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SERMONS

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 21, 2007

By The Rev. Sylvia Czarnetzky

Nehemiah 8:2-10
Psalm 113
1 Corinthians 12:12-27
Luke 4:14-21

Every three years, when this lection comes around, I always feel I should apologize to the lector who got stuck with the first lesson! There are 28 (count ‘em, 28) names in the passage from Nehemiah, and at least six or eight of those Are simply unpronounceable! That’s not a very nice thing to do to an unsuspecting lector!

It might make you (lector) feel better to know that one year at the big Sunday worship service at Annual Council the lector had to read this very lesson in front of hundreds of people, and when he finished, he got a round of applause! So I applaud you for your persistence! However, there’s more to the lesson from Nehemiah than the brutal list of names! That passage paints a very particular word picture for us of a moment in the history of the Jewish people, And I want to hold that up for a closer look today.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a part of the crowd gathered that day to hear Ezra the priest and scribe, read from the law. It is about mid-day, on the first day of the seventh month. It is the Feast the Trumpets – the season before the winter rains begin. You and the people standing around you listening to Ezra read have only recently returned from exile to your home in Jerusalem, to rebuild your Temple, and to rebuild the city wall, and to give thanks to the God who brought you safely home.

From where you stand, you can Ezra. He’s standing on a raised wooden platform built for this very purpose, so that you and the others in the crowd can see and hear Ezra as he reads from the Torah – the book of the law. There are six men standing to his right and six men standing to his left. And the reading of the law is done with A certain amount of ceremony: the book is lifted up and opened in the sight of the people. You and the people around you all stand when he does. You say “Amen, Amen,” after the priest blesses the Lord. And you all bow your heads with your faces to the ground. And the Levites, helped explain the law that was being read,

You and your neighbors all know who Ezra is – he was one of the leaders who brought you back from exile - back to Jerusalem where you now hope that you can rebuild your temple and your city. It is around 400 B.C.

What you are witnessing on this day is one of the first things that Ezra did after we all got back to Jerusalem - he gathered us all together in the square, in front of one of the gates to the city, and read to us from the law. And one of the things you begin to notice, as you stand there all morning, listening, is that some people around you are weeping! The response of some around you to the reading of the law is weeping!

And as Ezra and the Levites see all this weeping, Ezra says to all, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep….Go,…” Ezra says, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send” some of each to those who have none. For today, Ezra says, is a day of celebration. And you are part of this community of exiles recently returned home, and you are all gathered around the Word of God to celebrate your homecoming.

Now, the scene shifts. We fast forward about 430 years! It’s about 30 A.D. Imagine you are in Nazareth. It’s the Sabbath day and you have gone to the synagogue, where, with other faithful Jews, you have gathered for worship. And Jesus is there, as he often is. You’ve known Jesus all your life – he grew up down the street from you, under the watchful eye of his mother Mary and his father, Joseph the carpenter.

Now, lately you’ve heard some of the rumors about Jesus – about that business that happened a few weeks back at the Jordan River with his cousin John - something about voices and a dove coming down from he sky. And, like everybody else, you’re not quite sure what to make of it all.

And then Jesus stands up to read. He stands in front of the gathered community. He is handed a scroll and Jesus unrolls it until he finds his place, And then he begins to read from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus reads, “because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,…to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, [and] to let the oppressed go free,…”

Then Jesus sits down, and he’s got everybody’s attention. It is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. And into this silence, Jesus speaks. He says “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And you and everybody else just sit there for a moment, trying to take in What Jesus has just said. Is Jesus saying that he himself is the anointed one of God - the one the prophets told us to expect? Can this be? What are we to make of this bold statement?

Let’s shift the scene one last time, to today, a couple of minutes ago, when (Frank/Alston/the acolyte/I) carried the gospel book from the altar to the middle of the aisle. It happens every week: one of us lifts high this gilded gospel book, and brings it into the midst of the people. And we listen together to the gospel of the day. And when the gospel has been read, we say “Glory to you, Lord Christ.” And the gospel book goes back up front, (and we sing our Alleluias,) and it is suddenly silent, as the preacher goes to the pulpit to preach.

I think that little piece of liturgical drama that we act out each and every week, marching the gospel book out into the aisle, and then marching it back after the reading, is a lot like what happened at the Nazareth synagogue that day with Jesus and the gathered community, and it’s a lot like what happened at the Jerusalem gate that day with Ezra and the gathered community of exiles. They seem to me to be variations on a theme, if you will. They are all three images of the community gathered around the word of God.

And isn’t that precisely who we are, we here at the Chapel? A community gathered around God’s word? Week after week, Sunday after Sunday, we gather around the gospel book, literally and figuratively. And we listen together to God’s word. And we struggle to understand what God might be saying to us in his word at this time and in this place. We read out loud words that were written cen-turies ago, by people we never knew.

We struggle to hear what those ancient words have to say to us as we listen to them today, in this place, at this time. We are the people of God gathered around God’s word and constantly asking ourselves – what is God’s word to us today? How does the story of God’s people struggling to keep the faith in a broken and contrary world inform our struggle to keep the faith in 2007 in Madison, Mississippi? What is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ in this place at this time? That’s one of the things we gather to do on Sunday mornings. It’s not the only thing, but it’s one of the most important things we do as the people of God Sunday after Sunday, year after year.

That’s the image I want to leave you with, on the Sunday of our Annual Parish Meeting. We are a community who gather around the word of God. We listen to God’s word, and we come to God’s table, where we feed on the holy food and drink of his precious body and blood. We as a community open our ears to God’s holy word, and we open our hands for the bread of the Eucharist.

And when we reach for the bread and the cup, we reach out to God, We open our hearts to God’s love and mercy, and to the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to transform our lives. Then, having been fed in the holy mysteries of God’s word and sacrament, we take that holiness and we take that hope, and we move out into a world that is broken and dispirited and sorely in need of hope and mercy. That world is where we live out our gospel - on the Mondays and Thursdays in a hungry and needy world, where God needs our hearts and our minds and our hands to do his work. Amen.