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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The last three Sundays of this month prior to today were all the beginning and a continuation of a season that we call in the church the season of Epiphany. Epiphany is an aha moment, a manifestation, a revelation of something that was, as it were, hidden before and now fully revealed. The first Sunday of the month was Epiphany, the celebration of the Magi visiting, and not only visiting, but worshiping the baby born in Bethlehem, the King of the Jews. Now that revealed that not only was God’s good news of Jesus, God becoming man, only for the Jews, but it was also for the Gentiles. And these Magi went back to their homeland and proclaimed what they had seen. That’s a revelation of God in the flesh.
The Sunday after that, two Sundays ago, was the baptism of our Lord celebration. We’re at the Jordan River when John the Baptist baptized God in the flesh, Jesus. The Trinity was revealed. For the voice from heaven was the Father speaking, “‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.'” The Son, of course, was the one who was in the Jordan being baptized and anointed and proclaimed as He who is the One, the Anointed One, the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus in the form of a dove. Last Sunday, not only was it changing water into wine to show that God is the God of all nature besides the spiritual realm, more importantly, it was a revelation of our relationship to the Lord. We are the church, the bride. He is our bridegroom. And that was a revelation of his relationship with us, fulfilling what was spoken about in Hosea and other places throughout the Old Testament.
This morning’s epiphany is when he sits in front of all the people in his hometown synagogue at Nazareth, finds that specific passage that the choir sang about just a moment ago: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those who are oppressed. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Rolling up that passage from Scripture, sitting down. Everybody’s waiting to hear his commentary on this text. And his commentary is amazing. Short, succinct. Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your ears.
There’s the revelation. But that’s only part of the epiphany of today. That he speaks and shows them the one about whom this has been spoken hundreds of years before I arrived on the scene is about me, God in the flesh.
There’s two sides to this epiphany, though. The first side is the very obvious one for us as believers. When we hear such words of God—Good news to the poor and liberty to the captives and sight to the blind. As believers, that’s comforting because we know it applies to people like us, sinners. The other side of this epiphany, which was also a revelation to believer and non-believer, was the rejection that Jesus received. Follow this, if you will, right after he says this in the text and right after he says to them, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Amen.
Notice that the text has some interesting adjectives. “‘All spoke well of him, marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.'” It goes from all rejoicing and all marveling to the end of the text where it says, when they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. All rose up. All drove him out of the town. All brought him to the brow of the hill so that they all could throw him down the cliff. Wow. It went from you’re the cat’s meow, you’re the great thing that everybody’s been waiting for to, you’re nothing but a troubler in Israel. That’s a revelation. That’s an epiphany. That’s a manifestation of God.
Now, lest we think, well, how can that be? The role of the prophet in the Old Testament, if you look at the prophets, every one of them have these moments of goldenness when they are everybody’s favorite hero. No. And then given enough time, they are everybody’s enemy. All, obviously. But the majority of the people receive these prophets as troublers, problem children. Ones who do nothing but stir up difficulties within the community.
Now the irony of all of this is that when Jesus is rejected, when he’s brought to the cusp of that hill to be cast aside, Nazareth was built on the side of a pretty good bluff. As he’s brought to that cliff, they leave that cliff. All of the people who gathered there to kill Jesus leave that cliff and do not believe that God did a miracle before their very eyes because they do not leave with Jesus at the bottom of the cliff dead. They leave empty-handed, but empty-handed not knowing where or how he escaped. That miracle performed before their very eyes leads none of them to believe. Isn’t that interesting irony? They ask for a miracle. Do the very same thing you did at Capernaum here, Lord. And he does do a miracle. As great and powerful as walking on water and changing water to wine, he walks through them and he is unharmed. And they look upon it and they go back to their beds and they don’t explain it in any other way like a miracle. They explain it in some other fashion.
So when you look at Jesus’ approach to these people, his hometown people, whom you think he would know the best, wouldn’t he? I mean, you and I know, whenever we meet someone kind of out of our culture or out of our community, whenever you meet someone from another region, you relate to them on a very polite manner because you don’t have a lot of things in common yet. And as you build this relationship and build this repertoire of working with this person, then you begin to realize the things that you can talk about and so on. But when you’re talking to someone from the same area and the same community, you would think there should not be anything lost in translation. Right?
So then why would Jesus, if he is God in the flesh and knowing full well their reaction, why would he push their hot buttons? Why would he stir the fat if he knew full and well what they would do? In the modern world, there is a view that we live in a Christian society, or there’s a modern view that we don’t live in a Christian society. And either way, they come up with the same point of view.
Many people think that we’re going to have to take this message, repackage it, reorient it, make it more beneficial for the hearer. Make it more—and the buzzword oftentimes used is, make it more missional. That’s denying the very word that was spoken from our Lord’s lips. It’s a lie of Satan to think that we have to do something different to make the word more palatable. It’s a lie of Satan for us to think that we have to repackage it or reorient it in order to make it more beneficial. If God in the flesh says in front of all of his homeboys and homegirls, it’s fulfilled in your hearing and they reject him, where does the fault lie for the stirring up of the problem? The hearer or the speaker? You can see how it’s a lie of Satan. It’s the hearer. The speaker is God in the flesh, not any Tom, Dick, or Harry.
