January 26, 2025 – Third Sunday After the Epiphany – Kalaupapa Sunday
Kahu Gary Percesepe
After a time of testing in the wilderness, Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. On the Sabbath, as was his custom, he went to his hometown synagogue. He stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God 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 favor.
He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. He then preached his first (and we may presume, his last) sermon in Nazareth.
The most important word of his sermon is the first word out of his mouth: Today.
In the sermon that inaugurated his earthly ministry, Jesus launches God’s promised revolution. He proclaims that the time has come. Echoing his mother Mary, who had prophesied that God’s mercy would soon fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty, bring the powerful down from their thrones, and lift up the lowly, Mary’s boy says to the congregation, “Today”—not yesterday, not tomorrow, not someday, but today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
The main theme of Jesus’ ministry is proclaimed in this Inaugural sermon, which is not given in the capitol city of Jerusalem at the imposing Temple but out in the hinterlands of Galilee, at a small synagogue in the humble village of Nazareth. The main theme of the gospels is what the King James Version of the bible calls “the kingdom of God.” A more contemporary translation is God’s non-Domination system[1], the realm of God which operates by a different logic from the nations of this world and is a clear rejection of any form of power that seeks to dominate and control other people. Domination means power over, but in his Inaugural sermon Jesus proclaims a different social arrangement where power is shared. Like Mary in her now famous Magnificat in Luke chapter 1, Jesus rejects power-over and replaces it with power-with. Today, he proclaims! Now is the time to release the captives from debtor’s prison, those imprisoned for the crime of being poor, those whose land was stolen by unjust landlords, those whose wages were stolen, those who lost the land that had been in their families for generations, those who have been oppressed by the powerful and silenced when they tried to protest—to these wretched of the earth Jesus says, it is for you that I come to proclaim the end of all those arrangements; that may be how things work in the kingdoms of men, but in the kingdom of God the last shall be first and the first shall be last.
God decreed in Leviticus 25 that a Year of Jubilee be observed every fifty years. All debts were to be forgiven, slaves freed, and the land returned to its original inhabitants. Jesus’ sermon strikes a note of revolution, because the Year of Jubilee was never actually observed, due to the greed and domination of the wealthy and powerful. Justice delayed is justice denied![2] America’s greatest prophet echoed Jesus when he spoke of acting with the fierce urgency of now! History is full of examples of how people of faith have been tragically slow to embrace the cries of the prophets to change their ways, to embrace all opportunities to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. Today, Jesus proclaims, we inaugurate the year of Jubilee!
This is not good news for those at the top, but it is good news for the poor! Jesus is anointed by God to preach a message of non-Domination where the powerful do not lord it over the powerless, the rich do not lord it over the poor, men do not lord it over women, where the earth itself, the aina of Ke Akua will be treated with aloha, and our natural resources no longer degraded to become the playthings of private benefit rather than the common good.
At our baptism we took solemn vows to uphold Jesus’ vision of this non-Domination system. Every Sunday we pray God’s kingdom to come, God’s will be done. Jesus’s preaching reveals God’s Dream for God’s creation. God chose to be manifested through the preached word. All present today, and those listening on the livestream, are summoned to bear witness that preaching is the primary means whereby God show’s God’s love for God’s people. There is only one preacher, only one kahu, and that is Jesus. We are all summoned to proclaim without delay the good news to the poor.
Why are sermons so important and how should we listen to sermons?
First, preachers speak under the power and authority of the Holy Spirit. A sermon is not intended as someone’s personal rant; the sermon is divinely derived testimony. The preacher speaks the word of God under a Spirit-induced compulsion. The human words of the preacher are empowered by the Holy Spirit, and the word made understandable to the congregation through the work of the Holy Spirit. The preacher listens for a word from the Lord. God instructs the listening preacher what to say. Through the preached word the Holy Spirit calls new horizons into being, opening space for the creation of a world rooted in forgiveness, love, reconciliation, hope, obedience, peace, and joy. What was unthinkable becomes possible when God’s word is proclaimed. Preaching and worship are rehearsals for the coming kingdom.
Second, the sermon is based on scripture. The Nazareth congregation didn’t ask Jesus to share his feelings or to indulge them from his personal experiences. They handed him the scroll of Isaiah and demanded that he work from that.
Third, the word of God is Jesus. Christ is present now in this room, and wherever two or three are gathered in his name. What you hear is not dead words from the past but the event of God’s presence, not the random thoughts and feelings of a preacher. As the Apostle Paul says, “We don’t preach about ourselves; we preach about Jesus Christ as Lord.”
Fourth, Jesus preaches to a specific group of people in a specific time and place who in the sermon come face to face with a God who constantly surprises them.
Fifth, Jesus’ sermon is about God. So many sermons today are about how we can become more successful, wealthier, happier versions of ourselves—all pandering to me me me me. But notice that Jesus spoke primarily about God and only secondarily about us. This is because worship is not directed at us, it is directed toward God.
Finally, it often happens that when the preacher is faithfully proclaiming the word of God, every demon in hell is set loose in the church! To hear what happens next in Luke 4, you’ll have to return to worship next week when the title of Jesus’ sermon seems to be, “Pardon Me While I Offend You with This Sermon.” Amene.
[1] I first learned this phrase from the wonderful work of biblical scholar Walter Wink.
[2] The phrase is from Martin Luther King, Jr.