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The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C
January 25, 2004
Christ Church, Covington
“Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled
in your hearing.’” (Luke 4:21).
Everything has a beginning, even the universe; a truth of faith that
science itself has come to concede by positing the singularity of “the big
bang” and a beginning to time. In other words, there’s a point at which
something new happens, a threshold or boundary which is crossed, which
can’t be predicted on the basis of what’s gone before. A singularity is
the “now for something completely different” immortalized by Monty Python;
a group of comics, not theoretical physicists, but still not too far off
the track. Thus, “something completely different”: a singularity, and the
origin of the universe.
But our tradition of faith has long been addicted to singularities of all
sorts: not only in the doctrine of creation, which posits a new beginning,
but also in the ministry of Jesus Christ, in his coming into the world and
in the new thing that he has done by his death and resurrection.
Christian faith rests on a series of mighty singularities, of things
completely different: the crossing of the boundary between the human and
the divine, and the threshold of passage from death to life. All of this
God has done in Jesus Christ.
You don’t even need to be a Christian to understand the threshold
experience of graduating from school, getting a driver’s license,
beginning a new job. Anyone who has married or enrolled in a twelve step
program will know what a new beginning is like. But we are Christians: we
have come to expect new beginnings: conversion, new birth, renewal in the
Spirit. Christians have come to recognize the evidence of the singularity
of Jesus’ death and resurrection, not by peering metaphorically into the
Hubble telescope or closely examining pictures from the Mars rover (as
wonderful as those are) but by seeing the effect in their own lives.
When Jesus comes to Nazareth to read the Scriptures and to preach in the
synagogue, he is pointing us in the direction of this new life. He reads
from the prophet Isaiah, who proclaims a year of jubilee: a year in which
the captives are released, the blind are given their sight, and the
oppressed go free. It is a new beginning that the prophet proclaims.
Blindness and captivity and oppression are about as stale and predictable
as the old life of sin can be. They cry out for singularity, for renewal,
for a new beginning. So Jesus makes the words of the prophet his own, and
crosses the threshold, when he says, ‘Today this scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing’. Not in the past, not in the future; not
yesterday or tomorrow but “now”.
Jesus’ comment is an invitation to a whole new way of life. Not just in
the “tweaking” of a new year’s resolution (though this itself is a sign of
our of this way of thinking). Jesus’ call is a call to boldness and
generosity and liberation; more precisely, it is a call to faith, to trust
in God. Jesus is calling us to live the new life now, today: not some
time in the future, perhaps after death, but now. To be bold and
generous, to set release the captives and set free the oppressed, requires
real trust in God. For me, having faith in Jesus Christ and in his
mission is the “something completely different” that I want to forget
about most of the time.
So now we hear these words and are confronted again by the call to faith.
What is the new beginning that we will make? Remember, he says “today”.
What will we do, in the “now” that God has provided? How have we let
ourselves be blind and captive to sin? How have we oppressed others,
failed in our trust in God? My guess is that the failures of generosity
and forgiveness will stand out without much help from me, if we will only
take seriously the “today” that Jesus addresses to us. It is only our
failure to respond that will frustrate the new beginning.
After all, God is doing a new thing in Jesus Christ, and the new and
singular thing that he is doing requires new and singularly changed
people. So Jesus continues to address us with this word today, so that we
may respond by grace with the new beginning that promises a whole new
world.
The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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