Sunday, January 26, 2025

Epiphany 3 (Year C)

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: The kind of world we want to live in

It’s been 55 years since the extraordinary achievement that was the first moon landing. On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, two lonely representatives of the planet earth, separated from the rest of us by 239,000 miles, set foot on our nearest celestial companion. Some of you will be able to recall where you were and what you were doing when it happened, but all of us can appreciate how symbolic it was. We humans had willed ourselves out and away from our home planet, venturing into the hostile and forbidding environment of space, and we had succeeded, and we had done so because countless individuals and an indomitable spirit had chosen to do so. The lesson is that there is nothing superhuman required if we want to accomplish great things, it’s just a matter of having uncommon proportions of what is common to all of us: determination, resilience, adaptability, courage, teamwork, problem solving, imagination, and a good bit of daring. And then focus. A goal towards which to direct all that energy and talent. And for manned space flight, that came in the form of an extraordinary challenge laid down by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961, in front of a joint session of Congress: to land a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth…before the end of the decade.

Over the next several years, through the Mercury and Gemini flights, the various systems, techniques, hardware, and software were tested, refined, checked and double-checked. The astronauts and flight controllers were put through their paces. Setbacks became lessons learned. There was a goal to reach, and we had to reach it. It was a matter of national prestige; it held the promise of new knowledge and understanding; it became a matter of honoring an assassinated President; and it was, above all, a way to prove what we were capable of as a species. “If we can put a man on the moon,” it is often said, “why can’t we do x, y, or z?” There is both optimism and pessimism in the question. On the one hand, look at what we can achieve when we have a mind to – even when it seems improbable. On the other hand, it begs the question, why do our more down-to-earth problems, those that are, literally, right here on earth, continue to frustrate and elude us?

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” In this short passage, Jesus identifies himself as the long-anticipated Messiah. He makes himself very clear and explicit. He is Israel’s king. He is the anointed one of God spoken of by the prophets. But for his first hearers, the real issue would become what he was not: not a military commander, not a nationalistic crusader, not a restorer of Israel’s national pride. He was not what they were looking for. He made his entire focus the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed during that brief span of 30-35 years he had to walk the earth. The revolution that sets the world free, says Jesus, is the one that happens within us, that restores to us and to everyone around us our God-given dignity; otherwise, we may find the world changing plenty around us and yet not really changing at all because we have brought our same old selves along with it. How have we, the followers of Jesus, done on our watch? How have we done in comparison with him during the two thousand years we have had at our disposal and with ever-expanding resources of knowledge and reach? The obvious answer is not as great. While we may have made some progress in some areas and can count a lot of successes, we can still do much, much better. If we can put a man on the moon, why is it that we seem incapable of making this world more like the one Jesus had in mind? 

As I have pondered this question this week, I have kept coming round to what, I suppose, might be called the “real” question. It comes down to intentions. What is the kind of world we want to live in? Because if putting a man on the moon is our object lesson in what we can accomplish when we set ourselves a goal, then we have to ask ourselves, what, in this instance, do we have a mind to do, or, rather more devastatingly, what do we not have a mind to do? What is the kind of world we want to live in? And the answer that keeps coming back to me is that, almost as a rule, the world we want to live in and whatever it is we tend to strive for, God is almost invariably on the opposite side. We get it wrong because we have our objectives wrong.

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you…for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. (Luke 6:20-26)

Now you may be asking yourself, if Jesus is really being serious here, why is God so against success? Doesn’t God want us to be happy and prosperous? Isn’t that only fair and just? Why is God so hard on us for just doing our best and reaping the rewards that come of it. I hear what Jesus is saying – be nice, be generous, be humble, don’t be so concerned about yourself that you forget to see and help other people – but how can I be responsible for everybody? Doesn’t it all seem too idealistic? Well, all I can say to you is what I have been saying to myself all week: if this were the right way to think about it and if the way we typically do things was so great, why are we not living in a world much closer to God’s dream for it?  

Abraham Lincoln was once heard to say, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.” The reason that we can’t get things right is that we have forgotten about God. The proof? If we really loved God, we would be living in a far different world. And it would be a world completely opposite to ours. We would not be so overtaken with division and anger and greed and want and hopelessness because we would love each other too much to tolerate that anyone who was within our reach could be touched by anything except our understanding and compassion and our desire for only what was best for them. “God does not have to choose sides,” said someone commenting on Lincoln’s quote, “We do. The question is: Are we on God’s side? We are invited to come alongside God, not the other way around. It’s as simple and complicated as that.”