Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + 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. (Amen.)
You may or may not know that this year, 20‑25, is a “jubilee” in the Roman Catholic Church, as was the year 2000 a jubilee, and other years going back to the year 1300, usually at intervals of either 25, 50, or 100 years. Every 50 years was the interval that God in the Old Testament commanded for the Year of Jubilee to be observed (Leviticus 25:8-22), though there appears to be only one reference in Israelite history to the Jubilee Year and so to its associated restoring of leased land to its respective tribe and returning of Hebrew slaves to their respective families (Jeremiah 34:8‑22). I am mentioning the Year of Jubilee this morning because in today’s Gospel Reading Jesus uses God’s prophecy through Isaiah in Year of Jubilee language in order to describe His Work as the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior. In the Gospel Reading, as we heard it read from the English Standard Version, Jesus speaks about “the year of the Lord’s favor”, and Jesus also says, “no prophet is acceptable in his hometown”. The same Greek adjective is used in both cases, and some Bible versions better reflect that common adjective by translating the first phrase as “the acceptable year of the Lord” (KJV, ASV). So, considering primarily today’s Gospel Reading, this morning we consider “The acceptable year and the unacceptable Prophet”.
As the Divinely-inspired evangelist St. Luke has it, today’s Gospel Reading comes after Jesus’s baptism and temptation, when Jesus “returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about Him went out through all the surrounding country, and He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all” (Luke 2:14-15). St. Matthew’s and St. Mark’s Gospel accounts later also report Jesus’s being rejected by His hometown synagogue (Matthew 13:53‑58; Mark 6:1-6), and St. Mark’s account of that rejection is regularly read in our three-year series of appointed Readings, but today’s Gospel Reading from St. Luke’s account uniquely includes more details about what Jesus read and said, including Jesus’s using two examples of prophets whose similar rejection by their own people apparently prompted them to minister to others (1 Kings 17:1-24; 2 Kings 5:1-14).
On vacation two weeks ago in Arizona, my mother and I visited longtime family friends from Peoria, Illinois, where I was brought up. Mrs. Huff had been my Sunday School teacher at an early age, and both she and Mr. Huff were probably present at the church where I was confirmed after my first year in seminary the one time that I preached there. I do not recall having there the “unacceptable prophet” problem that today’s Gospel Reading reports that Jesus had in Nazareth. In Nazareth, at least initially, all spoke well of Jesus and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from His mouth. Jesus had no problem preaching law and Gospel! But, soon enough, apparently what the people perceived as Jesus’s familiarity and ordinariness kept them from responding to His preaching with repentance and faith (Bertram, TDNT 3:38, with reference to Hebrews 4:2). And, Jesus’s resulting implication that they were like their unrepentant and unbelieving ancestors prompted them to try to push Him over the edge of a cliff, as if He was guilty of blasphemy.
By nature, you and I are no better than the people in the Nazareth synagogue: we are sinners deserving temporal and eternal punishment. How do we respond to faithful preaching? Do we find to be acceptable the prophet proclaiming the acceptable year? Do we let what we perceive as the preacher’s shortcomings keep us from responding to his preaching with repentance and faith? The Holy Spirit certainly calls and so enables us both to turn in sorrow from such sin and from all of our sin and to trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake. By the Holy Spirit’s leading we can be like those in today’s Old Testament Reading (Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10), who wept as they heard the words of the law but who also then rejoiced in God’s forgiveness.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s preaching on Isaiah’s prophecy with the language about the acceptable year makes clear that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior. The Spirit of the Lord is upon Him. Jesus fulfills the Scripture. The Triune God shows Himself in the flesh of the man Jesus! In the words of today’s Introit, the time had come (Psalm 102:18-22; antiphon: v.13)! Jesus not only effected the Good News of the free forgiveness of sins by His preaching, but Jesus also effected the Good News of the free forgiveness of sins by His dying on the cross for the sins of the world and by His later rising from the grave. Jesus was like Elijah and Elisha in that He was perceived to be an unacceptable prophet, but Jesus was greater than Elijah and Elisha in that He died because of His perceived unacceptability. Miraculously or not (confer, for example, John 10:39), Jesus passed through the midst of the people of the Nazareth synagogue who wanted to stone Him, but later the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders laid hands on Him (Luke 22:53-54), and then Pilate delivered Jesus over to their will to crucify Him. But, out of God’s great love, mercy, and grace, Jesus died the death that we deserve, in our place, as our substitute. When we repent and believe, then God forgives us for Jesus’s sake. God forgives us through His Word in all of its forms.
In today’s appointed Readings, quite prominent is the read and preached Word of God, but today’s Readings also can point us to God’s Word with visible and tangible elements in the miraculous signs of the Sacraments. For example, God through Elisha miraculously cleansed Naaman of his leprosy by Naaman’s washing in the Jordan River, which can point us to God’s miraculously cleansing us from sin in Holy Baptism. And, God miraculously fed Elijah through the widow of Zarephath, which can point us to God’s miraculously feeding us the Body and Blood of Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine of the Holy Supper. Even today’s Epistle Reading described how we were all baptized into one body (1 Corinthians 12:12-31a), and in today’s Old Testament Reading the forgiven people rejoiced in a meal of fat portions and sweet wine. Truly, in all of these ways God forgives and transforms us!
As transformed sheep of the Good Shepherd, we hear, recognize, and follow the Good Shepherd’s voice (John 10:3-5, 14, 27), even when the Good Shepherd’s voice comes through one of His under-shepherds, however familiar and ordinary the under-shepherd may be. We try both to hear and see past the under-shepherd’s personal weaknesses and failings and to remember that God’s Word and Sacraments are valid and so beneficial regardless of the under‑shepherd’s personal character. Yet, there is a fine line! We must judge whether law and Gospel are both being properly preached, whether the teaching is correct, whether we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice at all. The one proclaiming the acceptable year is an acceptable prophet! We receive such a one whom our Lord sends to us, and so we receive our Lord and the One Who sent Him (Matthew 10:40). As we receive Him in daily repentance and faith, we live in His forgiveness for our sins in this and any other regard, until He finally purges us, soul and body, of all sin as we enter eternal life.
This morning we have considered “The acceptable year and the unacceptable Prophet”. The Roman Catholic Church can have its jubilee years every 25 years, with their occasional emphasis on the forgiveness of sins, 35 million pilgrims expected in Rome, and the tourism money that those pilgrims will bring to the Roman Catholic Church. Writing 500 years ago about the declaration of the 15-25 jubilee, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther said, “We know (praise God!) that every hour those who hear and believe the holy Gospel have a year of jubilee … that the time when the Gospel enters in is the real, rich, acceptable jubilee year” (Luther, AE 59:107). Indeed, let us, who from the perspective of the psalmist, our Lord, and even Luther, were, in the words of today’s Introit, a “people yet to be created”—let us truly praise the Lord, now and forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +