Jesus walked in and looked around at the people gathered here in his home town. He had been preaching throughout the country, and was actually surprised when he was invited to preach at this synagogue. He knew everyone in the room. He recognized the faces of some of his teachers and neighbors. Parents of his friends, and friends of his parents . . . . he knew these folks and they knew him. Or they thought they did. That’s the thing about grown-ups and people they knew as children. The children may have grown up but the grown-ups still have a hard time seeing them that way. They still see the kid instead of the adult.

But the worshippers settled in, some hoping the service wouldn’t take too long. After all, there was a meal waiting, and this was the one time in the week they had time to really relax. Word had spread that Jesus was quite the teacher. Most of them found that reputation surprising. Some had a hard time believing any of it, after all, he was still the little snotty-nosed kid of Joseph the carpenter and his young wife Mary. No one was expecting much – but they were open to hear him preach, out of curiosity, if nothing else.

Some of his old teachers sat close, with pride in their eyes. It was more than curiosity from them. They had some hopes and dreams. The best teachers take pride in their students and surely there was some of that in the crowd.

 ‘There had been something different about him all along,’ his teachers could tell you. ‘He asked so many questions and he was so intense and serious about his study of scripture.’ He seemed to value it as much as they did. Maybe more.

The service opened with familiar prayers and songs.

It was the teachers who were on the edges of their seats when Jesus was handed the scroll, opened it and then rolled it to the words of the prophet Isaiah. He knew right away what passage he wanted to read.

His teachers were poised for his choice of readings, and his interpretation.

One elderly man, especially, leaned forward. He was having a hard time holding on to hope for this, his people. Things were bad and he knew Israel needed God’s help more than ever. But, as he was a scholar, he was aware that things were not going to get better until the people returned to God’s ways. He felt his own sense of failure about that.

He loved the story in Nehemiah about the reading of the scripture, when the people got it, really got it. “They wept,” the text said. “All the people wept when they heard the word of the law.”  And, “They bowed their heads and worshipped the Holy One with their faces to the ground.” 

It was a radical reformation. They returned to their roots. It made a difference. He knew that was what was needed now. He knew the people needed to once again be the holy people had called them to be.

But the lines from Nehemiah that bothered him were these: ‘So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.’

He had been a teacher all his life.

He looked back on his life and felt a failure . . . for he didn’t feel that he had ever been able to interpret scripture in a way so that the people could understand it.

But from what he had been hearing about Jesus, hope stirred within his heart. Perhaps this would be the one who could interpret the word in a way that the people could grasp the importance. Perhaps they would be moved to tears.

He remembered as a young man when he, too, was moved to tears by the text. When he realized that the words were written to him. That God would speak to him . . . to him! That God would call him - - him!

 He felt inadequate, and in God’s presence, there had been so many changes he wanted to make in his own life, so many changes he wanted to help make in the community. But there it was, even now, he felt his eyes welling up: God spoke to him. God spoke to them all. And that, that was still something to which he could cling.

He turned his eyes toward the young man sitting behind the scroll. Through the tears forming in his eyes, he saw him in a different light. He was ready to hear his words of wisdom. You could hear a pin drop.

Jesus read aloud, “The Spirit of the Holy One is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, and 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 Holy One’s favor.”

A lot of them listened as they often did, with one eye open and ears as closed as their hearts. Others were alert, anxious to hear what he would say. Pretty words. They had heard them before. But the words had lost their meaning for many. For others, the hunger was great for a savior, a redeemer. Roman rule had chaffed and irked them, as any would be irritated under foreign occupation. There had been those from near this area who had sought to overthrow the Romans, and not only did they meet with death, the situation in Nazareth was made worse by those attempts. Everyone was punished for the actions of a few.

Tensions were high in those days, and in that room.

Jesus rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant.

Because of recent events in Nazareth from those who were stirring up resistance of the Roman occupation, and the stringent ways that resistance had been put down, people were nervous. Not all of one mind, by any means, but all ears at this point.

The old teacher heard the words of hope in scripture. ‘Help them understand,’ he almost muttered aloud.

The sermon was short. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

That was it, but that was enough.

The Spirit had anointed him for a mission: to bring good news to the poor, to heal the blind, to free the prisoners and the oppressed.

This was it. Jesus came to “proclaim the year of the Holy One’s favor"—the year of Jubilee, in which debts were meant to be erased and slaves were freed. Every fifty years, the plan was that everybody started over again with a clean slate. All were forgiven and received into the community of faith on equal footing.

With the words "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," Jesus concluded his reading and launched his mission. It was a shrewd and stunning announcement of his purpose. The message had become political.

The old teacher looked around him to see if someone had opened a door, for it felt to him that there was a breeze in the room, he could almost feel it on his wrinkled face. But no, the door was not open . . . not the door to the house in which they were meeting.

But he knew that a wind was blowing, and a door had been opened, and change was coming. He closed his eyes and dared to dream for a moment of belonging to a people who had justice and compassion as their vision, a people who were as concerned for the poor and the homeless and the outcast as they were for themselves – indeed, who recognized that all people are a part of a whole  . . . Was this the revival he longed for? Could he dare to dream again? And then a chill went up his spine . . . unexpected. What would be required of him? What would he have to do now that he could no longer simply complain about the way things were going? Would he have to do more, be more, would he have to change, as well?

