Our gospel reading ends with, “And Jesus went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.”
Have you ever wondered what that message might be? We have portions of what we believe were some of his sermons, but can you imagine hearing him preach for yourself? Talk about a message that transforms your life! Think about the most inspiring message you have ever received, and then imagine that the person who delivered it was able to remove all of your doubts and fears and make you feel more complete and purpose-filled than you ever thought that you could.
I don’t mean to dumb Jesus down to the level of a motivational guru, but isn’t the message of Jesus that repentance draws you into God’s presence in a way that connects you with all of creation? Isn’t salvation as much about our lives today as it is about the promise of eternity? Isn’t that the Gospel – the Good News?
I imagine that if we asked each person here to say what he or she believes is the Gospel, the Good News, or the message of Jesus, we might get a few different answers. We might also get some answers that repeat what we’ve been taught to say or answers that give us comfort to hear.
According to our texts today, I believe the Good News we have received is that redemption comes through community, salvation is experienced between us mutually, and Jesus came to demonstrate the active presence of God and to invite us to participate in it. To get at the heart of these passages, I’d like for you to join me in a thought experiment where we consider, to the best of our abilities, the perspective of the original audience.
In order to assist you, I am going to attempt to narrate a retelling of certain portions of these readings from the perspective of someone in the original audience. Before doing that I feel that I must state the obvious, which is that even the most scholarly approach distills these stories through cultural and theological lenses. In other words, it’s impossible to read scripture without any form of bias or expectation.
For example, we typically treat Isaiah as though it was written by one person, but most scholars believe that Isaiah was written in three different eras and relates more to a style of discourse about the fall of Israel and Judah than an actual person.
For the sake of this exercise, I’ll try to thread the needle between both of those expectations while focusing on a first-person account of someone who might have heard this prophetic word while in captivity in Babylon. Ready? Ok. Here is my version of a person receiving the word of God from Isaiah:
“That Prophet is at it again. Isaiah, they call him – I think. He always speaks at difficult times. His words were shared in our palaces and public squares before the Babylonians took us, conquered us, and divided us like things to be traded. He told us of our sin as a nation while mothers cried because the old and young suffered a miserable fate. I’m not even sure if it is the same man who speaks now. Perhaps he is as much an idea as he is a man. Somehow, he speaks the very words of God.
It’s not so much about predictions coming true. It is more about representing truth. His words point out the truth we can hardly bare to see. This time his words offer a certain assurance. We have paid for our sins, and even more! We are even hearing rumors that Jerusalem is being restored.
Not that I want to go back. That place is in shambles. Servitude – which is terrible no matter how you slice it – was not as bad for me as it was for others. I’m a scribe. I am useful to our captors, and I have been given opportunities to earn money and support my family. It wasn’t so easy for those with no skill and strong backs. Let’s not even start talking about what the women have endured.
Now they are calling for us to return and restore Jerusalem, and this Prophet has to remind us how vast the creative force of God is and how limited our efforts to control the world must be. Not only that, he reminds us that God is always restoring us – not just me, but us. And our connection as God’s people gives us hope. Not only that, but it allows us to be defined by what God is doing – no matter what we have done. That’s good news – we are a people that God restores and redeems over and over and over again!”
Of course, we know from the prophecies of Ezra and Nehamia that Emporer Cyrus allowed the Hebrew people to return to Jerusalem, but it wasn’t quite as rosy as Isaiah promised as they remained a vassal state of various powers and dictators.
By the time this Rabi, Jesus, came to the scene, Rome was in charge, and there was talk of revolution everywhere. Years after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, stories about him were being written down to share with future generations – even you and me. I’d like to think there here was a person in the synagogue in Capernaum one day who saw Jesus teach in a way that silenced the Pharisees, and maybe he even commanded some compulsive busybody to be silent. The text begins with Jesus healing Peter’s Mother-in-law, but it says that “the whole city was gathered around her door.” Maybe that same person told someone about it – someone who was in the back of the crowd – when they were sharing a meal the next day, and maybe it went something like this:
“You won’t believe it. I followed him to that disciple, Peter’s, Mother-in-law. I tell you, she went from flat on her back to serving lunch in no time! Weird, I know. You would think someone else would let her rest, but she seemed fairly unstoppable. Perhaps her gratitude was so great that she felt like she had no other choice. Well, of course everyone and their cousin showed up, and he healed as many as he could. He even told some of them who seemed possessed to be silent, but it seemed like he wasn’t just talking to them. He was talking to whatever it was that controlled them. You should have seen them afterward! It was like he reached in and pulled out their doubts and fears. But then he snuck off in the middle of the night.
At first, we were devastated. But then we came to see that we could actually take care of each other. We could be God’s presence for each other. We could receive God’s presence from each other! The good news is that when we realized that salvation had already come, we wanted to do something in response. We wanted to share it, to seek others out, and to demonstrate it in new ways every day!”
And that is the message of Jesus! God offers redemption through a community of believers. In a community, we find that our salvation is not exclusive. It is dependent on our relationships. It is lived and shared and happening right now. And Jesus invites us, even here, even now to be a part of God’s salvation in and through our relationships with others.
Maybe the idea of living into our salvation together is just a concept or an idea to you. Maybe that’s a new way to think about it for you, or maybe not. Maybe you don’t even agree with my interpretation. That’s fine.
All I can say is that the real example of the good news of Jesus, for me, in this text is Peter’s Mother-in-law. As uncomfortable and loaded with social expectations as it may be, she responded to her healing by serving them.
I’m reminded of a woman named Maryland whom I knew in Lafayette. She worked for an organization called C.U.P.S. (Communities United in Prayer and Service) that started in the church I served after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita swept through South Louisiana and into Texas. Those storms were in 2005. They displaced over 1 million people. By the time I got there in 2010, C.U.P.S. had been formed as a coalition of faith communities attempting to help those who fell through the cracks of the available social services.
Maryland was the beating heart of that organization. She was the secretary, the organizer of the warehouse, and a social worker without credentials. She screened clients. She listened compassionately, and she connected people with resources. There were many others that worked countless hours, but do want to know why Maryland worked so hard? It was because she was one of the one million displaced people from the storm.
You know, last week we were reminded that God is God and we are not, and we were encouraged to think of our brokenness as an asset and not a flaw. Today I want to flip that script a little and say that our brokenness is not what defines us. It is our response to the God who loves us into wholeness.
You, who are God’s beloved, are one in a million! Together we represent those who may have felt washed up and washed out but are instead ready to respond to the love of God with our love for one another, and even more so for those standing outside in need of healing and hope.
As we gather around the table to celebrate the brokenness of Christ for the world, let us remember that we, too, are the body of Christ; we, too, offer healing; we, too, proclaim the good news. Have you not seen? Have you not heard? We are here to follow Jesus, who leaves healing in his wake, and thanks be to God for that. And let all of God's people say, "Alleluia! Amen!"
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