Sermons from St. Martin-in-the-Fields:
Jan 23, 2022 |
Joy is our Strength
| The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Joy is our Strength
Revisit the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 23, 2022.
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi...
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi...
Please join me in the spirit of prayer.
Jesus sets a very high bar for preachers this morning. His whole sermon on Isaiah 61 was nine words long. No wonder he was a popular preacher in Galilee. I apologize. I can’t do that.
So my question to Jesus’ reading of Isaiah 61 in the Luke passage is, where did the vengeance go? Where did the heartbreak go? These are the questions that my Saturday Bible Study asked of the text when we looked at Luke 4 and then flipped back to Isaiah 61 and read the original. In the original text, where it says “the acceptable year of our Lord”, it follows immediately with “and the day of vengeance of our God.
So, “I’m here to proclaim the acceptable year of our Lord and the day of vengeance of our God”. Jesus leaves that out. Earlier in the passage where it says “I’ve come to bring Good News to the Poor” the next phrase is “and bind up the broken hearted.” Also, strangely, missing.
Maybe Jesus got a faulty scroll, who knows, but one of the class members made this observation: the sorrow is missing, the broken hearted is missing, the vengeance is missing. All the times in Isaiah 61 where grieving and mourning are, are missing. Why is that? And this Bible Study member reached into scripture and said “well when the bridegroom is present, we don’t mourn. “ When the bridegroom is with us we do not mourn.
The whole passage points to Jesus. “This has been fulfilled today in your hearing. All eyes are fixed on him.” He is the fulfillment, the consummation of Israel’s hopes. He is the promise of Israel's relationship with God come true. He is the healing of the Nations. He is the joining of humanity to God in their synagogue. The bridegroom is present so we celebrate even when we have cause to sorrow. We celebrate even when we have cause to mourn. “All eyes were fixed on him. Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
I know for myself that I have learned through much painful experience to fix my eyes on him, to fix my eyes on Jesus. When my boat is rocking and swamping and being overwhelmed by the storm of life, when I am full of fear and despair and horror and hurt, I have learned to look up, to stand up in my rocky fragile boat and fix my eyes on Him who renews me. Who rejoices in my heart. Who fills me with the spirit again.
And when I fill my eyes with my loving savior moving towards me, I become resilient again. I become revived again. In my mourning, in my sorrow, in my fear, I can celebrate as well. Sorrow and celebration - these go together. We can be dragged down by one and lifted by the other and the gift of our life and faith is that that lifting factor comes from outside of ourselves.
Let’s see how this sorrow and celebrating plays out in Nehemiah and in Corinth. We see it on display in the Nehemiah passage (We get to hear Nehemiah once a year, so let’s do this). Nehemiah is describing the same group of people who are addressed by Isaiah 61, the people who’ve been returned from Exile back to Jerusalem. The first thing they’ve done is build a wall. They’ve rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem to secure themselves, to find that security these traumatized people desperately need. The next thing they're doing is gathering with all eyes fixed on the Torah, on the teachings of God, to renew their relationship with their Lord in this great public gathering of men and women and all who can understand.
Now, things are brewing for these people. These traumatized people are in conflict with each other. They’re debating the place of foreigners among them. Can people who do not speak the language stay, or shall we cast them out? For all those who married foreign women, do we cast out the foreign women and their children? They’re a community in conflict and they’re turning to the Word.
We don’t know which Word was read to them. Was it Leviticus? Was it Deuteronomy? We do know it took a really long time and they were standing out there for a long time, but whatever was read, this covenant with God was read and renewed among them. It caused them sorrow and weeping and mourning, and this is the sorrow and weeping and mourning of moral failure.
We all know that when we let ourselves down, when we do not live up to our ideals, when we fall short of our standards, we grieve. We mourn. We sorrow for the harm we’ve done to ourselves and others. This is the moral weeping of a people hearing how they have failed God as a special people set apart. As a special people set apart they know their story. By failing their obligations to God they have fallen into this state of despair.
But they’re not left there. That’s not the final word. The sorrow and despair causes them to humble themselves, to bend down and press their foreheads to the ground in that beautiful posture of supplication that we know so well from the mosque, if you’ve ever attended. And they’re devastated by God’s word to them, which also includes really stern words about welcoming the stranger, which they’re falling short of at that moment. They are then invited from sorrow into celebration. Don’t mourn but celebrate. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”
And if I want you to take home any word of scripture with you today, it’s that. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” God’s desire to connect with you through Torah, through instruction, through this beautiful law, revives your soul in this moment and gives you that next chance to live in relationship with God. So, in your sorrow, I will speak a word of celebration and it will literally raise you off your knees to become God’s renewed, revived community.