And yet there is this temptation among this world to say, you aren’t relevant. You need to be different in order to be relevant to this present day and age. That’s a lie perpetuated by Satan. There has always been and there will always be people who come to believe. There has always been and there will always be people who reject the Lord. We always look at the acceptance of faith as being a revelation or a manifestation of God’s glory. That here, here is showing that God’s powerful.
The role of the prophet throughout the entire scriptures has also been the other side as well. Because they too are a revelation of God’s revelation of himself. Their rejection shows forth truth. Because their rejection shows the heart of a man and a woman, a sinful person. Their rejection shows this message really is substantial and has power. Their rejection really does nothing more than show the reflection of Adam and Eve who hid themselves in the garden, who denied doing anything wrong, who blamed God for their problems. The rejection of the people here, the rejection of the people whom you and I speak to about this good news, is really nothing more than a revelation of the truth.
The other mistaken notion is that we are somehow cut from something different. There’s something within us that makes us a little bit more remarkable than the other common folk that we’re trying to reach with this message. Right? We explain it away, saying, well, you grew up in the church, or you had a long history of people who have been a part of the church, so this message was more beneficial for your ears. It rang and resonated a little bit better than in the average person who has no church background. That’s to deny the common sin that infects us all. That’s to say that we’re not as sinful as other people who are unchurched, who may not have a family lineage of faith. That’s a lie of Satan too. There will always be people who believe. And there will always be people who reject.
Let not Satan’s lies bind us to think that this message is only archaic and we have to update it. It’s not like a computer program. It’s eternal, this truth. It’s not going to be infected by viruses and we have to get the latest update. It’s absolute. And your being here is as much a miracle as an unchurched person who joins. Because you and I are both cut from the same sinful bolt of cloth.
The beautiful aspect of Jesus’ preaching is that regardless of the culture which he was preaching to, and he preached to different cultures. The Samaritans were a unique and different culture set apart from the Jews. The Syrophoenician woman was a distinct culture different than the other people in the area. Judah, Bethlehem, and Judea, that area was a totally different culture in many ways than Galilee. As much as you know, the people from Jersey are a little bit different than the people from Texas. And the people from Southern California, well, maybe not always nowadays in Austin, but you know there’s a difference.
Jesus did not change his message with the different cultures, the different backgrounds, whether they were churched or unchurched, whether they were active members of the synagogue or not, whether they were prostitutes, tax collectors, or the like. Or priests within the temple. He never changed his message. He didn’t repackage it. He didn’t reorient it. He just said in loving fashion, the Spirit of God has anointed me. And at his baptism, it was very obvious, the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
And he has set me apart to proclaim to us that we are rich in forgiveness. That’s something that you and I treasure and cherish because we know how poor we are without it. He has proclaimed that we’re liberated, freed, because you know how guilt loves to shackle us together and drag us down to the bottom and the depths of the sea of despair. Jesus has been sent so that we can see.
Last night was blind outreach here, and we had a number of our elders and some other members helping with the meal. And talking with those blind people, about 30 of them, only one is a member of our church here. The other one is up in Michigan getting a seeing-eye dog. That’s Paul. The other 20 aren’t. It’s a beautiful outreach for these people. Now, all of them are Christian. The beautiful thing is the things that we were teaching and talking about last night, especially this part about eyes being opened. We who claim to see think that we’re different. That means we’re really blind, isn’t it? They who really are blind know, if they look at their blindness only, think that they’re different. That means they’re not only blind physically, they’re blind spiritually. When we see ourselves as both spiritually blind, no matter what our physical sight is, then we know what it means to see, and see clearly, and see correctly.
Finally, that we’re favored. Ha! That’s the latter part of his message. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. You know what it’s like if you weren’t the favored child in your home. And you know how possibly you teased your kids and said, Oh, he’s our favored one. And you’re their favorite one. And so on. You know what it’s like to not be favored. In God’s eyes, you are his favored. Because of Christ. That’s what he came to send.
This message resonates with every color of skin, every culture in humanity, and it resonates because sin is universal. And this truth, which is also universal, is the great message of the gospel, which you and I have been given. This is your epiphany. It’s your and my aha moment to say, you are right, Lord. This is a powerful message that you have been using. And it will be accepted, and we’re very thankful for that. It will be rejected, too. And we leave that to God.
This parable right here, the parable of the seed and the sower, doesn’t explain the phenomenon, but describes the phenomenon of what happened in Jesus’ ministry here in his own hometown. That there were believers there, just like there’s believers here, in the name of the one who made you favored. Jesus himself. Amen.
Pray with me. Oh, gently call those gone astray that they may find the saving way. Let every conscience sore oppressed in you find peace and heavenly rest. Shine on the darkened and the cold. Recall the wanderers to your fold. Unite all those who walk apart. Confirm the weak and the doubting heart. In the name of Jesus, amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