The text ends with the full text of Jesus’ sermon: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

I, of course, took liberty with the text, in the form of midrash. There is nothing in the original text about a teacher. Next week, our text will make clear how this brief talk in his hometown was a failure in many ways. It almost got him killed.

No one likes to hear sermons that hit too close to home and challenge us to grow, and to be more faithful. A good sermon, like a good newspaper, afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. Truth is fine until it hits us where we live.

Luke puts this story fairly early in Jesus’ ministry. For Luke, this is the vision that would lead Jesus. The people may have been looking for the messiah, but Jesus defines what his own mission is about. And it isn’t a military solution. The role of the messiah for Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy and the messiah is God’s servant to turn the hopes of the poor, imprisoned, and oppressed into reality. The messiah will bring the amnesty, the liberation, and the restoration of the year of the jubilee.

And the story defines not only who Jesus’ was, and what his vision was, but to whom his ministry was addressed and what that ministry would mean. It is important for us to note that he was in the synagogue, honoring the Sabbath. The foundation for his teaching is found in the scriptures, the location is in the synagogue – his ministry is inside, not outside, the bosom of Judaism and the traditions of his people.

He is not an opponent of his tradition, but a reformer in a radical sense. Radical – meaning roots – his mission is based on returning to the founding myths of his own tradition. The founding roots which hold dear justice and mercy for those who cannot care for themselves.

The founding roots which put the well-being of the community as a value worth upholding.

Paul is concerned with the same thing: the well-being of the whole community.

We hear all the time: how our differences separate us. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus was not a new idea, it’s ancient. Different races, different ages, different sexual orientations, different abilities, different cultures, different experiences, different opinions, different beliefs -- all, we are told, separate us from one another.

And, let’s be honest – it’s easier to relate to someone who is similar to us. Someone who agrees with us, has the same values we have, and the same experiences.

But, of course, ‘easy’ is not the point.

Differences challenge us . . .  we have to make more of an effort to get along with someone who is different. We have to use our imaginations, we have to learn to hear one another, we have to be open to someone else’s reality being very different from ours. We have to be open to our surety being challenged, our reality not being universal.

Paul believed our differences need not separate us.

Paul saw differences as gifts . . . gifts from God. To Paul, the differences were necessary to the health of the whole.

Paul used the body as a analogy for the church. We’ve heard it before . . . it is part of the usual liturgy for all of our ordination services, and we will be using it later on this morning when we ordain and install some new officers.

It was brilliant of Paul, in terms of the ways a system actually functions. But it was even more daring in its day and to that rag-tag little group of folk seeking to follow Jesus in Corinth.

Think, if you will, of that group of people trying to figure out how to be a true community, how to be the beloved community so long ago . . . talk about diversity! They are Jewish and Greek, they are slaves and free . . . and they are striving to live with each other in ways that reflect mutual love, justice, and support. They are trying to be a holy people.

It could not have been easy. Living in community is never easy.

Partnership between two people is a struggle. And community is a similar commitment with a whole group of people. Not all of the same mind, any more than any two people are really always totally in sync.

Kathy Galloway once wrote of this struggle and its importance:

“Without the ability to imagine, even just for a few moments, what life looks like seen through another’s eyes, without the capacity to empathize with the pain or delight of another, to know that there have I been, and there I am, without the courage to go beyond the boundaries of our own self-interest, prejudices, cares, need, and meet others without defenses, how can we affirm with Paul, that ‘if one part of the body suffers, all the other parts suffer with it; if one part is praised, all the others share its happiness’ (I Corinthians 12:26) It is not just that we have bodies, we are a body, in which the divisions are the illusion and the barriers and the disease. Of all the divisions, the most damaging is that of one part of our self from another part of our self. As long as we are strangers to ourselves, then we will be deeply strangers to others. Sometimes it may be our experience of being deeply loved by another that will bring us home. Life is kinder that we let it be, for there are so many occasions for love, if we don’t let fear overpower us. So may opportunities for healing, for wholeness, and all of them signs of the grace of God that desires to go on loving us and healing us and calling us home to ourselves and to each other. But without the facing of fear, even stumbling, even trembling, even sick to the pit of our stomachs, without these abandonments of jumping off the cliff into the arms of God, then we can only armor, repeat, retrench, self-protect, and whine at anyone who is different from us. And face lives without passion, without sap, without grace.”

 God is always calling God’s people back to the radical roots of justice and compassion and the unpopular idea that all of humanity is connected and that now is the time to live that truth in our life together.

It would be easy to feel guilty about how little we have done, how sad our witness has been, how dim our light has shone. We could even let that keep us stuck and hinder us from becoming more fully God’s own people.

But, instead, we can take our cue from the Israelites in Nehemiah’s day who were told: “This day is holy to the Holy One your God: do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Go – they were told – eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our God; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Holy One is your strength.”

The joy of the Holy One is our strength.