Now let's go to Corinth. Corinth, once again, sorrow and celebration. Corinth is this very sophisticated, very cosmopolitan city on this isthmus between Athens and Sparta. It’s a rich mercantile city and a great trade route location, and it’s one of the most argumentative and petty churches that Paul founded. And their big issue is that they cannot figure out how to be the body of Christ together when there are aristocratic elites and the poor all at the same table. They don’t know how to do this.
So, when the passage starts off with that great Good News, “In Christ there’s neither Jew nor Greek”, the whole room can celebrate because they’re all gentiles. “Oh my God, we’re brought into the covenant, who would ever have thought this possible, thanks be to God.” But the next line kicks into sorrow - “neither the slave nor free.” Wait, what? This is the rub for the Corinthians. How do you sit as an equal in Christ with somebody you don’t even honor as a person? In the ancient world only the aristocratic elite were persons. They were the only ones who had that status. The slaves and the plebes were non-persons. They were often referred to as bodies.
Cleverly St. Paul takes this figure from the Greek world and turns it back on the community. This sophisticated group would have known how Plato and Aesop and Livy had used the image of a body to explain the State. Aesop had a great fable about this where the mouth and the hands and the teeth go on strike against the stomach. They all get fed up with feeding the stomach because the stomach gets all the food while they do all the work.
But in Plato and Aesop, the moral is get back to work and serve the stomach. Get back to work and serve the higher authority. In Paul it’s quite different. In Paul he’s using this common analogy to say, “no, we are all equals. You might think you’re the head. You might think you're the more honorable part of the body, but you’re on par with the less honorable.” (And he’s being euphemistic about genitals here. We’re an adult service, I can say this) “You are as dependent on them as they are dependent on you. In the spirit of God, in the church, in this community made by Christ we are equals”.
And this is a cause of sorrow and mourning and loss to those of high status, and a cause of celebration of low and dishonored status. But they are One in the spirit, so they celebrate and they sorrow together. The sorrow and the celebrating overcome the antagonism of rivalry, of being opposed to each other. We are called to be a community that remembers that we sorrow and we celebrate together. And in our celebration we remember all that God has accomplished for us that cannot be taken away from us. And in that knowledge of what God has done for us we find our resilience, our hope, our courage, our ability to support our brothers, our sisters, our siblings who sorrow and are destroyed.
I’ll never forget my great hospital chaplain supervisor Mark Grace (so well named) saying to me once in Supervision, “Jarrett, it doesn’t help the patient if you are as depressed as they are. Remember who is with you. You bring the risen Christ into that room and in that rising you both shall rise, sorrowing and celebrating in God’s eternal life.”
Amen.
Jesus sets a very high bar for preachers this morning. His whole sermon on Isaiah 61 was nine words long. No wonder he was a popular preacher in Galilee. I apologize. I can’t do that.
So my question to Jesus’ reading of Isaiah 61 in the Luke passage is, where did the vengeance go? Where did the heartbreak go? These are the questions that my Saturday Bible Study asked of the text when we looked at Luke 4 and then flipped back to Isaiah 61 and read the original. In the original text, where it says “the acceptable year of our Lord”, it follows immediately with “and the day of vengeance of our God.
So, “I’m here to proclaim the acceptable year of our Lord and the day of vengeance of our God”. Jesus leaves that out. Earlier in the passage where it says “I’ve come to bring Good News to the Poor” the next phrase is “and bind up the broken hearted.” Also, strangely, missing.
Maybe Jesus got a faulty scroll, who knows, but one of the class members made this observation: the sorrow is missing, the broken hearted is missing, the vengeance is missing. All the times in Isaiah 61 where grieving and mourning are, are missing. Why is that? And this Bible Study member reached into scripture and said “well when the bridegroom is present, we don’t mourn. “ When the bridegroom is with us we do not mourn.
The whole passage points to Jesus. “This has been fulfilled today in your hearing. All eyes are fixed on him.” He is the fulfillment, the consummation of Israel’s hopes. He is the promise of Israel's relationship with God come true. He is the healing of the Nations. He is the joining of humanity to God in their synagogue. The bridegroom is present so we celebrate even when we have cause to sorrow. We celebrate even when we have cause to mourn. “All eyes were fixed on him. Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
I know for myself that I have learned through much painful experience to fix my eyes on him, to fix my eyes on Jesus. When my boat is rocking and swamping and being overwhelmed by the storm of life, when I am full of fear and despair and horror and hurt, I have learned to look up, to stand up in my rocky fragile boat and fix my eyes on Him who renews me. Who rejoices in my heart. Who fills me with the spirit again.
And when I fill my eyes with my loving savior moving towards me, I become resilient again. I become revived again. In my mourning, in my sorrow, in my fear, I can celebrate as well. Sorrow and celebration - these go together. We can be dragged down by one and lifted by the other and the gift of our life and faith is that that lifting factor comes from outside of ourselves.
