Today -- Luke 4:14-21 (3rd Sunday of Epiphany; Rev. Eric Beene preaching)

Photo credit: Ales Krevec, used with permission via Unsplash

Scripture:

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of God is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God 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 God’s favor.” And Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The scene in our scripture lesson this morning was a normal Sabbath service for the people of Nazareth in the early 1stcentury.  The service included prayers and a lot of scripture, both recited by the people and read to them from the scrolls and then expounded on by one of the community members who was educated for that task. On that particular Sabbath in the early 1st century, Jesus showed up back in town. He was Joseph’s boy who had been hanging around out in the desert with John the Baptist, then gone out for a few weeks all on his own. He got up during the service as one of the men who would read something from the scroll of the prophets and then offer the exposition of the passage that he read.

I imagine that many of the folks who had gathered that day were expecting a history lesson.  They were ready to hear again what God had said and done in the past.  In Isaiah’s time, the Israelites were hounded by the Babylonians. They had lost their land and their cities but not their identity as God’s people. They had to figure out in exile how to be something they hadn’t been for a long, long time:  a nation without any land of their own, scattered, but still united in their loyalty to their God.  God told Isaiah to tell the people that hope would come in the form of an anointed agent of God who would unify the people in their faith and faithfulness.  God’s words spoken through Isaiah consoled those people who were suffering in the time when they were spoken; they carried God’s promises that people who were poor would have good news spoken to them, that people who were in captivity would be sprung from their traps, that people who were blinded to the light and the truth would see things they had never seen before, and that people who were feeling crushed by those who were more powerful and wealthy would be freed from those heavy burdens.  These words of the prophet reminded those people who were in exile that God’s law commanded that every few years, there would be a time of jubilee, when slaves would be freed, land that had been lost because of debts would be restored to the families who had owned it before, and economic and social arrangements would be reworked so that everyone had a fair chance.  That was “the year of the Lord’s favor” which Isaiah spoke about in the words which Jesus read.

So some of the people there were ready to hear these words and think nostalgically about those glorious days of the past, when Isaiah was telling God’s people that God was with them.  And I imagine that the people who came to that Sabbath service who were not expecting a history lesson were looking instead for a prediction of what the future would be like.  Some of them were probably aware of the tough things going on in their community and nation:  again, they had to deal with a foreign occupier.  They saw their neighbors succumb to the temptation to go along to get along. They watched their fellow people of God pursue wealth and power just like the Romans did, instead of pursuing faithfulness and concern for their neighbors, as they were commanded in the law and the prophets of God.  The Romans were powerful, and they were everywhere, and the people of that community didn’t see any sign that anything more powerful than the Romans was going to rescue them any time soon.  So they came to the Sabbath service in the synagogue that day looking forward to some distant day in the future, by and by, when what the prophet said would finally come true:  there would be good news to tell, there would be release, healing, freedom, and jubilee.

Some folks gathered that day expecting a history lesson. Other folks gathered that day expected a prediction of what would happen in the distant future.  Jesus had their attention when he finished the reading.  And in that moment, when there was nothing hanging in the air of that synagogue but the expectations of those people looking to the past and looking to the future, he said one word which would have jarred them.  “Today,” he said.  With that word, those who were looking to the past were yanked out of their warm nostalgia.  With that word, those who were looking to the future were jerked back from their complacent wishful thinking.  All of them had to suddenly pay attention to today.  “Today,” he said, “this has been fulfilled in your presence.”  Today, God is acting.  God didn’t just act in the past, and God won’t just act in the future.  Today, God is giving good news for you to share with one another and your neighbors.  Today, God is working to release you from whatever is holding you captive.  Today, God is allowing the people who are blinded to see things they never saw before.  Today, God is freeing the people who are laboring under crushing burdens.  Today, God is proclaiming that God wants us to live in jubilee, when everyone is given a fair chance for a full, abundant, and joy-filled life.  God’s activity is neither imprisoned in the past nor out of reach in the foggy future.  God is acting today, even as you hear these words.

And I wonder if Jesus’ one word, “today,” is a challenge to you and to me, too.  It’s been a tough week for all of us who are concerned with peace, with justice, with wisdom, with freedom, and even with simple mercy. I am imagining that I am not the only one in this room that has had to, day after day, wrestle with how to balance my compulsion to read the news and my social media feeds with my need to maintain some semblance of hope that all of the ugliness will somehow be stopped. I’ve searched not just for the latest summary of what new problems the executive orders may unleash, but also for who is already filing lawsuits, asking hard questions, voting “no” on legislation, and offering other kinds of resistance. Just looking at the news, today is bleak, it is hateful, it is violent, it is chaotic, and it is just plain exhausting.

