2024.02.02 | Fill My Wounds with Healing
“Fill My Wounds with Healing”
Luke 4:21-30
Preached by
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, CA
02 February 2025
Good morning beloved and may the peace of Christ be with you. Today we mark a special feast day, that of Candlemas, which not coincidentally falls mid-way between the winter solstice and spring equinox. Many traditions surround this special time in our earth's revolution around the sun. Immediately recognizable to us is Punxsutawney Phil. Do we know if he saw his shadow or not? Another tradition is Día de la Candelaria in which candles are blessed for use in homes for the last half of winter, tamales are made, completing the 40 days after Christmas, and baby Jesuses are blessed, celebrating baby Jesus being able to sit up on his own. Today you are invited to take candles that have been blessed into your homes, to continue letting our light shine brightly in the darkness. And after our service please stay and join us as we will have tamales ready for you to eat, to make, and to take! And you see those of you in the pews who got the Baby Jesus during our Tres Reyes festival!
Gracias a las Compañeras, hoy en celebración del Día de la Candelaria vamos a tener tamales para la hora de compañerismo después del servicio. También vamos a poder hacerlos todos juntos. Hoy vamos hablar de sanación y el momento en que Jesús tuvo que hablar la verdad a su comunidad. La gente acudía a Jesús con heridas en el cuerpo, la mente y el espíritu. Y los habitantes de la ciudad natal de Jesús interpretaron las Escrituras como promesas de un pacto exclusivo de Dios con ellos, un pacto que incluía promesas de liberación de sus opresores. Pero Jesús vino a anunciar una liberación, pero no se trataba de una liberación étnica o nacional, sino de la promesa divina de liberación para todos los pobres y oprimidos, independientemente de su nacionalidad, etnia, género o raza. Esto fue una buena noticia para muchos, pero para algunos, querían matarlo por decir estas cosas.
We are continuing our series on God’s economy. We’ve already contemplated the themes of filling our homes with hope and filling our plans with purpose, and today we will contemplate filling our wounds with healing. I know, I know, you might be thinking, “wait a minute Pastor, how can we talk about healing right now?” I thought the same thing at first, but it may, just may be a good word we need to hear at this moment, so I ask you to bear with me.
My friends there are wounds too numerous to count in this world, and plentiful threats of more wounds to come. Whether these wounds be betrayals, disappointments, be they familial, transgressions of the community, lacerations that come from the body politic, or even from within one’s own faith community. Being wounded and mending wounds is part of living. It was as true in Jesus’ day as it is in ours.
People came to Jesus carrying wounds of body, mind, and spirit. This week we continue the story of Jesus in his own hometown. Especially when wounding hits “close to home,” we tend to panic. Fear, anger, and grief may set in, maybe even paralyzation. But we must guard against falling into the myth of scarcity, and we must certainly not succumb to doing nothing, carrying on with business as usual. Jesus didn’t.
In our lectionary passage this week, we don’t read of Jesus sitting up as celebrated in church tradition this day, so much as standing up. After Jesus read from Isaiah, “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 set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” he rolled up the scroll, sat down, and began to have a heated exchange with those in the synagogue.
The people of Jesus’ hometown read the Scriptures as promises of God’s exclusive covenant with them, a covenant that involved promises of deliverance from their oppressors. Jesus came announcing deliverance, but it was not an ethnic or national deliverance but God’s promise of liberation for all the poor and oppressed regardless of nationality, ethnicity, gender, or race. This is where he seemingly ran afoul, crossing that thin line.
Last week the Vice President was interviewed by a certain entertainment network not to be named, where he made this comment: “There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”
Had that comment been what Jesus uttered after rolling up the scroll, he would have not stirred up a commotion that got him nearly thrown off a cliff, and we probably would not even be reading about it. Heck, if that was the essence of Christianity, there would be no Christianity.
Guess what JD, that’s not, I repeat, that’s not what Jesus said.
I’m going to bracket out the possibility that he was referring to what Augustine called the “ordo amoris,” or, the “Order of Loves,” and take his comment at face value as he isn’t a theologian. Jesus himself, though, problematizes even this order, decentering biological affiliation when he asks, “Who are my mother, my brothers and sisters?” Let us also recall the parable of the good Samaritan, teaching us that our neighbor is indeed the one outside our immediate community, even the one chiefly despised by the majority group. The same is true of today’s lesson. Those in Jesus’ hometown expected to receive a double blessing if you will, but Jesus surprises them and states that his ministerial priority is going to be those folks over in Capernaum
Jesus appeals to the prophets, calling attention to Elijah’s healing of the widow in Sidon and Elisha’s healing of Naaman, both non-Israelites. In Zarephath, in between Sidon and Tyre (modern-day Lebanon) the gentile widow miraculously fed Elijah from the last of her oil and flour thinking it was enough for their last meal before dying. Yet, in God’s abundance the oil did not run out, nor did the flour. There was enough for them both. Na’aman’s leprosy was healed after he bathed in the Jordan seven times, demonstrating his immense faith, even while a military commander for the King of Aram. Jesus was not about to fall prey to a Make Judea Great Again campaign. No, that’s thinking too small. His ministry, God’s economy, was and is so much more expansive than that, it’s not just for insiders. He was following in King David’s footsteps of creating a multi-ethnic kin-dom.
To follow Jesus is to be in relationship with those who are oppressed, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Even at the threat of a cliff. Jesus was pleading with the faithful to not domesticate their prophets. Today we will celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., canonizing his call to non-violence and racial equality in his “I Have a Dream” speech, but rarely claim his so-called radical message of God’s economy as can be heard in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech. Many in our country felt that Rev. Dr. King had gone too far in questioning our republic’s innocence, probably not unlike those in Jesus’ hometown synagogue.
In a time of very real political oppression, those in the synagogue perhaps expected an anti-Roman message, but what they got instead was a pointed message directed at themselves. In his first public sermon, rather than critiquing the Romans, Jesus critiques his own community. This is inline with the Scripture he read from Isaiah, which just before his reading, the prophet states,
“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
Jesus is calling out their sins of exclusivity right to their faces! For true healing to take place, a recognition of wrong and harm must occur. But the risks are high. People get thrown off of cliffs for doing just that. And even Jesus wasn’t immune to this.
For Jesus, how we treat the least among us is far more an indication of who we are than our religious, ethnic, or cultural identity. Jesus’ attitude seems to be“Who cares if Rome is oppressing us if we aren’t protecting and lifting up the least among us?” What’s the point of being free of the yoke of empire when we refuse to do anything about the yokes we place on each other’s necks?
Are we courageous enough to say what needs to be said, even if it isn’t what our community or congregation wants to hear?
Are we walking the walk in our own congregation? Are we doing everything to mitigate harm and set free those who are oppressed? Or are we just talking the talk?
El pasaje del leccionario de esta semana presenta a Jesús de pie en la sinagoga de su ciudad natal y desafiando la estrecha visión que la multitud tiene de la liberación de Dios. Cuando lee Isaías, anunciando la liberación de Dios para los oprimidos, se enfrenta a una reacción violenta porque su mensaje no trata de la salvación étnica o nacional, sino de la liberación para todas las personas, independientemente de su origen. Al hacer referencia a los actos de sanación de los no israelitas de los profetas anteriores Elías y Eliseo, Jesús señala una visión más amplia e inclusiva del reino de Dios que trastoca las expectativas excluyentes de la multitud. Su mensaje va más allá de los límites convencionales, llamando a una inclusión radical que confronte los pecados sociales, especialmente el daño que hacemos a los más pequeños entre nosotros. La incapacidad de la gente para aceptar esta gracia inclusiva les impide recibirla. El ministerio de Jesús llama a un reino donde la liberación no se acapara, sino que se comparta, y donde la verdadera sanación provenga de reconocer y abordar el daño, incluso cuando desafíe a nuestras propias comunidades.
When the radical inclusiveness of Jesus’ announcement became clear to those gathered in the synagogue in Nazareth, their commitment to their own community boundaries took precedence over their joy that God had sent a prophet among them. In the end, because they were not open to the prospect of others’ sharing in the bounty of God’s deliverance, they themselves were unable to receive it. That’s the paradox of the gospel, the unlimited grace that it offers so scandalizes us that we are unable to receive it. We can only truly receive it in sharing it with others. That’s God’s economy, not one of hoarding for self, only keeping watch for one’s own, but freely sharing, so that all may have all. Only then will old wounds truly heal.
Asking folks to change our ideas, our practices is risky. The cliff is real folks, the risk is high; are we willing to do something new? Even here at Eden this progressive community of faith? Can we imagine answering a call like that? The cost is as steep as the cliff. The stakes are real.
Jesus told us this was coming: Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of me. Actually living the gospel is dangerous, unlike playing the role on TV.
Oh there’s a fine line people say. After everything that has transpired in the past two weeks is there even a line anymore? Many speaking to their congregations this morning may find, and hopefully so, that the tightrope we walk as deliverers of prophetic words is now gone. It never really existed. It did not for the many faithful organizers during the Civil Rights Movement. They knew the stakes were high, and they knew the Gospel call. Some even answered with their lives.
So, how are we, in spite of empire, going to ensure that we bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, bind up the brokenhearted, and set free those who are oppressed, mitigating harm within our community, and within our congregation? Because we know empire’s not going to do it. How are we going to go about healing?
The Right Reverend Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Church preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ at the inaugural prayer service earlier this month. She called for love and compassion, grace and mercy, and inclusion of migrants. For that a Georgia Congressman has called for her deportation, the President has demanded an apology from her, and the Vice President has MAGA-fied orders of Chistian love. Bishop Budde, like Jesus, has since received death threats. She refuses to apologize or back down. She, like Jesus, stood up. This is the kind of courage that this moment in history demands.
In the context of implementation of MAGA’s orders of love, we received word this past Friday that two-thirds of the staff of one of our partners, Church World Service will be furloughed by end of day tomorrow. This is not just the local East Bay office, but staff across the entire country for an organization that has more than a $200M operational budget resettling refugees and assisting asylum-seekers, and has done so since WWII ended, when seventeen Christian denominations came together “to do in partnership what none could hope to do as well alone.” This undoing is not what Jesus would do.
In the days and months to come, church, we will be called to follow Jesus, the one who came into the world and his own did not receive him. I just said something there. I hope you heard me.
With so much chaos, we may feel disoriented at times, but when evil is called good, and good is called evil, we must and we will call it out.
And so, how can we talk of healing at times like these? When old wounds are again exposed, the sins of our ancestors no longer haunt us, but again become the law of the land?
While we know that there can be no true healing without repenting and accepting of responsibility, there are things that happen along the way.
Jesus’ hometown synagogue nearly lynching him was a foreshadowing of what awaited the prophet, and his followers. Yet, Jesus did not wait until the end to begin to heal wounds. He did so along the way. Healing like salvation is not relegated to a distant future. It is something to be claimed in the here and now, even if never fully realized. Jesus shows us this throughout his ministry, it happens when his disciples and followers gather. Miracles happen not in isolation, but in interaction, in vulnerability, in community-making, in way making.
Ultimately, Jesus did not let the crowd or the majority opinion sway his mission of healing. Our passage ends with a phrase that Luke repeats throughout his Gospel, “He kept going on.” Jesus didn’t let the crowd stop him, neither should we.
No boundaries or borders prevents God’s abundance. God’s grace is never subject to the limitations and boundaries of any nation, church, group, race, or ethnicity. Those who would exclude others thereby exclude themselves.
“Fill my wounds with healing,” is the supplication on the lips of a certain man who was en route from Jerusalem to Jericho when attacked by robbers. It was neither Priest nor Levite who provided healing balm, but a Samaritan. Jesus teaches us that our neighbor is the one who shows mercy no matter to which socially constructed order of love they pertain.
For our wounds to truly be healed we must first become healers, and accept healing from our neighbors. And to be healers in a time such as this, is to be bold as Jesus was. Standing up, yes to empire, but to also those within our own fold if need be, protecting especially our migrant and non-binary siblings. May the LORD deliver us also from the crowds and the cliff, so that we too can carry on God’s mission of an abundant, equitable and healing economy for all. Amen.