Epiphany 3C 2025

Text: Luke 4:21 “And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.””

Let me share with you how one man described why he is no longer a Christian:

He described a recent emotional crisis that he had had. He is a fairly successful YouTube creator. More than two million people are subscribed to his channel. His videos get more 5-6 million views each month.(He does videos about science topics, if you’re wondering.) He is successful enough that he makes videos full time. That is his full time job, plus he has multiple people working for him, editing his videos for example.

The emotional crisis came, ironically enough, at an event he was invited to with a number of other well-known YouTube video creators. He says that, one night during the conference, he ended up back in his hotel room, absolutely in tears. He was having an absolute breakdown. Nothing horrible had happened that day. Just the opposite. He had been welcomed and recognized as someone important. So why the breakdown?

Long story short, he says that he had come to the conclusion that he has a very hard time believing good things about himself. He didn’t use the word, but what I understood him to be saying was that, when he got back to his hotel, he was overcome by the feeling that he was a fraud. He’s not, but he has such a hard time believing good things about himself that he felt that way.

Now, here is why I bring him up today. He connected that struggle with the fact that he was raised a Christian. He described going to church every week and hearing that he, along with the whole congregation that was gathered there, was a horrible person; he had sinned in all sorts of different ways; he deserved God’s wrath and punishment. That was the only thing he had taken away from all of those sermons that he heard. And, to be fair, if that is all that you heard about Christianity— if that is the only thing you have heard about Jesus— then it makes sense to walk away and not look back. (Impromptu comments made by Joe Scott on live stream for Patreon supporters January 23, 2025.)

First of all, think about how you would respond to him. How would you answer that? I suspect that he is far from the only person to feel that way. You may very well have heard the same general idea from people you know. They may or may not be as successful as the guy I mentioned; they may or may not have had a similar break down; but they feel the same way about Jesus. All they took away from the message of Scripture is that they are bad people who only deserve God’s punishment.

He is also has a lot in common with the people in the synagogue in Nazareth described in today’s Gospel Reading— the ones who ended up trying to throw Jesus off a cliff. What message from Jesus did they object to? Well, on that day, Jesus is invited to read a passage of Scripture and comment. So, He opens the scroll to Isaiah 61.

You can imagine the anticipation at having this well-known teacher and miracle worker there as a guest preacher that day. He begins to read the great prophet: “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” (vv 18–19). He finishes. Then He rolls up the scroll and sits down. Then he drops a bombshell: “Today,” he says, “this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (v 21).

He proclaimed good news; He proclaimed recovery of sight to the blind; He proclaimed liberty to the captives and those who are oppressed; He proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor. Initially, they were amazed. “All spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (v 22). But then His point begins to sink in. The point of His sermon is simple: He’s preaching about the coming savior and He says, “I’m the one.” That is what caused the mood to change so drastically. “How can this carpenter’s son claim to be the Christ, the Savior of God?” “This guy came from down the street, not from heaven!” “How dare he claim to be equal to God?” That was the point about Jesus made when He was talking about Elijah and the widow and Elisha and the leper. Jesus is saying that Him just being from their town doesn’t get them a thing! And so, they reject their town’s famous son, even seek to murder him. They grab him and drag him toward the hill on which the town is built, planning to throw him off. Violence is the sinful response to the inconvenient and unflattering truth Jesus has spoken against them.

That is not exactly the same objection as the YouTube creator I mentioned earlier, but the sentiment behind it is very similar, isn’t it? “How dare you say that you are something special?!” “How dare you say that we’re not good enough?”

Let me go back to the question I asked earlier: How would you respond to the man’s complaint that the only thing he heard at church was how wicked a person he was? May I suggest an answer?

He was not wrong to hear the message from his pastor that he deserved God’s wrath. What he missed is the fact that the message he heard was a diagnosis. If he really thinks that he can claim to be righteous in God’s sight, then he first person he is fooling himself.

On one level, you and I should not need to hear that message, should you? Your conscience will tell you what you deserve from God— if you are willing to listen. You know very well that you are not ‘okay’. Yes, you can be a good neighbor; you can be good and responsible at your job; you can earn some level of success. But you know what is beneath all of that. Even still, your conscience will tell you what you deserve from God— if you are willing to listen. The point his pastor was making in each of those sermons that he is so offended by was to diagnose his problem. The point that I and every other pastor whom you have heard and ever will hear from this pulpit is to diagnose your problem. Of yourself, you have nothing good to offer God on Judgment Day. You were born a slave to sin. You are blind to what the word ‘love’ truly means. Each and every day you are under the heel of the devil and this world. You don’t need me to tell you that you and I are not ‘okay’ any more than you need me to tell you that this world is a mess. My job is to put a name to the problem. To identify the problem.

And the thing that gets me out of bed every Sunday morning to be here—hopefully the thing that gets you out of bed every Sunday morning, too— is the chance to tell you about the solution.

The prophet Isaiah wrote “18 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, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19). Brothers and sisters in Christ, in the Name of Christ, I declare to you that this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

This is the year of the Lord’s favor.

Because Christ escaped from the mob on that particular day in Nazareth, but He escaped so that He could be led to the top of another hill where He would not die as quick and easily as the people of Nazareth intended. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” God says. On Golgotha, Jesus would experience the day of vengeance of our God. The full vengeance for every sin— not just the cute ones from your school days, all of them— that should, by all rights, have been poured out on you was poured out on Him instead. He would be nailed to a cross— the ultimate act of rejection by humanity— in order to show you God’s favor. When His tomb was opened three days later, it signaled the fact that He had broken open the gates of death hell for you. As He sent His disciples forth to witness to all that they had seen and heard, it was with a proclamation of liberty. You are now free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight, all the days of your lives.

Where you brought only death and hell upon yourself, in Christ you now have been given far more than whatever you might have hoped to earn from God with your time and your money—  to you is now given a crown of gold instead of ashes. You have been clothed with the perfect robe of Christ’s righteousness that covers all your sin.

That is the miracle that Jesus does here, in your presence, on a regular basis. It is hidden beneath an ordinary man speaking ordinary words from this pulpit; it is hidden beneath water in that font; it is hidden beneath bread and wine on this altar, but it is the very medicine of immortality. It is a healing balm for the desperate soul.

You are no longer a slave to sin. Your conscience is not wrong, but it is only part of the answer. “6 [Your] old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:6 ). The devil and this world and your sinful flesh have no dominion over you any longer. You are free. Free to truly love. Not the pathetic, pandering kind of love that this world tries to pass off on people who are too blind to know anything different. A real, sacrificial love. A love even for your enemies. A love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7). A love that never ends.

That is what I earnestly pray that you have heard from your Savior today.