- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: Luke 4:14-21

Every four years the new president of the United States gives his inaugural address. In it, he articulates his program or his plan of action for his term of office. See if you recognize the President who made the following remarks:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." - Abraham Lincoln, 1865.

"This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933.

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." - John F Kennedy, 1960.

Today's Scripture is Luke's version of the opening moments of Jesus' public ministry. We might call this his inaugural sermon.

I want to suggest to you that this text also makes a good inaugural message for our church as we begin this new year of ministry, and particularly as we will dedicate individuals for ministry later in this service.

The text begins, “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee…” Here we find one of the prominent themes of the Gospel of Luke – the emphasis on the role of the Spirit. Already the Spirit has played a prominent role in the birth of Jesus, in the message of John the Baptist, and in the temptations. We will find this theme all the way through Luke and Acts, perhaps most notably in Acts 1:8, “But you shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the world.”

And the Spirit should play an equally prominent role in our ministry as a church. Just as Jesus was “filled with the power of the Spirit,” we should pray that our church will be filled with the “power of the Spirit.” Let us never forget that this is a church that is driven by the mystery of God’s Spirit. I hope that there will always be that about our church which cannot be explained in human terms. What happens here cannot merely be attributed to hard work, great talent, and human insights. God’s Spirit is at work among us, and I hope we will always sense that mysterious quality to our life together.

Next we read, “and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.”

There is only a fine line between the function of teaching and preaching. Jesus was often called “Teacher,” which can remind us that teaching is a high calling.

Jesus has just begun his ministry, when he returns to the place where he was brought up. He enters the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom.

Scholars say that it was not unusual for a visiting guest to be asked to read and speak at the synagogue. No doubt the people in his hometown were curious about the stir that Jesus was already making, and wanted to hear what he had to say. Notice that he stood to read the Scripture and sat to deliver the sermon.

Someone gave him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he unrolled it and found the text he wanted to read. We cannot be sure if this was the assigned text for the day, or if Jesus selected the passage he wanted to use for his inaugural sermon. I prefer to think it was the later, and this gives me the second theme I want to emphasize today.

Jesus knew his Bible, and we should know ours. When Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone began the movement which is our heritage, the Disciples were known as a people of the Book. The Disciples emphasized “no book but the Bible.” It seems to me that Disciples have gotten too far away from the Bible.

One of the hallmarks of my ministry among you will be a renewed commitment to knowing the Bible. I think some of us have over-reacted to the Bible worship of other denominations. Some other churches reverence the Bible more than we do, and I believe they go to extremes.

My own pilgrimage has brought me out of that kind of setting, where the Bible was virtually idolized. I have seen some people make such radical claims about the authority of the Bible that it seems to be elevated to a place higher than God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We don’t want to be guilty of idolatry or as some call it “Biblioatry.” But we do need to know what the Bible says.

I love the Bible. I love studying the Bible. I want this to become a church that really does know the Bible. I want every member of the church to have a good study Bible. I recommend the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. That is the version we will be reading from the pulpit, and I want you to be able to easily follow along.

I want our children to know and love the Bible. Teaching our children the message of the Bible is more important than teaching them soccer, football, baseball, piano, and even arithmetic. Bringing children to Sunday School and church is one of the most sacred and important tasks for parents. At our planning retreat this weekend, the Cabinet made a renewed commitment to providing excellent training to all the children of this church. I believe the whole church can get behind this effort.

I will forever remember a profound sermon delivered by one of my students from the Boyce Bible School. He was a bi-vocational African-American man, and he delivered his sermon with the magnificent cadences so characteristic of his church culture. His outline was simple, “The Bible should be in our hand. The Bible should be in our head. The Bible should be in our heart.” I pray that South Elkhorn Christian Church will be come known as the people who have the Bible in their hands, their heads and their hearts.

Jesus read from the book of Isaiah. The text we have quoted is actually a mixture of verses from Isaiah 61:2 and Isaiah 58:6. Luke quotes it this way, “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.’

More than any other Gospel, Luke emphasizes compassion for the poor and downtrodden in our world. My Methodist friends love to use the phrase, “the least, the last and the lost.”

I believe Jesus fulfilled this prophecy in a literal fashion. Jesus really did bring good news to the poor, he really did release those who were captive to demons, and bring sight to the blind.

But Jesus also fulfilled this prophecy at a deeper level. He came to those who were so spiritually poor that they had no God, no law, no place of worship. In Ephesians 2, Paul writes,

“…you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”

Jesus brought release to those of us where were slaves to sin. He brought spiritual sight to those of us who were blind.

Friends, we are called to this same ministry. We are called to the least, the last, and the lost. We are called to those who are poor without God, to those who are addicted to sin, to those who are spiritually blind. That is our mission. That is our calling. That is why we exist as a church.

There was some discussion at the Cabinet retreat about our desire to grow. We all agreed that we don’t want to grow for growth’s sake. We don’t need to grow so that we can merely brag about numbers. Instead our desire for growth is actually our concern for persons. Our mission is to reach people. People really do need the Lord, and that is why this church exists.

I want to point out one last sentence in our text that jumped out at me. The text records, “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” I pray that sentence will become the defining characteristic of our church – “The eyes of all… were fixed on him.”

Jesus is the model of the kind of life we want to lead. Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. Jesus is the savior of the world. Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is at the heart of everything we do in this church. I pray that every one of us will have our eyes fixed on him.