Monthly Archives: February 2019

Sermon

Love your enemies, do not judge, and be merciful – just like God

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GOSPEL: Luke 6:27-38

[Jesus said:] 27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…

37“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” (Read the whole passage)

This is the last green Sunday of this season after Epiphany. Soon we will go up the mountain of transfiguration next Sunday, and down into the valley of Ashes on Ash Wednesday. All along the way, we have been hearing stories that reveal to us the divine son of God. Stories like the Wedding of Cana where Jesus turned water in wine, stories like Jesus taking Simon Peter out fishing and almost sinking the boat with nets so full of fish. And now today, before the journey from the Lenten Wilderness to the cross gets moving, Jesus finishes a sermon began last week. This is the next part of the Sermon on the Plain that began with the Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes we heard last week, were a direct address to the crowds. Blessed are you, Jesus repeated over and over. And we heard that our idea of blessing is not about things bestowed upon us – wealth, health, happiness – but rather God’s presence in all the parts of life.

And then today, Jesus continues. “I say to you that listen, love your enemies” and so on. Love, mercy, forgiveness. Offer the other cheek, give up your coat. Do not judge, do not condemn. Be merciful.

These sound like quite the instructions. Everything sounds aspirational and nice… but honestly, who could really live like this?

Yet, as Jesus speaks to the crowds gathered on the plain, poor, hungry, grieving and seeking masses, looking for salvation… these instructions are more than a check-list of nice ways to treat those around you.

Jesus has been setting his audience up. He began with the Beatitudes, reminding people of their own liturgical understanding of blessing, of naming God’s presence in the world. And now he is challenging the law… the rules of righteousness that the people Israel lived by. Rules that governed work, relationships, cleanliness, food, crime, economics and politics. Rules that, if followed, provided a path to righteousness and salvation.

And Jesus is turning those rules on their head. Because those rules were all about holding people to account, measuring sin against a measuring stick, knowing where you stood with God, where you stood in the community. And Jesus is undoing that sense of knowing and security.

Jesus is telling those who are normally on the outside, those who are unrighteous, to love and forgive and be generous. Not things you do when you are trying to measure up to the law.

And almost certainly Jesus’ words caused unrest. Because letting go of the system that the world runs on is hard… even if the system is keeping you down.

Love, mercy and forgiveness simply don’t mesh very well with keeping the law… how do you measure up and hold people to account if you cannot judge and condemn, but should be forgiving and merciful.

Having rules to measure ourselves, and others, by is something we know all too well. We aren’t above grabbing for magic bullet quick-fix solutions to our struggles. We often stick to the rules we know well and have always followed in the hopes they will keeping seeing us through, even when things start to be hard or fall apart. We like structures that tell us where we stand, and tell us where others have failed. We keep those rules for generations, just like the people of Israel did.

“The way we do things” is a phrase we know well whether it is at work, at home, or at church. Showing mercy, forgiveness and love is not how the real world works we might say in response to Jesus. In the real world you get what you deserve and pay what you owe, you live with consequences and accept that that is life.

Except when the world changes and the way do things seem to fall of the track… and the rules and traditions and steps to success that we have trusted for years don’t seem to work anymore. The measuring and judging and condemning stop being way to salvation, the way to righteousness, the way to know where we stand and they become burdensome… forcing us to become constantly reactive. When we spend more time bemoaning that the rules we love are no longer followed or cared about, when we complain that there aren’t enough of us to maintain the traditions, when look about for someone to blame because our system of knowing and security doesn’t work anymore.

It is almost as if Jesus is saying something about that… something about the burden of following rules that don’t work anymore.

Jesus isn’t giving us a new set of rules to replace the old set. Jesus isn’t telling that they are the new things we need to do be righteous, to be successful, to be faithful.

Jesus is describing something much beyond all of that.

Jesus not telling us how we ought to be with one another, but how God is with us.

God is the one who loves. God is one who forgives. God is the one who is merciful.

God does not judge.

God does not comdemn.

God gives us Godself completely, from being born in manger to dying on a cross.

Jesus is describing God and God’s Kingdom, a Kingdom of Love, mercy and forgiveness.

And Jesus is talking true freedom. Freedom from rules that don’t work. From laws we cannot keep. From traditions we cannot maintain.