Let’s see how this sorrow and celebrating plays out in Nehemiah and in Corinth. We see it on display in the Nehemiah passage (We get to hear Nehemiah once a year, so let’s do this). Nehemiah is describing the same group of people who are addressed by Isaiah 61, the people who’ve been returned from Exile back to Jerusalem. The first thing they’ve done is build a wall. They’ve rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem to secure themselves, to find that security these traumatized people desperately need. The next thing they're doing is gathering with all eyes fixed on the Torah, on the teachings of God, to renew their relationship with their Lord in this great public gathering of men and women and all who can understand.
Now, things are brewing for these people. These traumatized people are in conflict with each other. They’re debating the place of foreigners among them. Can people who do not speak the language stay, or shall we cast them out? For all those who married foreign women, do we cast out the foreign women and their children? They’re a community in conflict and they’re turning to the Word.
We don’t know which Word was read to them. Was it Leviticus? Was it Deuteronomy? We do know it took a really long time and they were standing out there for a long time, but whatever was read, this covenant with God was read and renewed among them. It caused them sorrow and weeping and mourning, and this is the sorrow and weeping and mourning of moral failure.
We all know that when we let ourselves down, when we do not live up to our ideals, when we fall short of our standards, we grieve. We mourn. We sorrow for the harm we’ve done to ourselves and others. This is the moral weeping of a people hearing how they have failed God as a special people set apart. As a special people set apart they know their story. By failing their obligations to God they have fallen into this state of despair.
But they’re not left there. That’s not the final word. The sorrow and despair causes them to humble themselves, to bend down and press their foreheads to the ground in that beautiful posture of supplication that we know so well from the mosque, if you’ve ever attended. And they’re devastated by God’s word to them, which also includes really stern words about welcoming the stranger, which they’re falling short of at that moment. They are then invited from sorrow into celebration. Don’t mourn but celebrate. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”
And if I want you to take home any word of scripture with you today, it’s that. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” God’s desire to connect with you through Torah, through instruction, through this beautiful law, revives your soul in this moment and gives you that next chance to live in relationship with God. So, in your sorrow, I will speak a word of celebration and it will literally raise you off your knees to become God’s renewed, revived community.
Now let's go to Corinth. Corinth, once again, sorrow and celebration. Corinth is this very sophisticated, very cosmopolitan city on this isthmus between Athens and Sparta. It’s a rich mercantile city and a great trade route location, and it’s one of the most argumentative and petty churches that Paul founded. And their big issue is that they cannot figure out how to be the body of Christ together when there are aristocratic elites and the poor all at the same table. They don’t know how to do this.
So, when the passage starts off with that great Good News, “In Christ there’s neither Jew nor Greek”, the whole room can celebrate because they’re all gentiles. “Oh my God, we’re brought into the covenant, who would ever have thought this possible, thanks be to God.” But the next line kicks into sorrow - “neither the slave nor free.” Wait, what? This is the rub for the Corinthians. How do you sit as an equal in Christ with somebody you don’t even honor as a person? In the ancient world only the aristocratic elite were persons. They were the only ones who had that status. The slaves and the plebes were non-persons. They were often referred to as bodies.
Cleverly St. Paul takes this figure from the Greek world and turns it back on the community. This sophisticated group would have known how Plato and Aesop and Livy had used the image of a body to explain the State. Aesop had a great fable about this where the mouth and the hands and the teeth go on strike against the stomach. They all get fed up with feeding the stomach because the stomach gets all the food while they do all the work.
But in Plato and Aesop, the moral is get back to work and serve the stomach. Get back to work and serve the higher authority. In Paul it’s quite different. In Paul he’s using this common analogy to say, “no, we are all equals. You might think you’re the head. You might think you're the more honorable part of the body, but you’re on par with the less honorable.” (And he’s being euphemistic about genitals here. We’re an adult service, I can say this) “You are as dependent on them as they are dependent on you. In the spirit of God, in the church, in this community made by Christ we are equals”.
And this is a cause of sorrow and mourning and loss to those of high status, and a cause of celebration of low and dishonored status. But they are One in the spirit, so they celebrate and they sorrow together. The sorrow and the celebrating overcome the antagonism of rivalry, of being opposed to each other. We are called to be a community that remembers that we sorrow and we celebrate together. And in our celebration we remember all that God has accomplished for us that cannot be taken away from us. And in that knowledge of what God has done for us we find our resilience, our hope, our courage, our ability to support our brothers, our sisters, our siblings who sorrow and are destroyed.
I’ll never forget my great hospital chaplain supervisor Mark Grace (so well named) saying to me once in Supervision, “Jarrett, it doesn’t help the patient if you are as depressed as they are. Remember who is with you. You bring the risen Christ into that room and in that rising you both shall rise, sorrowing and celebrating in God’s eternal life.”
Amen.
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