Sermon Title: “An Agent of Jesus’ Good News”
After Jesus’s baptism, which we read a couple of weeks ago, the Spirit forced Jesus out into the wilderness where the adversary, also known as Satan, was tempting him. He was there for 40 days. The adversary offered Jesus a deal: “If you worship me, I will give you all the inhabited kingdoms of the earth to you, and they will glorify you.” Jesus refuses and he says, “Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.”
Once the adversary had gone through all its tests, the Spirit sent Jesus back to Galilee. Filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus went from synagogue to synagogue, and His word was being spread.
We find Jesus today in the synagogue in Nazareth. It says He was raised there. He takes the scroll, opens it, and reads from the prophet Isaiah as a refresher again:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then He sat down and said, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Next week, we’re going to hear what happened after this. He didn’t just leave the synagogue, but He had some more to say to the people of the synagogue. And, uh, cliffhanger — it doesn’t necessarily go well for Him. We’ll get back to that next week.
But everything that follows from this point forward must seen through the lens of what Jesus has just read and proclaimed. All throughout the rest of the Gospel of Luke, here, we see that this is Jesus saying what His essential mission is. This is His mission statement for the rest of His ministry throughout His time on Earth.
For Jesus didn’t just come to preach in the past but preaches in our lives. He has come to preached the good news to those who are poor. Jesus has come to proclaim release to the captives. Jesus has come to recover sight to the blind. Jesus has come to set free people who are oppressed. Jesus has come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor — not just something that one says, but something that also one does.
The year of the Lord’s favor is an echo to Leviticus 25. I know, we don’t always like Leviticus, but there are some very wonderful passages in it about how we treat one another, how we live in common community. Leviticus 25 lays out the Year of Jubilee. This is a year that, every 50 years, every 50 years, the land would have time to rest. Debts are forgiven. Land that was sold due to economic hardships are forgiven and returned. Those who sold themselves as indentured servants, were also released and set free.
Now, you’re going to find someone that’s going to say, “Well, you don’t really find any record in the Bible or in other contemporaneous documents of the time when the Israelites actually did this thing.” Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not. I don’t necessarily think you have to find a record of it for it to have happened. There are lots of things that people did in that time that I’m sure are not covered here in the biblical story. (pause) But even though it may not have happened, it does not diminish the Israelites’ expectation for a day to come when it would be realized.
Imagine people who are slaves, people who are living in extreme poverty (of which most people were at the time) hearing this for the first time as Paul and his team spoke this message to them. They listened to this and learned that the corrupt financial, religious, and powerful elite tried to take Jesus down for His message. But instead, we know that He rose from the dead. His resurrection signaling Christ’s victory over them — that His gospel message cannot be defeated.
A man like Jesus, who preached the message He did, could be easily dismissed. But what we see here is that God brings Him back from the cross to the tomb, to emerge from the tomb to bring new life, new hope, new possibilities.
We know this story. We know what happened. Jesus’s disciples then, after He was resurrected, turned from students to messengers of the Gospel — the good news. They became agents of His mission, and it spread to nearly all of the various four corners of the Roman Empire. (pause)
It spread to where people were starting to persecute those who followed Jesus. There was a man named Saul who had persecuted Christians and led many of them to their deaths. But then one day, the Lord came. He gave Saul a vision, and then he was Saul was transformed from Saul to Paul. He was given a new life, new hopes, new opportunities to correct his past wrong-doings.
Paul’s experience and subsequent vigor to advance Christ’s gospel message made him one of the major leaders of the early church. He was someone who was a well organizer, good organizer. He used the roads of the Empire to preach the gospel and to spread it. He went to Antioch, Cyprus, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Ephesus, Galatia, Corinth, and more. He raised evangelists to advance this message: Silas, Timothy, Priscilla and Aquila, Titus, Phoebe and of course more.