The freedom of love, is the freedom to stop holding the world around in our wrath and anger because our rules don’t work.

The freedom of mercy, is the freedom to let go of standards that have stopped helping long ago.

The freedom of forgiveness is not be bound us by judgement. Not to react to every transgression. Because if God did not forgive, God would be in a constant state of judgment over humanity, constantly condemning us for our constant failure.

And so love, and mercy and forgiveness… these are the freedom of God.

No, they are not a new list of things we need to start doing… they are the things that will free us from the burdens of the rules of righteousness, the burden of saving ourselves.

Because here is the thing about love and mercy and forgiveness… even these we cannot bring to fruition. We cannot be as loving, forgiving and merciful as we should… and that is the point.

God’s kingdom of love, forgiveness and mercy comes to us because we cannot do it on our own.

This the revelation that has been unfolding for seven weeks, the revealing of God’s Kingdom, God’s Messiah come to us because we cannot do it on our own… and even if we did keep the law, it would not save us… if we could keep up our old rules, we would still be right where we are now.

Jesus gives us this vision of the Kingdom to make us ready. Ready for what comes next.

For a mountain top experience like no other with a bright and shining Jesus appearing to frightened disciples… for a pathway that leads us down into the valley of ashes, into Lent.

Because from here on in, we are on our way. On our way with Jesus through the wilderness, the wilderness that will strip us of the rules and laws that we thought would make us righteous… and along the way we will find out that we have never been righteous by our own effort. That the rules we love never were the thing that was saving us.

Instead we have always needed God to intervene. And intervene God will, on a cross and out of an empty tomb.

Love your enemy, Jesus says… because God first loves you.

Forgive and bless those who hate you, Jesus says… because God has forgiven you.

Be merciful, Jesus says… because God’s mercy has been there all along.

Because God’s love, forgiveness and mercy has always been our righteousness and salvation.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

It is not the things that are #blessed anyways

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GOSPEL: Luke 6:17-26

17[Jesus] came down with [the twelve] and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people…
20Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.

Today, our journey into this long season of Epiphany comes to an unusual place… the 6th Sunday after the Day of Epiphany. Most years, we are already heading into Transfiguration, Ash Wednesday and Lent by this point, Epiphany is being put into the rear view mirror of the journey into the Lenten wilderness. But because of when the first full moon, happens after the spring equinox (yes, that is how the date of Easter is calculated), we are six weeks into this season with still one more Sunday to go.

And so on this unusual Sunday, we hear a familiar story out of place. The Sermon on the Plain from Luke, also known as the Beatitudes. We often hear the Beatitudes on All Saints Sunday or in the summer… at times when they speak to who we are. But this time after Epiphany is about revealing Christ and who Jesus is, as we have heard in the stories of Jesus’ baptism, the wedding of Cana, Jesus preaching in the synagogue, Jesus almost getting hurled off a cliff after preaching in the synagogue, and Jesus almost sinking Peter’s boat with a net full of fish in the middle of the lake last week. And so with different ears to hear Jesus’ familiar sermon on the plain, they reveal to something unexpected about who and where Jesus the Messiah is in the world.

“Blessed are you who are poor” Jesus begins.

And we immediately begin to conjure up ideas of what it means to be blessed. To have, to obtain, to be given things of value and worth. We believe we are blessed with health, wealth, and happiness. “In the world of social media, one of the ways to communicate is through the use of hashtags, also known as the pound symbol, or the number sign. It’s a way of categorizing posts, so one can look up what other people are saying about a particular topic. One might look up #wpgjets or #mbroads or any number of other topics. As you might imagine, #blessed is pretty popular. On instagram, as of the time of this writing, there were 106 million posts featuring #blessed. It was [just] Valentine’s Day, so most of them were love related – feeling blessed for romantic love, family, friends, chocolate! Or to be the blessing to others by providing something as a sign of one’s love: flowers, cards, food… chocolate! But there were literally a million other things people felt #blessed about. And that’s not even counting all the other social media venues. To be #blessed in almost all of these situations is to have [or to own, or to possess] something, or someone.”

And yet, even as the people of Israel may have treated blessings in this way in daily life, the bible and ritual practice Ancient Israel did not. The thing or person most frequently blessed in the prayers of the Israelites was not themselves, but God. “Blessed are you O, Lord our God, King of the Universe” was a common way to begin a prayer.

