The Third Sunday after Epiphany:
“Getting the Gist” THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
January 23rd & 24th 2010 St. Mary’s Church, Barnstable
-The Rev. Robert W. Anthony
A meditation with you today is entitled:
“GETTING THE GIST”
A text is taken from our first reading, the Book of Nehemiah, chapter 8, verse 8:
“And (the readers) read from the book, from the law of God, clearly;
And they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”
It is difficult, at times, for us to leave our homes, get out of our cars, in church parking lots, come into the church for worship and to hear lessons of scripture, as assigned readings, and be able to get the gist of the matter in just one hearing--”cold turkey.” Often the Bible isn’t that simple!
It was better, I thought, when I accompanied my godmother-- Anne Trayser, married to Don Trayser, to her Christian Science Church in Hyannis--located near the new skating rink. In those services whenever I attended in the summer, they made things easier to understand, because a reading from Scripture was read and then immediately someone would interpret and explain what we had just heard. Sometimes I like to do that as a kind of summary of the readings we have heard, to try to delineate common themes and messages--to get the “gist” of matter or the essence of what we need to hear.
Today, is a particularly good occasion for doing this and the benefit is that providing an overview you are likely to get a shorter sermon but not always!
We focus on three readings today, in particular.
The First Lesson, usually an Old Testament reading, appointed today from the Book of Nehemiah, chapter 8; The Second Lesson, nearly always from the New Testament, today is taken from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12 and finally the Holy Gospel from the 4th chapter of Luke.
At first look the Nehemiah reading and the Gospel reading seem very different and yet there is a parallelism between them that we need to note.
After the Jews had been released from their Babylonian Exile by the Persians, they were allowed to return to their homeland, to set up shop, re-establish their farms and homes and rebuild the Sacred Temple in Jerusalem.
But initially things didn’t go all that well, in fact very badly.
It took two distinguished leaders--a layman named Nehemiah and Ezra the priest and scribe--to get the job done; according to scripture, they literally cracked heads and dragged people by the hair to work in order to get things accomplished.
It is interesting that Nehemiah’s name itself means so much: for it translates from the Hebrew “God is generous”--and that is how the people viewed God’s restoration of them after such as difficult time in exile.
Putting today’s 8th chapter reading into context (something that we rarely have time to do in worship), this is actually a continuation of Ezra’s account of setting before the people the proclamation of God’s Law they must follow. The text of verse 8 reads: “And (the readers) read from the book, from the law of God clearly…so that the people understood the reading.” Up to then when the people returned home there was a lack of direction, consensus and understanding. The peoples’ noncommitted blandness and inertia deprived them of vision, ambition or energy to build their future. Their knowledge of the Torah--God’s Law--was nearly nonexistent and from Ezra’s perspective his people were badly in need of a turnaround. Within this event of a public reading of God’s Law before all the people in the more familiar Aramaic that many more people understood, everything came together and in joy of this, recorded in verses 10-12, a new feast is appointed to celebrate this reawakening. Hooray!
Placing this first reading alongside the Gospel reading from Luke reveals some similarities. Both events--readings by Ezra and Jesus--centered on the scriptures proclaiming God’s word; both events were held in public places--at the Water Gate-- a popular, public square and the synagogue in Nazareth; both events featured important people who attracted the public’s attention and both readers received the rapt attention of their hearers: Nehemiah verse 3 says “the ears of all the people were attentive,”
While after Jesus sat down, “the eyes of all were centered on him,”
(one translation says “all eyes were riveted on him”). Both events led to a dramatic turnaround or conclusion. But the end result was far different. Ezra’s situation and the people’s outpouring of tears and joy led to the establishment of a new, joyful festival in the Jewish Calendar. However the reaction by the people was far different in Jesus’ situation. In fact, you could entitle today’s gospel reading: “Jesus’ Getting into Trouble!” or “Peck’s Bad Boy”.
The context is understandable; it was a great moment in Jesus’ public life. For just as he returned from his forty days in the wilderness, he reads scripture in his home town synagogue before friends, family and neighbors--what a debut, a coming-out party! The congregation is gathered for the Sabbath service in Nazareth. Jesus is presented the reading for the day, taken from the Book of the well-known prophet Isaiah.
Jesus reads:
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
HE CLOSED THE BOOK,
AND GAVE IT BACK TO THE ATTENDANT, AND SAT DOWN;
AND THE EYES OF ALL IN THE SYNAGOGUE WERE FIXED ON HIM. AND HE BEGAN TO SAY TO THEM,
‘TODAY, THIS SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN FULFILLED IN YOUR HEARING.’”
