Third Sunday of Epiphany

The words of Jesus to the synagogue congregation in Nazareth. ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’.

A Bishop was greeted by a burst of applause when he made his appearance as the key-note speaker at a conference. He responded by saying: ‘Applause before a speaker begins is an act of faith. Applause during the speech is an act of hope.  Applause at the end of a speech is an act of charity’.

A keynote speech is very important. It sets the tone for all that will follow. Its whets the appetite. A good keynote speech inspires the full attention of those who hear it.

I’ve just finished reading ‘Finest years’ which is the biography of Winston Churchill over the finest years of his life – his premiership during the war. It was his speeches to the British nation which characterised the early days of his leadership in which by sheer rhetoric and strength of conviction and character conveyed in that rhetoric he inspired the British people to stand alone in the darkest of times. Churchill’s early speeches listened by the nation on their radios were the keynote of Britain’s resistance to tyranny. In today’s Gospel we hear how Jesus went to the synagogue in Nazareth to deliver his keynote speech.

There is a similar incident recorded in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus returns to his home town of Nazareth. But Luke put the visit to Nazareth and the speech of Jesus in the synagogue right at the start of Jesus' ministry. Luke also paints a wonderfully dramatic picture in which we can almost see and feel ourselves sitting in the midst of that synagogue congregation that Sabbath day when Jesus came home for the first time. He sets the scene by introducing some excitement and anticipation because everybody in the surrounding countryside was talking about Jesus of Nazareth and now he was coming home – What were they in for? As usual Jesus went to the synagogue just as he had done every Sabbath from as far back as he and his family and everybody else could remember. But today it was different – everybody knew that. The Spirit was in the air.

St Luke then gives us a little glimpse into the form and pattern of worship in the synagogue at the time of Jesus. We know from other sources that the service consisted of readings from the Torah followed by a reading the one of the Books of the prophets followed by a sermon. That is what happens. Jesus is asked to read from the prophet Isaiah. Everyone watches with rapt attention as he unrolls the scroll finds the place and begins to read:

‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

Slowly and deliberately and reverently Jesus rolls up the scroll and gives it back to the attendant. Now what? Everybody’s eyes were on him. What will he say? There follows the shortest and yet the most effective keynote speech in history. ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ says Jesus. You can almost hear the gasp from the congregation. Jesus is accepting the title and the role of the Messiah as set out in that prophecy from Isaiah. ‘The long cherished hopes of all in that synagogue and the hopes of all Israel are now fulfilled in me’ says Jesus. ‘For anointed with the spirit I have come to bring God’s salvation.’ What the prophet foretold is fulfilled here and now and is beginning in Jesus. Short though it may be this is some keynote address. And it will set the scene for all that Jesus does in his forthcoming ministry – especially as Luke’s Gospel will tell it.

That quotation from the prophet Isaiah concentrates on captives, the afflicted, the poor and the oppressed. Throughout his Gospel Luke will present Jesus as stressing that these are the favoured children of God to whom Christ's message of salvation is primarily addressed. The poor and outcast shepherds at Bethlehem, Lazarus covered with sores at the rich man’s gate. The despised tax collectors and the outcast sinners are all in different ways subject to God’s special love and care as Jesus sees it and exercises it. In some ways Luke’s Jesus seems more at home with the rich than does the Jesus of Mark or Matthew. But he’s also more careful to point out the great dangers of wealth and the need to use it rightly and especially to give to the poor who are especially blessed in God’s kingdom. Jesus in Luke has a special care for the outcasts and the sinners; those who are marginalised by polite society and indeed by the religious – the parable of the prodigal son who put himself beyond the pale and yet was welcomed home -  is at the heart of Jesus teaching in Luke.

Perhaps most shocking of all to those who first heard it is Jesus’ insistence in Luke’s Gospel that his message is for the whole world – for other nations as well as for Israel. For outsiders as well as for insiders. He sets a Samaritan foreigner up as a hero figure who does God’s will and shows Gods compassion when both a Jewish Levite and a Jewish priest failed to do either. In the parable of the great feast the outsiders – the Gentiles - are compelled to come in and share the banquet.

In his opening sermon – his keynote speech- in the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus lays out a wide and all inclusive vision of God’s salvation reaching out to all. As wide as the world. In his ministry he brings that vision to reality as he reaches out in love and compassion to all and everyone. It was an all inclusive vision and  challenge that the congregation at Nazareth rejected when they heard it from Jesus even as they rejected Jesus and expelled him from their midst. It was too much. But he lays the vision before us to continue what he has begun. To be a congregation who show care and compassion to the poor. To reach out to the outcasts of our day. To go out and to look for those who have lost their way in the moral confusion of our times. To welcome those whom society rejects and looks down upon.

If Jesus came and spoke to us one Sabbath – I guess his key-note speech would be the same as it was in Nazareth. How would we receive it? Would we embrace it or reject it?