Jan 23, 2022 Third Sunday After Epiphany

 Luke 4:14-21 (The Message) 

14-15 Jesus returned to Galilee powerful in the Spirit. News that he was back spread through the countryside. He taught in their meeting places to everyone’s acclaim and pleasure.

16-21 He came to Nazareth where he had been raised. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,

God’s Spirit is on me;

    he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,

Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and

    recovery of sight to the blind,

To set the burdened and battered free,

    to announce, “This is God’s time to shine!”

He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.” Or as the RSV puts it, “TODAY this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

“TODAY: This Scripture is Fulfilled”

Jesus is letting the secret out in his first sermon, in his home congregation, and it is too much for them to hear or believe.  They didn’t take him seriously and rejected what he said.

We do that too.    We hear only what we want to hear and believe only what we want to believe.  We take from a sermon only what fits our belief system - not what challenges us to a new belief system.  Religion can even become something which keeps us from living the Gospel, and changing our ways so they more closely alien with God’s ways. (i.e.exclusive judgement of all who are outside Christianity.) 

The bite, in our text,  comes with the word ‘today’.  Had Jesus  said ‘someday’ it would have been easier to take.  For we live in the somedays more than today.

Yet we are called to be today people: fulfilling the scripture today!

We are to make a difference today.  Martin Luther King did.  Mother Teresa did.  We can.  Someday is not enough.  Today something of God’s love and Jesus compassion would be fulfilled in us, through us,  in our world.  Make what you can of that - Today!

 

                                   

                                                        

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, show me what I can do TODAY to make a difference in someone’s life.  So your compassion can be present through me.”