They helped him organize this church, and after he planted a church, there was still communication between him and the various Christian communities throughout these various cities. These, uh, team workers of his, they would go to the community, and they would receive a report back. Then, when they came back to Paul, they reported all of the things that the community was doing wrong or reported to him what the community needed encouragement with.
And they would be the ones to take the letter to him.
One of the things we always need to be mindful of when we look at the letters of Paul is that it’s a one-sided correspondence. We can only hypothesize as to what was the actual wrongdoings in that particular community. Sometimes it leaves room for suggestion, but Paul, with the power of the Holy Spirit as part of this well-thought plan out with the spirit as his guide. Paul went to these urban cities. These large urban cities because they were major hubs.
Of course, when you think of a major city with diversity—Milwaukee, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, London—all the places around the world are filled with all different kinds of people.
Corinth was a wealthy city; it was large, with all those different religious backgrounds. As part of that, as any city does, there are all kinds of skills, education, jobs, free and slave, Jews, and Greeks. All of that diversity would have been found in the Corinthian church, just like churches today.
We draw upon the communities around us and the strengths and the gifts that you all have. Brought All these people together in this diversity but what united them was Christ, and that they were baptized by one Spirit. They were baptized into one body. Jew or Greeks, Slave or Free.
See, these new converts then didn’t just meet—they did not meet in formalized church buildings—but they met in homes, often in wealthier people’s places. They worshipped the one who brought Jesus back from the dead, the one who sent Jesus to the mountaintop to be transfigured, the one who sent us to be agents of Christ’s gospel message.
But as we have heard and seen, like any new community—or older one—the ideal, the vision of what could be and what should be, often meets the hard reality. As I mentioned last week, the Corinthians had a whole lot of issues. Last week, I mentioned that the wealthier and poorer members of the community were divided over the fairness of the distribution of the communion meal.
Now, today, we see the community is dividing over who is more important than another, which spiritual gift is superior to another. Humanity, as we know, likes to play this game, don’t we? Which job is more important, which gift is more important?
Is it the artist or the entrepreneur? Is it the art history major—I’ve heard all those jokes—is it the English major or the science, technology, engineering, or mathematics majors? Which one’s more important? Is it the CEO who runs the business, the company, the corporation, or is it the factory worker on the floor?
Is it the woman who is living on the streets or the woman who is married and raising kids? Is it the single person, or is it the people with kids? All these questions we go back and forth on in our minds because we’ve been conditioned to do it.
So it’s no surprise that the church in Corinth is struggling. The struggles out there in society were reflected inside, but the reverse is supposed to happen. What you learn inside, you’re supposed to bring outside.
And, So it’s no surprise that if what’s being taught in the Christian church inside is misguided, because what we bring out there—what we learn in here—we will also bring out there. However, just because the Christian church hasn’t lived up to its ideals does not diminish, again, the importance and expectations of them.
The ideal still remains. It still remains that the Christian church is an alternative to the outside world. Václav Havel was, among many things, a philosopher and leader in the Czechoslovakian dissident movement. In his extended essay The Power of the Powerless, he highlights what we call parallel structures.
These are alternative structures compared to the dominant society structures. The need for alternative structures is because the dominant society shuts out ordinary people from living free and fair lives. He wrote about this underneath totalitarian communism. Thankfully, there are these things called parallel structures that create alternative cultures, and these things are so powerful that they become magnents and make people feel compelled to follow them and join them.
These alternative cultures allow for people to have free expression, new ideas, demonstrate acts of kindness, and transform the dominant culture for the better, taking what happens inside and taking it outside.
While living underneath communism, free expression of arts was suppressed, like rock music. The only expressions of art allowed were the ones approved by the state, used to further their propaganda. Only state-approved and controlled news was allowed. Only books and magazines that further advanced the interest of the totalitarian state were allowed.
In the shadows of that, an alternative culture—sometimes we might call it a subculture—was developed. These parallel structures underneath communism created alternative publishing houses, alternative underground music like rock and roll, and an alternative to almost everything.
