Luke 4:16-21
When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“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.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
As you probably know, I’ve been skimming around recently through other preacher’s teachings that have been posted online. I’m not doing this in order to ‘steal’ other people’s work – honest.
I’ve been doing this preaching thing here, in this church, for about 25 or 26 years now and I often feel like I have talked a particular subject to death and I am just repeating myself.
Preachers preach on the main stories in the whole Jesus cycle. I don’t know about others, but I tend to pick the key points in a longer story and use those for my messages. While reading through other’s work I’ve come to realize that I mostly focus on what Jesus says, rather than how he presents it, and through my browsing I’ve come to realize that the how is at least as important as the what – if not more so.
This recent understanding came in the form of a quote from someone I’d never heard of before -- Bishop Craig Loya, Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota. He says:
Jesus, in his time, was not seen by the bigger world as anyone special. He was not a celebrity. He was a nobody from Nazareth – a backwater town somewhere up in Galilee – far from the sophisticated urban world of Jerusalem. Until the very end of his human life most of the world had no idea he existed. Yes, he had followers but at first they were a mere handful. Having seen him or heard him once – by chance -- they were moved by curiosity to follow him to hear more and in time his fame did grow but it took centuries before he became the universal figure he is today.
For us here today and those gathered in churches around the world, Jesus is the reason we are here each week – the reason we still seek to follow him – the reason we still come together to learn from him and live in his ways. But in his lifetime, he was – to all appearances – just one of many itinerate preachers, miracle workers, story tellers, who traveled around exhorting the folk to follow him and learn from his ways.
Jesus taught people by his words, yes, but he also taught by the example of the life he lived as much as by the words he spoke. Even when he performed miraculous feats of healing, he mostly did them quietly and many times drifted silently out of town in the night to somewhere away from the crowds.
The title of this message is “Small Good Things,” a phrase I took from Bishop Loya’s statement I quoted at the beginning here today. “It is worth remembering that Jesus is God’s small, good thing for the world. The path of life Jesus sets out for us isn’t forged by victory through force. It is forged by the small, good things of standing in the broken, forgotten places, with the forgotten, vulnerable people.”
This is why we follow Jesus. Not because he can dazzle us with miracles, but that he stands here with us – in this broken world -- when we are the broken ones, the lost ones. He stands with us and models for us with his very being, that we are loved, and that love is what we are about.
Jesus does not expect us to do all the big things, but if we are indeed his followers then Jesus does expect us to do every little thing that is in front of us, and to do it with the biggest possible love.
I’ve been doing this preaching thing here, in this church, for about 25 or 26 years now and I often feel like I have talked a particular subject to death and I am just repeating myself.
Preachers preach on the main stories in the whole Jesus cycle. I don’t know about others, but I tend to pick the key points in a longer story and use those for my messages. While reading through other’s work I’ve come to realize that I mostly focus on what Jesus says, rather than how he presents it, and through my browsing I’ve come to realize that the how is at least as important as the what – if not more so.
This recent understanding came in the form of a quote from someone I’d never heard of before -- Bishop Craig Loya, Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota. He says:
- “It is worth remembering today that Jesus is God’s small, good thing for the world. The path of life Jesus sets out for us isn’t forged by victory through force. It is forged by the small, good thing of standing in the broken, forgotten places, with the forgotten, vulnerable people. It is forged as God’s extravagant love reaches over every division that tears God’s children apart. While the world will always worship and covet what is big and powerful, small and humble is how God saves that world from itself”.
Jesus, in his time, was not seen by the bigger world as anyone special. He was not a celebrity. He was a nobody from Nazareth – a backwater town somewhere up in Galilee – far from the sophisticated urban world of Jerusalem. Until the very end of his human life most of the world had no idea he existed. Yes, he had followers but at first they were a mere handful. Having seen him or heard him once – by chance -- they were moved by curiosity to follow him to hear more and in time his fame did grow but it took centuries before he became the universal figure he is today.
For us here today and those gathered in churches around the world, Jesus is the reason we are here each week – the reason we still seek to follow him – the reason we still come together to learn from him and live in his ways. But in his lifetime, he was – to all appearances – just one of many itinerate preachers, miracle workers, story tellers, who traveled around exhorting the folk to follow him and learn from his ways.
Jesus taught people by his words, yes, but he also taught by the example of the life he lived as much as by the words he spoke. Even when he performed miraculous feats of healing, he mostly did them quietly and many times drifted silently out of town in the night to somewhere away from the crowds.
The title of this message is “Small Good Things,” a phrase I took from Bishop Loya’s statement I quoted at the beginning here today. “It is worth remembering that Jesus is God’s small, good thing for the world. The path of life Jesus sets out for us isn’t forged by victory through force. It is forged by the small, good things of standing in the broken, forgotten places, with the forgotten, vulnerable people.”
This is why we follow Jesus. Not because he can dazzle us with miracles, but that he stands here with us – in this broken world -- when we are the broken ones, the lost ones. He stands with us and models for us with his very being, that we are loved, and that love is what we are about.
Jesus does not expect us to do all the big things, but if we are indeed his followers then Jesus does expect us to do every little thing that is in front of us, and to do it with the biggest possible love.
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