The Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany
February 3, 2013 - Pastor Adam Moline
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a Luke 4:16-30
Grace, mercy and
peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text today is the Gospel lesson just read, especially these words, “And
they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of
the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the
cliff.”
Dear friends in
Christ. In the church year, we are in
the season of Epiphany. Epiphany means
“Shine forth” or “Be revealed.” It is
during this time of the year that we see who Jesus is, as he reveals himself to
be the very Son of God made flesh, and dwelling among us. And Jesus very clearly tells us who he is in
our text today. Quoting the prophet
Isaiah’s prophecy about the coming Messiah, Jesus says, ““The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the
captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who
are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
And yet, when
Jesus tells the people plainly who he is, they scoff at his words. “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph and
Mary? We know him! We’ve seen his brothers and his sisters. He’s
no messiah, he’s a nuisance. Let’s take
care of him!” And off they go to throw
Jesus, the Son of God, off of the 900 foot cliff near their town. You see, they don’t believe the words Jesus
speaks. They don’t believe what Jesus
says about himself. They don’t believe
the words of Scripture that Jesus read.
They don’t believe the words of the Word of God made flesh.
It’s easy for us
to judge that isn’t it? It’s easy for us
to put them down, to complain about the way they treated Jesus, and to say that
“Oh, no, we’d never do that.” But the
truth is, our sinful nature is just as guilty.
Our sinful nature hates Jesus and his claims of divinity just as much as
those Nazarene’s so long ago. Our sin is
just as great.
And we see that
all over the world don’t we? So often in
our world today, people don’t like what Jesus stands for. They don’t like who Christ wants them to
be. They call us bigots, they call us
prejudice, they tell us we are up to date with the modern world. They despise us because of the word we
preach, and the faith we believe.
Who is
Christ? He’s the one who has come and proclaimed
the truth. That we are captives to our
sin, that it infects us to the deepest core, and that we on our own can do
nothing, no not one thing to save ourselves.
But Christ tells us even more, he proclaims liberty to the captives,
freedom to the slaves to sin. He comes
to tell us of the year of the Lord’s favor, whether we like it or not. He comes to reveal himself to us. To tell us the reason he has truly come.
And that reason is
to die for our sin. To take it away as
far as the east is from the west. To
make us sinners holy again – and it isn’t based on you, or your works, its
based on a cross on a hill far away. Its
based on nails hammered into the hand of God.
Its based on blood – the blood of God – being poured out upon the
world. It is a forgiveness for you, a
freedom for the captives, and a great joy for all people.
Its Jesus. God who has come to this world to set you
free from your sin. He may not come in
the way we want, or the way we understand, but he comes all the same. And as he comes, he brings forgiveness in his
wings.
Jesus has come,
and today he reveals himself. The God
who brings good news to the captives, and liberty to us. Freedom from our sin, bought with his blood. That’s our God. That’s who he is. Praise be to his name. Amen.
