven, but his work and presence continue through the church, and the
church, of course, is made up of the members who have been baptized and who live
according to Christ's teachings. The members of the church are equal in God's
sight. They may be poor or rich in the world's eyes. They may be male or female,
slave or free, Jew or Gentile, old or young, black, red, yellow or white, famous
or lowly...but every member of the church is important, and each has his or her
own special work to do to carry on Christ's ministry in the world. No one member
of the church can say he or she is better than another; we are all equally
important in the carrying-out of God's plan, which is the mission of Christ in
the world around us. Each of us has the dignity of being called to help do God's
work, no matter how we may look to other people.
And what is Christ's mission? What is God's work? Jesus told us very clearly
the answer to these questions...it's one and the same answer for both. In the
synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and then
explained that this work, this mission, was present in the world today, some 500
years after Isaiah, in Jesus himself. That work, that mission, is also present
in the world today, two thousand plus years after Jesus read it out in the
synagogue. It is present in you and me, and it's our job because we are
commissioned by our Baptism to carry on Jesus' work, which is God's work. We
need to think a bit about that mission and how we are to do it.
Jesus proclaimed that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, giving him the
right and the duty, and also the ability, to do this work. The Spirit of the
Lord is given to us at our Baptism and our Confirmation, for exactly the same
reason. We also have the right, the duty, and the help of God to do this work.
The first job Jesus says he has is to proclaim the Good News to the poor. You
and I have the obligation of helping to spread the news about Jesus and his love
and his deliverance to everyone. People who do not know God are poor, poor in
spirit. We have to help tell them about Jesus' coming to forgive sins, to
deliver all people from the power of sin and the Devil, and help them repent
their sins in order to participate in that deliverance and salvation.
Jesus, and we too, are sent by God to proclaim the release of captives. We
need to tell people how they can be released from their slavery to sin and to
the ways of the world. We need to tell people how Jesus died, taking their
punishment for sin upon himself, so that they can be free of the burden and
torment of sin.
Jesus said he was also supposed to bring sight to the blind. While he did
heal blind people, and people with many other diseases, he also helped all
people, with good eyes or bad, see how God works in the world, and opened the
understanding of God's ways and God's love to people who had never known it
before. That's our job, too...healing the physical needs, bringing light and
understanding to the mental and emotional darkness that keeps people blind to
the glory of life and of God.
We, like Jesus, are supposed to help people who are oppressed go free. It
doesn't matter whether people are oppressed by sin, by poverty, by lack of
opportunity, or by not knowing how to free themselves of what is holding them
down...we need to do what we can to help free them. This might mean volunteering
to tutor school kids in their homework, or it might mean sending money to help
the people of Haiti who are oppressed by the results of the earthquake. It might
mean helping a young couple learn to be better parents, or helping a single
mother find a clean, safe place to live. It might mean starting a Bible class
for teens or adults, or delivering meals for Meals on Wheels, or driving someone
to hospital or clinic for help in dealing with a disease that keeps them unable
to fend for themselves.
Finally, we, like Jesus, are to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. In the
Old Testament, one year out of every 50 was a Jubilee Year. Fields were not
plowed. They were allowed to rest. Debts were forgiven, even if they had not
been paid off yet. Disagreements had to be forgotten, and everyone had to
forgive one another any old grudges. And we need to proclaim that God loves us
all and has forgiven us what wrong we have done, what right we have forgotten or
omitted to do, and that we can all return joyfully to God and to the fellowship
of our neighbors.
When Jesus read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, he was almost setting
the agenda for his own ministry...and for ours.
Amen.
