Return to Shalom

What the world craves

We live in a world where people really feel dissatisfied. We’re good at putting on a brave face. We can even look happy, perhaps even carefree, but deep down, the vast majority of the world feel this dissatisfaction.

And the reason is obvious. There are a lot of wrongs in this world. The rich get their way and the poor are trampled on. But even if you’re counted among the rich, even you feel the dissatisfaction. No matter how much luxury you buy, things are not right.

We long for something better, but the truth be told, for the most part, we don’t even recognise what it is that we want.

We crave a better world - but what would that even look like.

Different groups will paint a different picture of what they think the world should look like.

Free market capitalists imagine the world will be better when the market is free. Cut the red tape, cut the burdensome tax, businesses will flourish, and as a result, everyone will have a better experience.

Those who identify with socialism would disagree with those free market capitalist. They see the greed that comes with such a system, and so they would see that the world will be better with regulations. Things need to be controlled so that there is a more equitable distributions of goods and money.

Or we could look at the environmentalist, that argue that the world will never get any better if we don’t start caring for the environment.

Or there are groups that might define themselves as progressives, who have seen traditional values at there worst, and think the world will be better if we change some of our values, such as sexual ethics, abortion and voluntary assisted dying.

There are other groups as well, each having a different focus for what they think will make a better world.

The problem is, regardless of which path you take, you still end up with dissatisfaction.

Some of those ideas I mentioned have good merit, but none of them will make the world what we are craving.

So do we just throw our hands in the air and give up. They’ve all been tried and all found wanting.

Well, no we don’t. In fact, if we’ve understood the story line of the Bible, we can’t.

You see, last week, I opened the year with this idea that we can make a difference in the world in which we live. I took that from the idea Jesus gave in Matthew 5 when he tells us that we are the salt and the light of the world.

Now I want to suggest, that in being the salt and light, we should be pushing the world in a certain direction. A direction where we actually can start to feel satisfaction.

And it’s this direction that I want to explore this morning.

Jesus homecoming

I want to find this direction by exploring the passage read to us earlier where Jesus gives us the direction that he intends to head in.

So this morning, we are in Luke’s gospel, and Luke has placed this story right at the start of the active ministry of Jesus on purpose. The reality is that Jesus would have done quite a bit before this time. You could look at John’s gospel, for example, where he turned water into wine.

But here in Luke, we go from Jesus’ baptism, to his forty days of tempting in the wilderness, to this passage, with just a passing reference at the beginning that Jesus had already been doing various teaching in synagogues.

Now if you look at verse 16, you’ll see that what’s happening in this passage is somewhat of a homecoming. We’re told that Jesus has come to Nazareth, which of course, as we’re reminded in the passage, is the very place that he grew up.

He’s coming back home. He’s coming home in a literal sense, but there is also a sense in which we’re also about to see the plan of a metaphorical homecoming for humanity.

What do I mean by that?

Well, let me unpack this idea a little, because it is when we understand this, that we will understand what I said before about how the entire story line of the Bible helps us know the direction we should be heading.

The Biblical homecoming

Well, we need to go back to creation for this one.

Genesis 1-2, we get a picture of creation. Throughout Genesis 1, after each day, God declares it good, that is, till after the sixth day, when all is done and humanity is on the earth - and it is declared very good.

Now this is significant. Because in this creation picture we get this little glimpse of what things should be like.

In fact, this is where I’m going to bring in the idea of Shalom.

For a short time in history, there was perfect shalom.

Earlier in the service, we saw the video from the Bible Project explaining this concept of shalom.

It’s the word that is frequently translated as peace, but it is so much more than the absence of hostility. It’s about wholeness. It’s about being complete.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for that shalom to be broken.

Sin entered the world and things quickly spiraled out of control.

Greed, pride, envy, murder. A self-focus wins out.

It quickly becomes apparent, as it still is today, that humanity left to its own devices means that the idea of shalom is gone.

But this then becomes the story line of the Bible.

That is, God intervenes to bring the world back to shalom.

It’s a long journey that takes many twists and turns.

But if you track it the whole way, you see it finally return in its fullest sense when we get to the last two chapters of the entire bible. The chapters which give us the New Heaven and the New Earth.

In Revelation 21:4 we read: “…there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain...”

That’s because we have come back to shalom.

You see, by using this concept of shalom you can see as we move towards a state of shalom, we are in a sense, returning to the state that God created for us. In a sense you could call it - coming home.

And so back to our passage for this morning, I’m going to make the suggestion, that not only are we seeing a literal homecoming of Jesus to his home town, but we’re also about to see the homecoming in the sense that Jesus is about to describe what things should be like.

Reading from Isaiah

So let’s see what happens.

So he’s in his home synagogue. Where quite likely, he knows everyone and they all know him. Not just from his recent reputation which has started to grow, but from his childhood.

As is the tradition, he stands up to read the scroll. He’s handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and so unrolling it, he goes straight to the words which reflect what he wants. In our Bible, it’s Isaiah 61.

And he reads the words:

Luke 4:18–19 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

He then rolls up the scroll and sits back down - he sits because traditionally, the sermon was given while seated.

And then he proceeds to give one of the shortest, but perhaps most pertinent sermons ever. He simply says: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”.

And with that, Jesus is essentially declaring his intention.

In this, he is not giving a full picture of salvation - that will come. Rather, he is giving the direction that everything is headed in. That is, that we need to return to the place where all things work together. It’s a picture of bringing us back closer to where things were at creation.

Spirit of the Lord

Well, let’s have a closer look at the Bible reading Jesus gave in this passage, because as we do, we’ll get a better picture of what Jesus is about.

Now it starts with the words “The Spirit of the Lord is on me...”

It’s interesting that with Jesus owning these words from Isaiah, we are starting with a very Trinitarian perspective. The Spirit gives us the reference to the Holy Spirit. We also get the Lord, that is God the Father. And with Jesus owning these words, the “me” refers to Jesus the Son. And so we have the Father, Son and Holy Spirit working together - this in itself gives us an amazing picture of shalom - it is out of this perfect unity that we get the picture we have.

The Oppressed

Now as we see the task that Jesus has been annointed to, we’ll notice something in common with all of the types of people who are the focus on his attention.

Firstly it’s the poor. Then the prisoners. Then the blind. And finally the oppressed.

We’re talking all of the people who have no power. Particularly in Jesus day, they had no recourse to anything. They were all at the whim of those who were in charge.

Today, perhaps these groups have a little more power. In some countries like ours, the poor have access to welfare. Prisoners have access to an appeal process. And the blind have access to disability services. Yet even with all of these services, we see big discrepancies in their rights.

But here’s the thing. While ever there are groups that are being oppressed, we do not have shalom.

This is why Jesus sets as his task to proclaim good news to the poor. To proclaim freedom for the prisoner. To provide recovery of sight for the blind. And to set the oppressed free.

The purpose of this is restore the imbalance.

Justice

In fact, I want to suggest that this gets to the heart of the biblical concept of Justice.

Now let me just think about this idea of justice for a moment.

When we talk about justice, we can really talk about two types. The first is retributive justice - and to be honest, this is probably what we first think of.

Retributive justice is kind of the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth sort of justice. That is, if someone does something wrong to me, then justice says something needs to be done to balance the ledger, so to speak. There needs to be some punishment in proportion to the wrong done. That’s retributive justice, and it’s what our legal system is largely concerned with.

But the bible gives us another picture of justice - what we call restorative justice. This is the type of justice that looks at the inequalities that exist, and restore it so we get a level playing field.

It’s the type of justice you see in the Old Testament such as the year of Jubilee, when slaves were to be released, where land was to be returned. God placed these laws there to stop the powerful getting more powerful and the poor getting poorer.

We see it also in the prophets who plead for people to have a voice for the oppressed, to care for the vulnerable.

I want to suggest that this is the essence of justice in the Bible.

It brings things back to where they should be - where all people share as image bearers of God.

Jesus was setting the scene for his ministry when he read out the prophet Isaiah in his home town of Nazereth. He was saying that he is about redeeming humanity to come back to the shalom that was originally created.

