Luke 4: 14-21 – Jesus reads from Isaiah at the Nazareth synagogue
One of the most precious human experiences is to discover what your life is about and why you’re here.
We often act as though only young people have dreams and hopes: finding a cure for cancer, or flying to the moon, or perfecting a mousetrap, or having an idyllic marriage and ideal children.
The human heart and mind have an amazing ability to dream dreams that stir up passion and determination. World-changers like Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were all taught the faith as children and gave their lives for a world that manifested God’s ideal of peace and justice.
Maybe you remember dreams that were disappointed, and hopes that never came to pass. Maybe your experience has formed an uneasy truce with that idealism over the years. But it’s important for us to push past the trap of thinking we’re too old or too tired to discover a deeper sense of purpose and call in our lives even right now.
I’ve read and preached today’s verses from Luke many times. Jesus was back in his home town of Nazareth. Everyone knew him as a kid. He’d grown up, apparently gone off to the big city of Jerusalem for schooling and training, and then returned. You may remember, just before this episode John had baptized him in the Jordan; he’d seen the dove descend and heard God’s voice saying “this is my beloved son.” Luke then tells us Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days where he encountered great temptation to walk the wrong way.
So now he begins his ministry. He stepped to the front platform, the bema, in his hometown synagogue, and read from the appointed scripture of the day from Isaiah:
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.
Then Jesus shocked the people when he said: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Wow! I’ve been wondering whether Jesus himself had an Epiphany right there, right then. Do you suppose he’d been walking along, guided by the spirit, and had come to that synagogue intending to read the Word and preach to the people and suddenly had that spine-tingling shiver that opened his heart and mind so that he realized that God was calling him to this prophetic role?
Whatever it was, certainly Jesus knew he was more than a guest preacher, a son of the congregation who’d gone off, grown up, and come back with a powerful message. This was certainly no act of arrogance, no youthful, pompous claim to be something he wasn’t. Rather here we witness a cornerstone for all that followed – his debut, if you will. And we can well imagine that what he said stirred the hearts of many who had heard all the words and endured all the rhetoric, and who had reached the point that they doubted God could ever stir up the people and open the new age with the coming of Messiah.
Jesus knew what his life was about. He knew his gifts and his weaknesses. He knew his calling and his vocation. The Spirit of God filled him and lived through him.
We believe that incarnation is God’s act of becoming human in Jesus, but not only that. Surely, incarnation is also about what God becomes in us. Because when we choose our path of discipleship we don’t sign up as observers. Much more, we adopt the life of Jesus as the model for our own; the spirit of Jesus as the guide in our personal desire to engage the world and make it more what God has always intended.
This is truly vocation – a holy calling to live your life and to let your life speak. Parker Palmer, the Quaker writer, teacher and activist, wrote a compelling little volume by that title: Let Your Life Speak. In it he said:
Vocation, at its deepest level is not “Oh, boy, do I want to go to this strange place where I have to learn a new way to live and where no one, including me, understands what I’m doing.” Vocation, at its deepest level is, “this is something I can’t not do for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling.”
[Palmer, Parker J. 2000. Let your life speak: listening for the voice of vocation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; pg. 25.]
Have you ever had an experience like that… a time when you realized there was something you couldn’t not do? I have.
I was headed toward parish ministry from early childhood and wrote my eighth grade vocational project about ministry. I still have it. “When Duty Calls” it says on the cover, and shows a man in a black robe looking very dignified. The teacher commented “nice cover,” then gave me a B+.
I know I was initially drawn to ministry because my parents were both ordained. I was particularly influenced by my father who was a parish pastor and conference minister before his untimely death at age 55. He knew I had a deepening sense of call and often said “don’t pursue ministry just because your parents have.” My mother was also ordained, as was a grandfather who with my grandmother was a missionary to Japan for many years early in the last century.
So as I grew through high school and college, I explored whether ministry was, in fact, something I couldn’t not do. Like a fish in the tank, I was so immersed in ministry as vocation that I needed to consider alternatives. Was there any other field to which I might feel called? I looked carefully at religious journalism, clinical psychology and social work, but ultimately came full circle and went to seminary then directly into parish ministry, ordained soon after my 24th birthday.
During that time of exploration I was profoundly shaped by the opportunity to go to Selma, Alabama, in March 1965, as Martin Luther King, Jr. led black folks pressing for their right to vote, and led people of good will from all across the land to support them on the eve of the Voter’s Rights Act of 1965. I was shaped, too, by the Vietnam War and protests against it, and by a sense that religious communities were too passive, too silent in the face of injustice of every kind.
For a while I thought I’d go to an inner city church in Chicago and minister among poor folks, marginalized folks, and make the world better that way. I had an edge to me, a righteous (or self-righteous) impatience with power and privilege. How ironic, then, that when I was seeking my first job during my third year in seminary I ended up as an Associate in a UCC congregation in a very affluent suburb of Chicago. My first real sermon was entitled “Don’t Tread on Me” and I asserted that I was a liberal Christian and that I wasn’t very patient with a conservative, judgmental understanding of the Gospel.
More importantly, in nearly 42 years since I was ordained I’ve had the privilege of knowing that I’ve lived my true vocation: sharing life with so many good people – and more than half that time here with you. We’ve learned together that following God’s nudge and God’s call sometimes leads us to places we expect… and sometimes to a great deal more. For me, parish ministry has been something I couldn’t not do!
We believe that ministry – in every shape and every manifestation – is a holy calling. But we don’t believe for a moment that always means being ordained and leading a parish. God calls us as disciples and equips us in countless ways. And we can answer that call with the confidence God will make us able to live our faith in our daily lives.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said:
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
How has your life spoken?
- What has God said to you in the dark nights of the soul and in the joyous experiences of forgiveness and renewal?
- What have you said to the world through your vocation, your relationships, your ideals, and your passions?
- How has God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ also shown itself incarnate in you?
Jesus wasn’t just saying we should be nice. He was calling his followers to be agents of healing, agents of reconciliation, agents of justice. Because he embodied the spirit of God who takes no delight in possessions and power and position; but delights in the ability of each holy individual who works for the common good in the name and spirit of Jesus.
There’s no question whether your life speaks.
What does it say? That’s a question worthy of a lifetime.