Unlike communism, the Roman Empire wasn’t a secular state. It used religion as a tool of propaganda to propagate and advance its message. The pagan gods were used to further the social, economic, and political system of the empire, reinforcing it in the minds of the people that if you worship these gods, all will be well.
Each and every single city had their own god. This reinforced the idea that if you pray to this god, your city will do well.
Those were the gods that reinforced the social hierarchy of the time, the economic order of the time, the political system of the time. These gods were the state approved gods—you paid homage to them.
Except for Jewish folks, there was contention back and forth all the time. That was also true with Christians. Christians said there’s only one Lord, and there’s only one God, and He is Jesus Christ. He’s not the emperor in Rome; He’s Jesus Christ.
That, in itself, was saying an alternative way of being: to identify oneself not as part of the empire or as part of the Roman empire but to be a Christian, to be one who identified and live in such a way.
They created the church in the shadow of the empire. Everyone was supposed to be fed. Everyone was supposed to see each other as equals. Each was supposed to share the responsibility for the church.
Thankfully, they did. Thankfully, throughout the history of the Christian church, the church has been a springboard for advancing Christ’s gospel message, taking it from the inside of our churches and taking it out onto the streets and into our local community and daily acts.
In the difficulty, in this difficulty of life, it can be easy for us to develop a sense of helplessness, but helplessness has never helped anybody. The Christian church continued to spread that gospel message. It continued to be filled by the Holy Spirit.
The people in those churches came to realize that, in actuality, they were not hopeless. They did not need to change the empire for them to make a difference in someone’s life. They helped people stay afloat. They tended to the sick, supported orphans and widows, and shared their meals together.
In these parallel structures of the church, they prayed, read scripture, sang their troubles away, and found encouragement by each other’s presence.
We are inheritors of this great foundation and legacy of agents of Christ’s gospel message.
The Congregationalists started Sunday schools to teach how to read, founded universities to pass on knowledge, and formed hospitals. The Evangelical and Reformed Church side of the United Church of Christ started Advocate Health Care Center. That huge health care system now was founded by our religious ancestors in the United Church of Christ.
Today, my friends, you’ve got to take this feeling of helplessness and let our prayers and our worship take you outside these walls and make yourself helpful.
Use the empathy. Say this again because there was some social media going around—that empathy is sin? No, empathy was taught by Jesus Christ.
Take this empathy that you have, this sympathy that you have for other people, and go out and do things. You don’t have to do big things. You can do small things. Join or donate to organizations.
I can guarantee you there are organizations that need volunteers and who need your money—especially need your money to hire staff and others to keep their missions afloat.
There are places called things like Courage MKE, Family Peace Center, which is connected with Sojourner, Foces de la Frontera, MICAH (which stands for Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied for Hope), Common Ground Wisconsin, African-American Leadership Alliance Milwaukee, Block by Block, the Center for Veterans Issues, Fisher House, The Gathering, The Trevor Project—which is a national organization that sets up suicide hotlines for LGBTQ youth.
In the last ten years, the mental health of LGBTQ people, especially youth, has declined.
So, if you want to volunteer for a place like The Trevor Project, you can sign up. But what they really need, because they have so many people who want to sign up and volunteer to help work those crisis hotlines, but what they really need now is money.
To be able to hire more people, who will be able to train more volunteers, to have more phone lines, those things.
There are very little things you can do that will have a large impact. No matter how much you give or how much time you have, do it.
You know, I have a friend who, for years, has been saying they’re going to volunteer. Recently, I challenged her: “You’ve been saying this for a long time. You know a place you can volunteer at. Go and Sign up. Go and sign up, stop feeling helpless.”
Be agents of Christ’s gospel message and go make a difference in someone else’s life.
One thing that annoys me the most is helplessness. We don’t need to be helpless.
Go make a difference.