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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
I really do not know anyone, including other pastors, who enjoys criticizing sermons. A sermon’s style is one thing, but, even when a sermon’s substance containsfalse doctrine (or no doctrine at all, for example, no law or Gospel), even many pastors are reluctant to confront the preacher. Yet, no faithful preacher escapes wrongful criticism of his preaching, even if the preacher is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Moments ago in the Gospel Reading, we heard our Lord Jesus Christ apply to Himself Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah, the One anointed to proclaim various things, and we heard how His hearers were so critical of His sermon that they tried to kill Him. As we reflect on that Gospel Reading today, we do so under the sermon theme “Anointed to Proclaim”.
In keeping with the theme of the Epiphany season, today’s Gospel Reading gives us another manifestation of God’s glory in the flesh of the man Jesus. After telling of Jesus’s Baptism and Temptation and just before today’s Reading, the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke tells us that “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about Him went out through all the surrounding country, andHe taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all” (Luke 4:14-15). We do not know exactly how much time passed, but eventually Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. In Nazareth, as was His custom, Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. In that synagogue, Jesus stood and read from Isaiah (what was probably one of the appointed readings for the day), and then He sat down and preached a sermon on that reading—a sermon that was not soon forgotten then, and is still not forgotten even today.
Reading from God’s Word and giving its sense in a sermon certainly was nothing new when Jesus did it, as Ezra the scribe and priest did the same, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10). What was new about what Jesus did was His applying to Himself Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah, the One anointed to proclaim the good news to the poor, the One sent to proclaim liberty for the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to send liberty to those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Jesus said that He Himself fulfilled that Scripture in their hearing, in short, that He was “Anointed to Proclaim”. Perhaps while He was still preaching, Jesus’s hearers began to speak well of Him and perhaps then they began to marvel that such gracious words were coming from the lips of Him, someone they thought they really knew (NEB). Maybe hearing their words but certainly knowing their thoughts, Jesus tailored His sermon to His hearers. Jesus refused their apparent expectation that He prove His claim with some miraculous sign, and He likened them to their ancestors who were denied miraculous benefits from prophets whom God sent such as Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:1-15; 2 Kings 5:1-14). When Jesus’s hearers heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath, and they stood up and tried to kill Jesus.
I did not get quite that reaction the first time I preached in the congregation where I was brought up, but then perhaps I did not preach the law and judgment quite that sharply, either. Usually we might think that Jesus’s hometown hearers just were too familiar with Jesus, that their familiarity with Jesus bred contempt of Jesus, but there is more going on in the Gospel Reading than that. Jesus’s hearers apparently were so critical of His preaching that they rejected both Him and the gracious words that He spoke to them—rejected to the point of wanting to stone Him for blasphemy (Leviticus 24:10-16). They would have thrown Him backwards down the cliff, and, if He survived that, then they would have cast heavy stones on Him (Roehrs‑Franzmann, 64). Not the Holy Spirit but their wrath moved them (see Büchsel, TDNT 3:167), controlling and dominating them (RR, 149).
Jesus’s hearers were not indifferent to what Jesus said, but they were violently opposed to it, and, by nature, you and I are no better than they were. We may be too familiar with a preacher that we have contempt for him. We may wrongly criticize faithful preaching. We may be reluctant to confront those who preach false doctrine (or no doctrine, now law or Gospel). Even if we do not sin in those ways, we sin in countless other ways. As we sang earlier in today’s Psalm (19), the just decrees of the Lord warn us, for on our own we cannot discern our errors; we prayed for God to declare us innocent from sins we are not aware of and for Him to keep us from presumptuous sins’ (or sins that result from pride) having dominion over us. Jesus’s hearers wanted to kill Jesus, but they and we are the ones who, on account of our sins, deserve to die.
