Bible Text: Luke 4:14-21 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: The Beatitudes | Our key verse today is, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”  I thought about bringing in a chalice, or a mug, or a plate or bowl to represent our hunger and thirst for righteousness.  But instead, I decided to bring in this old men’s dress shoe.  I keep this shoe in my office, and it’s one of my favorite symbols of spirituality.  One evening, my husband Phil was getting changed after work, and I noticed he had a hole in the bottom of his shoe.  I said, “Phil, why didn’t you say something sooner?  I could take that to the shoe repair place for you.”  He said, well, it’s only a problem if it rains, so I keep forgetting to mention it.  He had gotten used to walking around with a hole in the bottom of his shoe.

I used a shoe like this as a sermon illustration in the first sermon I ever preached as an adult.  I held the shoe up for everyone at that Women’s Retreat to see, and said, this shoe, it’s a lot like us, isn’t it?  We come to church in our Sunday best, looking as polished and presentable as possible.  But all of us here have a hole in our soul.  It might not be a big gaping thing, but everyone here has a part of them that is not whole.  On sunny days, we might not notice it much.  But when the weather turns bad?  We become very aware of our problem areas!  We start to feel discomfort.  Lucky for us, God often uses “bad weather” to help us grow!

This is important to keep in mind.  Otherwise, we might be tempted to walk away from God in search of better weather somewhere else!  But we know that blessings come from submitting ourselves to God and enduring some discomfort in service of the greater good.  Last week Pastor Karen shared a great story about horses.  She was talking about meekness, which is a hard word for us, and pointed out that the Greek word we translate as meek is praus.  It was originally used to describe a wild horse that had been broken and was so steady and trustworthy, it was chosen to be used in battle.  When Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek”, he was saying, blessed are those who are willing to submit to God, who will get past the discomfort of the bit and learn to let God hold the reins and direct their lives.  Blessed are those who will run with abandon the race GOD sets before them.

In our key verse for today, Jesus gives us a course map for that race.   The battle we are needed for, the race God wants us to run, is the race for righteousness.  Most of us probably think of righteousness as ethical behavior.  John Wesley called this aspect of righteousness “personal piety”.  But there is a second part to being righteous, and that has to do with making society ethical.  John Wesley called this “social holiness”.  Righteousness is the catalyst for shalom, for the well-being of, and peace in, all of God’s creation.

Jesus claims righteousness as his very job description.  In our gospel lesson today, Phebe read for us from Luke chapter 4.  Jesus is quoting from the prophet Isaiah, using those ancient words to open his public ministry:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  (Luke 4:18-19).  This is the job description Jesus has for us as well.  He wants us to hunger and thirst for righteousness, for justice, for shalom.

It’s interesting that Jesus used the words hunger and thirst to describe the level of desire needed in order to experience God’s blessing.  I imagine in Jesus’ day, hunger and thirst were experienced with much greater intensity than in our day.  I was thinking this week about the last time I was truly hungry.  I cannot recall a time when there was not enough food in my house.  But in mid and late March, going to the grocery store made me very nervous.   There was almost no meat, hardly any canned vegetables, shortages on almost all the shelves.  I remember feeling true fear, because even though I can walk to the Acme from the parsonage, if the grocery shelves are bare, it doesn’t matter how close by it is.  I was willing to spend much more than I usually do on my groceries just to be sure we would have enough food, because food is an essential to life.

As I reflected on that experience this week, I felt like Jesus was asking me, “Dorry, do you have that sense of urgency when it comes to righteousness?  Do you want JUSTICE as much as you want food?  Do you see how essential justice is to life?”

That got me to thinking about the last time I was really thirsty.  It was last Saturday.  I was mowing the lawn at our house in the Poconos.  Mowing the lawn when it’s hot and humid isn’t fun!  I took a break to get some water, and got nervous for a second when I didn’t see any bottled water in the refrigerator.  We have a well at the Poconos, and although the water is safe to drink, it has a lot of iron in it and I don’t like the taste. So we bring drinking water there, and I had forgotten there were more bottles in the cabinet.  For a second, I felt true fear:  what if there isn’t enough to drink?  Water is essential for life!

This week I felt like Jesus was asking me, “Dorry, do you have that sense of urgency when it comes to righteousness?  Do you want JUSTICE as much as you want water on a hot day?  Do you see how essential justice is to life?”

I wish I could say yes, that day in and day out, I hunger for righteousness with the same intensity I had those times I was wandering one way down the largely empty grocery aisles.  I wish I could say that day in and day out, I thirst for righteousness with the same intensity I had last Saturday when I was very hot from mowing the lawn.  But the truth is, what I often hunger and thirst for is my own comfort and convenience.  What I hunger and thirst for are my own preferences and interests.  The fact that I do not daily feel a hunger and thirst for JUSTICE reflects just how privileged and blessed I am.  I do not know what it is like to be truly hungry.  I do not know what it is like to have no clean water available.  I do not know what it is like to be judged by the color of my skin, or the sex of my beloved, or the country of my birth.  I have a hole in my soul, a poverty to my experience that reveals how far away I am from the suffering of so many people in our world.

 

But the suffering of people in our world is something God holds very close to God’s heart, and God wants it to be dear to us as well.  In our scripture lesson today, Jesus has just returned from his forty days’ temptation in the wilderness.  He arrives back in Galilee, full of the Spirit, to begin his public ministry.  One day he found himself in his hometown of Nazareth, and went to the weekly worship service at his synagogue.  He was called upon to read scripture, and he selected a passage that described himself.  Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah a passage that described him exactly.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” what an autobiographical image!  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  After Jesus finished the reading, he sat down, and then he offers this commentary:  today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

The hometown crowd was initially receptive to Jesus’ message.  They spoke well of him and were amazed that the son of Joseph could come before them with such gracious words.  But Jesus knew they were misunderstanding him.  He did not come just to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor on just the children of Israel.  He came to bring salvation to the whole world!  Jesus could have just accepted their praise and walked away.  But he kept talking.  He went on to describe himself as someone who would be ultimately rejected by the people of his hometown.  He basically told them his message would be more graciously received by Gentiles than by his fellow Jews.  At this, the people in the synagogue not only ran Jesus out of town, they tried to throw him over a cliff!  He managed to escape, but right from the start of Jesus’ ministry, he met up with resistance from people who could not conceive of God’s love being for all people, not just for them.

This story sets the tone for the entire work of Christ:  that Jesus has come to be savior of the whole world, and he will give his life to fulfill his mission.  God’s dream isn’t just salvation for the Jews but for the entire human family.  Jesus has come to bring about salvation to the world’s lost, and sight to the world’s blind, and freedom to the world’s oppressed, and it begins with just his say so.  Naming the truth set Jesus free to do his ministry.

We have been called to continue Jesus’ ministry of bringing salvation to the whole world.  And in order to be set free to do our ministry, we need to name the truth about ourselves:  we are a congregation of people with holes in our souls!  That might sound like a problem.  But we know that having holes in our souls is a good thing.  Jesus said so himself.  Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Blessed are those who mourn.  Blessed are the meek.  But are those who hunger and thirst.  As Paul would go on to observe, it is through our weaknesses that God’s power is made perfect.

There is so much mystery to this idea, that God needs our weaknesses in order to best wield God’s strength.  This is a sacred, precious mystery, so precious that I believe these holes in our souls are the biggest asset this church has.  Oh, I know we have 5 acres of land, and a beautiful building, and money in our endowment.  All together, Lima UMC is worth a few million dollars.  That’s a lot!  But property, plant, and investments are not our most valuable assets.  What good are those assets if we do not hunger and thirst for righteousness?  Without the holes in our souls, we would never feel the rain.  Without the holes in our souls, we lose touch with the suffering of people God loves and died to save.  We could easily become a group of people who are content to follow our own dreams instead of God’s dreams.

Last week, Pastor Karen reminded us that we all have different gifts and different ways we are called to serve God.  If we are meek, if we are teachable, if we are open to God’s leading, we can all be war horses who serve their master in unique ways.  This week I would like to point out that just as we all have different gits, we all have different areas of pain.  If we are willing to pay attention to the holes in our souls, we will sense God leading us to areas where our ministry is most needed.

Most people, though, do not want to admit they have holes in their souls, let alone pay attention to them.  But paying attention is our holes is the only way they will be filled.  These holes are not just about our own personal piety, making ethical choices for ourselves.  These holes are communal.  They are a call to social holiness, to making society ethical as well.  If we want to be filled, we must pursue both with urgency and passion.  We must come to see that justice is as essential for life as food and water.

Jesus said the Spirit of God was upon him to preach good news to the poor.  We must be willing to admit that we, even though we are lifelong Christians, are still poor. There is still a poverty to our experience that keeps us separated from the hurting people Christ loves with his whole heart, with his whole life.  Thank God for our hunger and thirst for righteousness!  It is through those desires that we will be truly filled, and the world will be truly blessed.  Amen.