So why on earth would Jesus want us to hear that word when he says it so starkly, “Today!” I wonder if it is because we could too easily miss something that he sees but we do not, at least not yet. Like those people in the synagogue in the early first century, when we come to church and hear the scriptures, we might succumb to the temptation to imagine that God’s miracles, God’s deliverance, and God’s good works are in the past.  Or, we might think God that will only be willing or able to act in our world in some future time in the sweet by and by.  Certainly we wouldn’t say so; of course, we know, God is acting in the present. 

But I think many of us live as if we aren’t so sure.  We all like the stories of great floods and parted seas, of grand projects building great temples and even greater palaces to proclaim God’s presence and power.  We like the stories of God’ speaking through burning shrubbery, or approaching barren old women to tell them they will have babies.  We like the stories of intimate conversations between God and Mary, between Jesus and his disciples, between three convicts hanging on crosses waiting to die and wondering what comes next.  But we live as if those are just stories, things that happened in the past which are sweet and even powerful, but not really relevant to today. 

Or, we find ourselves moved by visions of the future: when empires will be swept away, when temples will be thrown down, when mountains will be thrown into the seas, and when people will come from east and west and south and north and feast together in God’s realm. We look for what will happen to each of us after we die, or what will happen to all of us after the world ends, and we pin our hopes on that time when death will be no more, and mourning and crying and pain will be no more, and God will wipe every tear from our eyes. But we live as if those are just dreams, things that are not really possible, at least not right now.

When we don’t think that God’s powerful acts in the past are relevant in the present, and when we don’t recognize that God’s beautiful promises could possibly begin in the present, then we aren’t really paying attention to everything going on around us. Instead, we only fill our eyes and ears with noise delivered by the people who decide what gets reported on the news, and we get swept up into the angst and urgency that drives so many social media posts. We allow our emotions to be manipulated into anger and indignation and fear that paralyzes us. Because what kind of a fool would try to do some good in a world that is so full of awful, hateful, unwise, unjust, unkind orders?

But the scripture is being fulfilled today, in our very presence. That’s what Jesus wants us to know. God is giving us a message of good news today, and God knows there are plenty of people around us who need us to tell it to them.  God has a message of release for all of the people who are held captive today:  captive to unjust systems that don’t give them the opportunity to flourish, and captive to bad habits which limit their ability to work and play and learn and grow into the people God wants them to be.  God is giving us vision to overcome our blindness and see God today, right here, in the faces of the people around us and in the power of the Holy Spirit who draws us together to make an impact in our community.  God is speaking today in ways that can free us from the fearful orders of the president and the fearful reporting of the media and the fearful urgency of the person who is trying to be the first to post the latest doom on social media. God is saying today that this is the time when we are to celebrate jubilee:  when debts are to be forgotten, when relationships are to be mended, when we are to arrange things so that everyone has a fair chance at lives filled with beauty and joy.

If we can’t see where God is doing all of those things today, then we aren’t looking in the right places. The US federal government, and the media that are filled with people obsessed with what it is doing, are not the only places for us to find the news about what is happening today. You know all the other places to look. Look in your garden, and in the woods and the hills and the coastlines and the marshes of this beautiful part of the world. Look in your family and among your friends and on your street. Look in your local community, in the schools and hospitals and senior centers and even in local government. Look overseas, in other nations, where all kinds of people flourish. If you have to look at Washington, then look just as closely at what is being said in the National Cathedral as what is being said at the White House. God didn’t just act in the past, and God won’t just act in the future.  Today, God’s word is fulfilled.  Today, in our hearing, there is good news, there is release, there is healing, and there is freedom.  Today, in our hearing, God’s people do not have to settle for anything less than jubilee.  And today, we are called to speak hope and compassion and freedom and righteousness in Christ’s name to the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed.  Today, the scripture is fulfilled in our hearing.

And so my prayer this morning is that we will hear Jesus’ message for today.  My prayer is that we will not be the people who live as if God’s acts of wonder are in the distant past.  And my prayer is that we will not be the people who live as if God’s glory will only be revealed in the distance of the future, in the sweet by and by.  My prayer is that, no matter how awful the news seems to be, we will hear Jesus’ words which jar us into looking closer, looking around us, and looking wherever we can see God’s presence and God’s call to us in the present, today.  “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Amen.

© 2025 Eric Beene, published here with permission.