When God’s law has led us to realize both how corrupt we are by nature and the depth of our actual sin, then God’s Gospel leads us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sins for Jesus’s sake, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. To those who are spiritually poor, captive, blind, and oppressed, the Gospel preaches and gives the forgiveness of sin (Solid Declaration V:9). When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our contempt for preachers, our wrong criticism of faithful preaching, and our failures to confront false or no doctrine in preaching. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be.
You may know that around the top of the centuries-old U.S. Liberty Bell is inscribed Leviticus 25, verse 10: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof”. That verse, like Jesus’s being anointed to proclaim liberty to the captives, to send liberty to the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, has to do with the Year of Jubilee. Once every 50 years, heralds sounding trumpets would proclaim the Year of Jubilee throughout the land, and immediately the prison doors would be opened and debts would be forgiven. Jesus’s preaching in today’s Gospel Reading and all true proclamation of the Gospel is like those trumpet blasts that give what they declare (Friedrich, TDNT 3:706-707), only in this case, the preaching gives the forgiveness of sins for Jesus’s sake.
Contrary to what the people of Nazareth thought (confer Luke 3:23), Jesus was the Son not of the man Joseph but the Son of God the Father, and the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him, having anointed Him at His baptism, making Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One—not only our anointed Prophet, but also our anointed Priest and our anointed King. That Sabbath day in Nazareth was neither the time nor the place for Jesus to die (confer John 7:30), but later in Jerusalem Jesus completed His journey to the cross where, out of His great love, by the rejection of the Jewish leaders (Acts 13:27), Jesus offered Himself to death for you and for me. If we do not harden our hearts with impenitence and unbelief, as did the people of Nazareth that day, then Jesus’s gracious words give to us the very things they declare, especially the good news, liberty, and favor of the forgiveness of our sin (confer Bultmann, TDNT 1:511, 512), as we live under Him in His Kingdom.
If the Spirit of the Lord had not already anointed Isaiah to proclaim, the Spirit of the Lord certainly anointed Jesus to proclaim, and, in at least a somewhat similar sense, the Spirit of the Lord anoints pastors to proclaim (confer John 20:19-23). No longer in a Jewish synagogue but in a Christian church, especially the proclamation of God’s Word with visible means—water in Holy Baptism, the rite of individual Holy Absolution, and the bread and wine of Holy Communion—these miraculously forgive the sins of those who repent and believe. Seemingly more than a coincidence, Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading uses both the example of Naaman the Syrian, who was cleansed in the Jordan River at God’s word through Elisha, and the example of the widow of Zarephath, who was fed in her home at God’s word through Elijah. At the Baptismal Font, you and I are cleansed by water and the Word, and, at this Altar and its Rail, you and I are given to eat and to drink the Body and Blood of the One Who miraculously passed through the midst of the Nazareth crowd and so likewise can be present here to forgive our sins.
In our Baptisms God anoints us all for our individual vocations (2 Corinthians 1:21-22) and baptizes us into one Body, and we are likewise joined as members of His one Body of the Church as we partake of Christ’s one Body in the Sacrament (1 Corinthians 10:17). We heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 12:12-31a) how each member of the Body is necessary and arranged by God as He chooses. Even the weaker and less-honorable and unpresentable members of His Body of the Church are indispensable! There should be no division among any members, but each should have the same care for one another, and suffer and rejoice together. (Perhaps Divine Providence led me to delay to today our installation of congregational officers and board and committee members!)
I certainly welcome and encourage everyone’s response to my sermons, even as I may wrestle with my response to the sermons of other preachers. Obviously no one “Anointed to Proclaim” other than Jesus is perfect, and we all do well to remember that God’s Word by itself is efficacious, accomplishing that which He purposes (Isaiah 55:11)—whether what He purposes is bringing judgment on those who are unrepentant and unbelieving or effecting forgiveness, for Christ’s sake, for those who repent and believe. Such are the results not of the style but of the substance of the faithful proclamation of law and Gospel in God’s most holy Name.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +