All of Life is a Homecoming: Part One
“…I suppose it is not
so easy to go home,
and it takes a bit of
time to make a son out of a stranger.” -
Albert Camus
Jesus returns home. After being baptized by John in the
River Jordan, and 40 days being tested in the wilderness, he returns to Nazareth
in the region of Galilee, and we are told that the power of the Spirit is
resting upon him. [Luke 4:14-30] This is
the same Spirit-Breath that was brooding over the face of the waters in
creation, and more recently descended upon him, bodily, “like a dove” – perhaps
recalling the Dove of Peace returning to the Ark after the Great Flood had reset
and restored a world of persons who had become self-centered back into a community
of persons committed to the Common Good and Welfare of all. Once God’s Spirit-Breath
had landed, a voice declares, “This is my Beloved Son; I am well pleased with
him.”
At General Convention 2000, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold
asked us to “Notice that at that shattering moment, no task is assigned, no
agenda given, no test prescribed. Jesus is simply loved by God wildly and with
divine abandon. Nothing … is asked for or required of Jesus other than to
accept God’s delight and pleasure at his very being.”[i]
Filled with this Spirit of divine affection and delight,
news about Jesus began to spread like wildfire throughout the towns and
villages, for he was teaching in synagogues, literally “gathering places,” and
the people were giving him much honor. One Sabbath Day of Rest in the village
where he grew up, Jesus, as was his tradition, entered the gathering place and
stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He rolled
through the scroll until he came to these words:
“The Spirit of the Creator has come to rest on me. He has
chosen me to tell the good story to the ones who are poor. He has sent me to
mend broken hearts, tell prisoners they have been set free, to make the blind
see again, and to lift up the ones who have been pushed down – and to make it
known that the Creator’s time of Jubilee, of Setting Free, has come at last.”[ii]
He rolls up the scroll and sits down. The eyes of the hometown
crowd are riveted on him. Jesus says, “Today, these words you have heard have
found their full meaning. They are fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jubilee is an ancient promise described in Leviticus chapter
25 as a full Reset and Rebalancing for Israel – every seven years the clans,
tribes and all families return to the original balance and interconnectedness
of the community. They do this by removing changes that have altered the
balance, especially indebtedness. All debts are canceled, and all lands return
to the original clan owners. Jubilee signals a return to God’s Wilderness Manna
Economy of daily bread – a world in which everyone gets enough, no one gets too
much, and if you try to hoard the manna, it spoils – it spoils the manna, but
even more so it spoils life throughout the community. It destroys the Common Good. Those present
would recognize and remember that the text Jesus selects to read rings this
note of Jubilee, and that this old practice promises and offers the hope of the
restoration and recovery of all that has been lost.[iii]
And much had been lost. If it wasn’t lost ancestral lands to
rapacious urban, elite land owners, there was the indebtedness resulting from
the taxation and loss of resources to fuel the Empire of Caesar’s Rome. Living
in Israel had become the equivalent of returning to Pharaoh’s Egypt, or Exile
in Babylon. Now this son of the carpenter, Jesus, is saying the time for
Jubilee is near. The time to heal the world, to turn the world right-side-up is
approaching.
If this was Good News that Sabbath Day in Jesus’s hometown, most
of us would likely agree that this would be Good News today. Amidst economic
instability, a widening of the gap between haves and have-nots, threats of war,
violence at home and abroad, threats to democracies around the world, and a
seemingly never-ending global pandemic, these words of restoration and recovery
of all that has been lost, and a return to a world committed to the Common Good
and Welfare of all, ought to sound as hopeful today as they did in Nazareth.
This is just Part One of this story. Next Sunday we hear the
surprising conclusion. In the meantime, we would do well to remember that like
Jesus, we are loved by God wildly and with divine abandon, that we are to
accept God’s invitation to Jubilee and a restoration of our commitments to the Common
Good and the Welfare of all – all people, all creatures, and the Earth itself!
Amen.
[i] Griswold,
Frank T., Going Home, (Cowley Publications: Cambridge, MA, 2000) p. 15
[ii] Isaiah
61, First Nation’s Version of the New Testament, (Intervarsity Press, Downers
Grove: 2021) p. 111
[iii]
Swanson, Richard, Provoking the Gospel of Luke, (The Pilgrim Press, Cleveland,
2006) p.93,95
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