That is when all heck broke loose. Jesus’ first sermon sparked a riot in his home town. Both Jesus and Ezra had read God’s word, but whereas Ezra and the readers produced a unity, an integration among the people, a re-awakening, Jesus’ first words, his first adult appearance in his home synagogue, produced outright divisions among those who had known and admired him as a boy and those who were annoyed, even alarmed by him by what he dared to say today.
“TODAY THIS SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN FULFILLED IN YOUR HEARING…IN ME.”
I am the one God has sent, the One Isaiah talked about.
Here, at that moment, Jesus set in motion a revolution, a whole new movement, a whole new kingdom breaking upon these common people, bringing promise, hope, healing, insight although they at first didn’t get the gist and they missed Jesus’ meaning in what he came to do. This controversy makes our worship interesting today, worthwhile, and gives us something to take home and think about.
What is so wonderful is that our third reading from First Corinthians brings everything together; it undergirds the Old Law and the New Law, the Old Testament and the New Testament into a vital bond that you and I can appreciate.
Saint Paul was known for his “Body Language” and this section of his letter is known to describe the Body Language of the Bible and you and I know it well.
“YOU ARE THE BODY OF CHRIST.”--chapter 12, verse 27
The body does not consist of one member but of many…the eye cannot say to the hand, I don’t need you, or the ear cannot say, because I am not an eye, I don’t belong to the body…” (and so on)
Here is a passage of Holy Scripture that brings unity out of chaos, reconciliation out of separation, while proclaiming the uniqueness and diversity of God’s Holy Church. Here there is a message here of inclusiveness to place alongside all the differences and particular preferences you and I hold onto, all the unfortunate judgments we make on other people, failing to get the gist of God’s Word made known in Christ!
Let me read Paul’s memorable sentence three different ways in order to point out its meaning and its integrity for us worshippers today.
First--You are the body of CHRIST. It was just an ordinary lot of Christians in Corinth that St. Paul called “the body of Christ.” They too were full of frailties, foibles and shortcomings, yet in spite of their all-too-human faults and deficiencies, he thinks of them as the body of Christ.
You are the body of Christ.
Not just a body of congenial neighbors, not just a body of people drawn together by their own interests and their own ideas. Here in the church, St. Paul is saying, is a new society that we Christians did not create, for we owe our existence to Christ and God’s grace not to any human conception. You and I belong to CHRIST.
Second--You are the BODY of Christ. His body, not just a collection of individual units each standing alone, not just a stamp club, or a library CLAMS card, but a corporate fellowship knit together in a common and redeeming experience of Jesus Christ. There is in our fellowship here a corporate witness, a corporate vision, a corporate energy, a corporate compassion, a corporate responsibility, a corporate justice in God’s world to bear and fulfill as a social institution, beyond what each individual
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member can do alone and as a body, as Christ’s continuing body, we exist in this particular place to carry on Christ’s purpose in history.
Third, St. Paul says--YOU are the body of Christ. St. Paul was saying to the Christians in Corinth and all of us that with all our shortcomings, the carrying on of Christ’s work then and now depends on them and us, called, challenged, empowered, given gifts for ministry to live out our calling in God’s world as we clearly try to do.
Clearly, however, all of this comes with a warning label. Sacrifices will have to be made, risks taken, for the more faithful the church is to its own distinctive nature derived from Christ, the more likely it will experience a tension between itself and the culture, the world, around us.
In conclusion, I hope that a picture will suffice:
There was a little town in northern Italy that suffered great devastation during World War II. The Nazis came through and destroyed everything. Animals, flocks, human life weren’t spared. Buildings were ruined, roads and bridges mired in mud, even the town square was demolished including a great, proud statue of Jesus with arms outstretched in blessing, toppled over with its hands broken off. But along came the United States Army GI’s. They brought not only cigarettes and chocolate candy, but the skill to restore electricity and water and to rebuild hospitals and shelters. Someone in command looked over the village square and saw the fallen statue of Christ which had been held in such pride by the villagers. The GI’s said: “we can fix that; we can rebuild the statues’ hands.
The town mayor held up his hands and said: “No, don’t rebuild the hands of Christ. We want the people to remember that it was you the GI’s who are Jesus’ hands.”
Go and do, go and be likewise! Amen.