A social gospel

Now I just want to put in a little warning here. It is very easy to take what I’m saying today and turn it into a message that might sound a lot like what people today talk about when they talk about systemic inequalities and things like privilege.

I’m talking about the type of stuff that some of you might dismiss because it all sounds a little too PC.

Let me make two comments about this. Firstly, don’t just dismiss that sort of talk because you think the people behind it has some sort of agenda. Perhaps they do have an agenda, but that sort of talk about getting rid of inequalities started with our Bible, so to dismiss it as leftist PC garbage, is quite problematic for a Bible believing Christian.

But my second comment might sound like I’m contradicting my first point - do be wary about some of the groups that seem to be wanting to bring down systemic injustice, but yet are taking us away from God.

And let me tell you why. If you take God out of the picture, then we take away the only real solution to what actually is the problem.

You see, the systemic inequalities, of which, I’m talking about things like systemic racism, sexism and the like - these inequalities exist because of sin.

Let’s say you level the playing field in one area, but if the problem of sin hasn’t been dealt with, the problem is most likely just going to shift.

The gospel that Jesus gave, was one that dealt with the root problem of sin, and then which allows for a restorative justice to take place.

The problem today

Today, much of the population will applaud you for saying we need to deal with systemic injustice, but then get all upset when you say the root problem of this is actually sin.

Mind you, for some Christians, the opposite is true. They’ll applaud you for saying we need to deal with sin, but when we start talking about social action, then they get all worried.

But it is foolish to divide this into two problems. Jesus came to fix both.

Upset at Jesus

Well, this idea of getting upset with this message is not new. In fact, that’s exactly what we see in this passage.

You see, these locals - the people Jesus grew up with. They initially were quite amazed at the gracious words Jesus was saying.

That is, at least, until Jesus started suggesting that actually, there is a systemic problem with these people in that they don’t accept the truth. This was a problem in the day of Jesus, and Jesus gives examples of where it was a problem back in the Old Testament.

Well, to prove the point of Jesus, they go and reject him. Actually, they try and do it in style, and throw him off a nearby cliff.

But I love the matter-of-fact way that Luke concludes what should have been a frightful ordeal. It says: “But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way”.

Jesus had a job to do, and now is not his time. Nothing is going to stop Jesus from being the catalyst for the change the world needed. The change that would start to bring the world back to where it should be. That is, to a state of shalom.

Our difference

Last week I spoke about us being salt and light. We are to make a difference in this world by living the way that Jesus showed us to live.

But what is that difference?

Well, I want to suggest that the difference should look a whole lot like the difference that Jesus was intending to make, and in fact did make. We should be working towards a world of shalom.

We should be reaching out to the poor and letting them know the good news that there is hope for them. That they haven’t been forgotten.

We should be doing what we can to help the people that don’t have a voice. That are stuck in a system that won’t listen.

What will that specifically look like for you? Well, in part, that depends on the situation God has placed you. But look around. Who are the people in your community that don’t have a voice. Who are the people who are struggling?

In our community, we have a lot of people who are struggling to find housing. There is a real shortage, and what is available is becoming too expensive.

Now what can we do about it? Well, perhaps there’s not a lot. But maybe getting into the community and actually getting to know them might be a start. Listening to their stories and letting them know we care.

Obviously it would be great if we could actually do something that would get them what they need - sometimes we’re just not in a position to do that. But maybe we could even help them as advocates. Reaching out to politicians who might be able to help.

This of course is not the only problem.

But take the time and really ask the question - where in our community is shalom most clearly broken?

Because perhaps this is where we need to be focussing as we think about making a difference.

Conclusion

I know that we can argue with all of this - but can we really make a noticable difference? Even if I identify the areas where shalom is broken, I’m only one person. Or even if we think as a church, we’re only a small church with very limited resources.

The truth is, as individuals it’s unlikely that we will make a massive difference.

But know that we are part of something much bigger. We are part of what God is doing to bring shalom back to a broken world.

And we know where this is headed. We will not completely know shalom this side of Christ return - but the good news is that Jesus is coming back, and at this point, we will know shalom in its fullest sense.

At this point, there will be no more tears or pain.

Until that point, let’s keep working toward shalom.

Let me pray...