A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Luke 4:14-21

January 27, 2019

I had an old man experience when I met with the youth group last week, one of those moments when I realize I am from another century if not a whole other galaxy.  We were playing a game that required us to put the names of movies stars or musician, well known people in a hat.  We would then draw names and have to act out our person for others to guess. I think most of my offerings were unknown to the group, but the one that really got me was John Wayne.  Not one kid had heard of John Wayne. I’m feeling really old after that.  So please tell me you know field of dreams……Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, baseball, shoeless joe Jackson….corn field? 

I’m hearing this story about Jesus today and thinking of the movie but I’ll get to the movie in a minute.  First let’s look at the story.  In our story, Jesus reads a passage from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue, a passage about the end of oppression, and recovery of sight, and release of prisoners, about the year of the Lord’s favor. And then Jesus tells his audience that this prophecy has been fulfilled in their presence.  The scripture Jesus reads is Isaiah telling Israel that he has been sent to proclaim the good news of God’s activity in and among and for the people of God.  Isaiah was speaking about his own day and about an end to the misery of a people scattered into slavery and exile who longed for a return to their homeland and the promise of a life blessed by God.  Surely some of those who heard Jesus read the passage heard it as a promise about their future, about a time when Rome would no longer be in charge and they would be free again. 

This familiar story about Jesus suggests that Jesus will be the one to solve the problems still plaguing Israel.  

We western Christians with our strong work ethic easily hear that Jesus is the answer to the world’s woes and that peace, freedom, and reconciliation will come about if we just work with him to help make it happen.  But here is something worth noticing about this little passage.  Jesus doesn’t say he has come to fulfill the hopes of Israel.  He doesn’t say the promise will come about in time.  He says, quite clearly that the fulfillment has already occurred.  “This passage has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  It has already happened. The promised new life is available right now.

Jesus is proclaiming a new reality, a new way of seeing life and of being in the world. The salvation he announces is already here. So maybe our work has to do with becoming aware that the kingdom of God is already here, not out in the future somewhere, but here and now.  This moment is the moment of new sight, release of captives, good news.  This is the time of the Lord’s favor.  This story comes early in Luke’s gospel.  Jesus will spend the rest of the gospel narrative calling people to open their eyes and hearts to the presence of God which is all around us, and in which we all swim.

And that’s what brings me to Field of dreams.  Kevin Costner plays Ray Kinsella, a novice corn farmer who tears up part of his corn crop to build a baseball diamond.  I’m thinking of that great scene at the end where Ray’s brother in law finally sees the ball players that have been there all along.  He looks up and asks when did these guys get here.  In that moment of his new awareness of an unexpected reality, everything shifts.  His priorities change and he is willing to take risks to support what he has come to see. He is no longer worried about the impracticality of having a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field.  He now believes in the baseball players, yes, but it is more than that.  He isn’t just a believer, he is living in a new reality.  So the question for us this morning is how do we open ourselves to the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus says has taken place?  How do we live into this new way of being.

I find an answer to that question, not in some new aged, orthodoxy-questioning, emerging view of Christianity, though I know that is where you would expect me to go on this.  No.  I find an answer in the writings of one of the most respected thinkers in the Orthodox world, Christos Yannaras, who says faith is not about a set of intellectual convictions or beliefs, but is a mode of being.  Being a Christian means being in the world in a particular way.  This mode of being involves an awareness of the immediacy of God’s reality within us and between us and around us. 

How do we enter into, become aware of and live in that mode of being?  That is our work, it is a life process.  Yannaras says we enter into that new mode of being by surrendering our cogito and desidero.  Now generally, I have little use for the latin and greek terms slipped into sermons, but these two words are worth a look.  The words have to do with thinking and desire, but Yannaras puts them in the first person to make his point.   He says the new life involves surrendering our “I think,” and “I want.”  Not thinking and desire, but the very particular personal “I think,” and “I want.”  He suggests that loosening our attachment to our way of understanding reality,  surrendering our desires and expectations is the beginning of  opening ourselves to a new way, a new possibility.  He would say that we can only do that letting go by being part of a community of those who are also trying to live into that mode of being. He would say that the Church is our salvation, not because it points us toward God, but because in the church we are freed from our own stuck-ness regarding our desires and opinions and we come to understand truth to be held by and revealed in community.  

Maybe the easier way to say that is that if we can let go of our assumptions, just a little bit, in a good community of fellow travelers, we may notice amazing things that others can see that we can’t.  We may learn that we have our own piece of the truth puzzle to contribute.  

Jesus talked about this all the time. Expand your thinking, he said.  Give up your assumptions about those who are in and who are out of your community and learn from Samaritans and sinners and Romans.  The kingdom of God is all around you.  Love your neighbor and you will begin to see it.  

So….back to the ball field.  Ray’s brother-in-law comes to see what is true and yet unseen when Ray’s daughter falls and is choking.  In the crisis of the moment the brother-in-law lets go of his agenda for a moment, shifts his “I think” and his “I want,” and is filled with concern for the child.  It is in that letting go that he sees the real.  It is also in that moment that he truly enters into community with his sister and with Ray.  He becomes alive in a new way and is filled with awe and amazement at what he has discovered.   Life is changed.

I am thinking today also of that great Verna Dozier quote where she says the institutional church is where life is lived differently not just for the church, but always in order that life may be lived differently everywhere.

Maybe that passage too has been fulfilled in our hearing.  We just have to live it.  JB