Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21

God be in my words and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our understanding. Amen.

As I pondered the lessons appointed for this Sunday, I found my thoughts drawn again and again to the question of what it means for us to be the Church — the Body of Christ. I’m sure that the familiar lesson from the first letter to the Christians at Corinth, which contains the Apostle Paul’s wonderful physical analogy, started my thoughts in that direction. Paul’s metaphor is so apt when we think about our church family. We are all part of St. Barnabas’ and important — even vital — to our common life, but we also very different in personality, talents, strengths and weaknesses. The point Paul was making to the church in Corinth was that all parts are necessary — the flashy parts like the eyes and hands, and the less glamorous parts like the feet and the internal organs. It isn’t important what part of the body you think you are; the point is that all members of the Body — all members of the congregation — have a role in our shared ministry that is their especial task and responsibility. We need one another — and not only to pay our pledges and share the work of ministry; we need one another because when we come together, week after week, to worship and share the Eucharistic meal, our community of faith is enriched, strengthened and nourished by the diversity of our fellowship. And like a family, which we are, or a body — as in Paul’s vision — we need to look out for one another.

This sense of community, the inclusive and welcoming nature of the Christian enterprise at its best, has its roots deep in our tradition. It’s possible to get a sense of it in the passage from the Hebrew Scriptures, which we heard this morning.. The historical background for this account of Ezra opening the book of the Law and reading from it is that these events happened sometime around 445 BC — after the fall of Israel and Judah, and the people’s exile to Babylon. Ezra and Nehemiah were leaders of a group of people who were attempting to restore both the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, and to reestablish religious practices that were in accordance with their understanding of the Mosaic Law. In short, they were trying to reestablish Judaism by rebuilding the city, Temple and practices at its very heart. Their efforts (and the efforts of others called to a similar mission, over the centuries) bore fruit; if they had not read the book of the Law “facing the square before the Water Gate,” perhaps there would have been no Temple for Jesus to preach in, some 450 years later. The point that struck me in all of this is that it wasn’t enough for Nehemiah and Ezra to be people of faith — they had to include and inspire others if they were going to broaden and strengthen Judaism enough to survive in the face of all the other cultural pressures. Simply belonging — by virtue of one’s heredity — to the tribes of the Israelites wasn’t enough; it was also necessary for the people to be committed to a right relationship with God and converted to the way of life that identified them as the chosen people of God.

The body has many members, and the members have to work together to preserve the health and vitality of the body. A community is more than a collection of people thrown together in some kind of proximity. There needs to be a shared sense of mission or purpose, of identity and connectedness, in order for a gathering to be transformed into the Body of Christ. But we know this — and in large measure, I think we at St. Barnabas’ live this out. So, beyond caring for one another, and welcoming the stranger, beyond praying and sharing the Eucharist together, what does it really mean to be the Body of Christ?

In the lesson from the Gospel of Luke, we have an account of a dramatic and formative moment in Jesus’ ministry. This occurs early in his ministry; after his Baptism and testing in the wilderness, he returns — “filled with the power of the Spirit” — to the region of Galilee. And as he travels through the countryside, teaching in the synagogues, he is, we are told, “praised by everyone.” But then, he goes to Nazareth, his hometown; he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And he read a passage from the Prophet Isaiah’s writings, something everyone in that synagogue would have understood as a reference to the Messiah — the Anointed One of God — who was, they believed, coming to set all things to rights and to cast out forever the hated Roman oppressors. And Jesus, after reading this familiar, comforting passage, takes his seat and tells them all: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

It isn’t what people expected to hear. And frankly, it wasn’t a completely welcome message to them. In their minds, the fulfillment of that passage of Scripture would be accomplished with dramatic displays of God’s power: the Romans driven out, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah restored to glory, the Gentiles — the non-Israelites — removed from the soil of the Promised Land. And here was Jesus — whom they had known through all the undignified, awkward, and embarrassing stages of his childhood and adolescence — saying to them: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The part of the story the lectionary selection for this week leaves out is how Jesus expands on his new vision; how he explains to the gathered people that God’s favor is not limited to them and their kin; and it leaves out the crowd’s reaction, their angry attempt drive him out of the synagogue and to hurl him off the cliff. But maybe that part of the story wasn’t included this week because we are being encouraged to focus on Jesus’ insight and vision, instead of allowing ourselves to be distracted by the Nazarenes’ inability to accept it. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

“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 let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” We have no trouble, really, in seeing how Jesus was and remains the fulfillment of that prophetic utterance. For myself, I know that, in the deepest poverty of my flawed and broken soul, I have received the good news that Jesus brings: that despite my sins and failings, I am loved — as you are loved — by God. Jesus has released me (and you) from the captivity of fear and sin; he has opened our eyes to new vision and insight, he has freed us all from oppression and has made us aware of the Lord’s favor. It’s why we come here, week after week, to worship, and to be strengthened for the various tasks and ministries to which we are called. That part isn’t hard. The hard part comes when we read this passage and recognized that we are the Body of Christ, and as the body of Christ, this passage applies to us, too — to us as individuals, and to our corporate community of faith. We have, each and all, been anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind. We have been anointed and empowered to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor — not as something that happened long ago, in the birth, ministry, and resurrection of Christ, but as something that continues to happen now, today, this instant. Today, my brothers and sisters, we have heard this scripture fulfilled in our hearing.

So what does that mean to us? In the light of that scripture passage, what does it mean for us to be the Church, the Body of Christ? Or to phrase the question slightly differently, what would we — the faith community of St. Barnabas’ — look like, how would we change if we all behaved as if we believed that that prophecy was true of us? It is something for us to ponder as individuals, and it is something for us to discuss as a parish, and even as a diocese. In some ways, I think the institutional Church stands at a crossroads — and I don’t just mean the Episcopal denomination, I mean the wider Christian enterprise. The “way we’ve always done things” doesn’t seem to work as well as it used to; more and more people grow to adulthood with little or no understanding — beyond what they gather from the secular culture’s oddly slanted perspective — of what Christianity, and Christian people, are all about. If all you ever saw of Christianity was the coverage of scandals and schisms the media portrays, you might be forgiven for imagining that the church is about rules, hypocrisy, and arguments about the nature of orthodoxy. But the Body of Christ is anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. The Body of Christ is called to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to comfort the widows and orphans, to welcome the stranger, and tirelessly, to work for justice. That’s a long way from getting mired in arguments about doctrine, orthodoxy and church polity. And it is also a long way from getting consumed by the practical concerns of paying for heating oil and maintaining our buildings. Somehow, I think all of us — the whole of Christendom, not just we at St. Barnabas’ — have to dream, and pray, and imagine our way into a new vision of how to be the Church, a new paradigm that allows us to be the Body of Christ, and doesn’t confine us within a limiting institutional framework. It’s not our buildings (beloved as they are) that are the Church; it’s the people, the members of the Body, who do the work of Christ in the world.

It is my prayer that we will find new ways to be Christ’s hands and feet, to be His suffering heart of love, His compassionate eyes, so that we all — together — may do the work in the world that He would have us do.

In the Name of Christ, AMEN.

Sermon preached by Beth Hilgartner
at St. Barnabas’, Norwich