Sermon Tone Analysis

The Word And Words \\ Luke 4 : 14-30

 

Eugene Patterson is a Presbyterian Pastor, and also an outstanding writer.

He's the pastor of Christ Our King United Presbyterian Church in Bellaire, Maryland.

This is one of Patterson's simple, matter-of-fact, powerful expressions of truth:  "There is no such thing as successful churches.

There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered week after week by the Holy Spirit, in towns and villages all over the world.

And in these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called Pastor...and it is his or her responsibility to keep the community attentive to God."

That's who we pastors are -- sinners like you laity -- and our task is an awesome one: To keep the community.

The task of your pastor and your clergy and program staff, is to keep the community attentive to God.

As I have thought about that, I have concluded that the way we do that -- the way we keep the community attentive to God -- is through our leadership of worship, the administration of the sacraments, teaching and preaching, and, of course, pastoral care.

But we must not forget that we do it through our very person as well.

If who we are as persons, how we establish priorities and order our life do not call others to be attentive to God, we are not fulfilling our calling.

That's what happened in Nazareth when Jesus began his public ministry.

That's the event that we are looking at in the sermon today.

Let's begin with that rather innocent sounding practice of Jesus: Going into the synagogue "as his custom was."

He had been doing that in the area of Galilee, teaching the people in the synagogue.

Now he comes to his hometown of Nazareth.

The word that I want us to focus on is a simple one, a matter-of-fact action on Jesus' part: "He opened the book."

If the community of faith is to stay attentive to God, that must be the everyday practice to which we give ourselves -- and it must be the center around which our life together revolves.

He opened the book.

John Wesley called himself "a man of one Book."

I wish I could legitimately call myself that.

I wish that every member of Lutheran Church of the Master could with legitimacy call themselves that -- persons of one book, The Book, God's Word, the Bible.

Let me share two reasons why we must more and more become persons of the book.

First, the word of this book can give us a sense of direction.

There's a wonderful Charlie Brown story that speaks to us here.

He and Lucy are on a cruise ship.

Lucy, as usual, is playing philosopher~/psychologist and says: "Charlie Brown, you see those folks up there?

They have their deck chairs facing the front of the ship.

They are futurists, the long-range planners, looking at what's ahead because they want to be ready."

"Then you see those folks back there, they have their deck chairs facing the stern of the ship...They are the introspective crowd.

They are interested in history and what we can learn from where we have been.

And those folks over there...they have their deck chairs facing the side of the ship...they don't care where they are going.

They don't care where they've been...they are only interested in the now.

They want to celebrate today and everything about it."

Then Lucy asks the penetrating question, "Now Charlie Brown, I just want to ask you one question.

On the ship of life, which way is your deck chair facing?"

Charlie Brown responds: "Gee whiz, Lucy, I'm still trying to figure out how to open mine up."

There's a parable in that -- a parable for our life.

We need direction.

Scott Peck opens his very helpful, best selling book, The Road Less Traveled, with this simple sentence, "Life is difficult."

Well, it is.

It's difficult at every level.

Do we believe that there is a distinctive Christian response to life?

If not, what are we doing here?

If so, where do we find our direction?

What is the source of our authority?

Life is difficult, confusing, demanding.

We could talk about any number of issues: War, abortion, divorce, conspicious consumption, concern for the poor, racism, sexual orientation and practice.

What is the distinctive Christian response to those issues?

I believe the direction of the total Biblical witness is clear.

We don't condemn: As clergy we don't beat people over the head with the law.

We don't do anything that would even hint that the blessing of Christian community cannot be theirs.

We love and care.

We reach out in compassionate concern realizing that they have hurt enough already and don’t need more pain from those who are supposedly called to love.

We let them know unequivocally that their sins and failures in one area of life are no graver than our sins and failures in other areas.

We need this book and we need to read it.

We need to make the message of this book integral to our life because it's this book that gives us the direction we need.

But not only does this word of God give us direction, it can change our life and give us new meaning.

Many of us have likely heard stories about how the Bible has changed one life or another.

Countless people over the generations have had a Bible placed in their hands by a caring Christian and found their life turned around by its message.

Even  for us, who can often take the Bible for granted, who sometimes think we already know it so well, it can give direction to our life and give us meaning.

That's the reason we need to become people of the Book.

That brings us to the centerpiece of our sermon today, captured in the sermon title: The Word and Words.

We live in the kind of world in which we are bombarded with words.

They come at us from all directions, pitching every possible idea, trying to convince us of what we need to do, what we need to eat, what we need to wear, the kind of car we ought to drive, the kind of toothpaste and deodorant we ought to use.

Words, words, words -- words from everywhere.

We are bombarded with them.

We don't need more words, we need the Word, the Word of God.

The Sanford Hotel in San Francisco reports that it never lost a single Bible in the 15 years it placed them at the bedside as a service to the guests.

But, in one month after it started putting dictionaries in the rooms as well, 41 dictionaries disappeared.

Now, I don't know whether you can draw a solid conclusion from that, but on the surface, it seems obvious that persons apparently place a greater value on human words than they do the Word of God.

So, there are words and The Word.

Of course, the Bible is the Word above all other words.

But we go even further than that in the Christian faith.

Jesus is the Word -- the Word become flesh-- and by the Word that He is, we assess all other words including the Bible.

We could have spent the entire sermon talking about the message that Jesus read from Isaiah when He took up the book in the temple.

And He sounded it clearly.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach...." Luke's gospel is a gospel that emphasizes more than any other the fact that Jesus stood always for those who were given a second- class citizen position, those condemned to ride on the back of culture's bus, the poor, the sick, the prisoners, those who lived on the tenuous shadowy edges of life, the marginalized.

Here in his inaugural address, he announced what scripture proclaims throughout, that God has taken a preferential option on behalf of the poor.

And you can't read the gospel of Luke without that coming through clearly.

God is always on the side of the poor.

If Jesus played favorites -- He always favored the poor and the oppressed.

So, the message could focus there, and I hope I'm never reticent in proclaiming that message clearly.

However, here in this dramatic announcement of his being a servant on mission to the poor, there is no restriction outlined.

His mission is to everyone.

It's to you and me -- to all of us, because for all of us, He offers release to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and the proclamation of the Jubilee -- the acceptable year -- the Jubilee of God's favor.

When Jesus had finished reading from the prophet Isaiah, He closed the book and said, "Today the words are fulfilled in your presence."

That was the bold claim that in Jesus the Word had become flesh; the words were personified, had come alive in the Word.

John put it this way in the Prologue to his Gospel: "The Word became flesh among us, full of grace and truth."

So we have the Word -- the Word of God in Person -- Jesus Christ.

And He will provide release for us from whatever bondage enslaves us.

He will enable us to recover our sight.

He will open our blinded eyes that we will see clearly what He would have us see.

And He will see to it-- He will proclaim it with his love and with his very life, that God's favor, God's Jubilee, is available to all of us, and today is the acceptable year of the Lord - - Today is the Day of Salvation.

I close with this --"a beautiful story about a great chieftain who lived on the southern border of the empire of Cyrus.

His name was Cagular.

He was a mighty warrior who tore to shreds and completely defeated various detachments of armies sent from Cyrus to subdue him.

Finally, running out of patience, the Emperor amassed an entire army who marched down and captured Cagular and brought him to the capitol for trial and execution.

On the day of the trial, Cagular and his wife were brought to the judgment chamber.

Cyrus was most impressed when he saw this magnificent looking warrior.