And in Christian tradition it is the same, in fact the most familiar prayer of our worship begins this way, “Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed (or Blessed) is your name.”

To bless something is to name it holy. To declare that God is present in something or someone. To say a blessing is simply to say, “God is here.”

And so to hear the beatitudes in this way, changes them.

God is with you who are poor…

God is with you are hungry…

God is with you are weeping…

Yet this understanding of blessing does not change the upside down sense of the beatitudes. To think of being poor, or hungry or weeping as being blessed is strange… but maybe it is even harder to imagine just how it is that God is with those who are suffering.

And isn’t that the problem, no matter how we hear the beatitudes or who they are about. The way in which they turn the world upside down is just hard to grasp.

Every other message that we hear in this world tells the opposite story. Those 106 million instagram posts are probably not showing pictures of poor, hungry and grieving people. And who among us really believes that it would woeful to be rich, to be full – even after Christmas dinner, or to be laughing.

We just cannot escape thinking that blessings are things we can have, posses and own. Things that will fix our problems, make our lives easier, bring us happiness. Things that we have and that others don’t. And to be poor, hungry and weeping in our view is to not have the things.

So what is Jesus getting at? What is “Blessed are you – God is with you – who are poor”, really about?

Well, the clue is in who Jesus is talking to today.

In the other version of the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount version from Matthew, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom.”

But here on the plain in Luke, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor.”

Blessed are you.

You.

Jesus is speaking directly to his audience. And he is not philosophizing about some abstract poor. But speaking to us.

Blessed are you. God is with you. I am with you.

You are the poor, you are hungry, you are weeping, you are the hated.

And You… you are also the rich, the full, the laughing, the well-liked.

It is a much richer and broader understanding of these blessing and woes than we might first think.

You might NOT be poor in terms of your bank account, but we are all poor in some way. Maybe poor in relationships, in energy, in community, in time, in health. And we are also all rich… maybe rich in relationships, in energy, in community, in time, in health. And maybe we are both at the same time.

These beatitudes seem to go in a circle. They don’t provides categories or PREscriptions, but rather DEscriptions. They describe the complexity of life, the messiness of it all. Because we are never just one thing or another, we are all these things.

And in the midst of all these things. Poverty and riches, hunger and satisfaction, weeping and laughing, hatred and acclaim… Jesus is there. God is with us.

It is not the things that are blessed anyways.

It is you.

You are blessed. Blessed are you, Jesus says.

Standing there on the plain, looking out and the crowds and his disciples, looking out at the masses, full of complicated and messy people, looking out at a group of people not any different than us… And Jesus proclaims, “Blessed are you.”

Blessed are you, when it is God who is most often blessed.

Blessed are you in the messy, complicated parts of life.

Blessed are you in your poverty and riches, hunger and fullness, weeping and laughing. Because in the midst of all that, you are not alone. God is with you, wherever you are, whatever is happening.

Here in this sixth week after Epiphany, these Beatitudes from Luke speak to us in a new way. They bring us before the Messiah, the Christ, standing on the plain, standing right before us, speaking directly to us. And this Messiah, this Christ tells us something completely different than we hear anywhere else… this Messiah reminds us that our neither our poverty nor our riches are signs of God’s absence or presence. In fact, these things get in our way. When we think God has abandoned us in our want, or that we do not need God in our abundance. Jesus declares that it not these things that tell us where God is among us and what God is doing. Rather, Jesus stands before us and tells us, reveals to us just where God is among us.

And of all the radical things that the Beatitudes seem to proclaim about God’s vision of the world… blessings for things that we don’t see as blessed, woes for things that we usually consider blessings… the most radical thing of all is that none of those things are the most important. The radical thing is that God has come into the world in the flesh of the Messiah, the Christ. That the one whom the wisemen sought, the one for whom the a voice from heaven thundered, the one who turned water in wine, the whom Isaiah was speaking of, the one who filled the empty fishing nets… that this one is here, right here with us, calling us blessed.

Jesus says, blessed are you.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

What does Jesus know about fishing?

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GOSPEL: Luke 5:1-11

4When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” 5Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. (Read the whole passage)

Our journey from Epiphany to Transfiguration continues today. We began with wisemen searching for the Christ-child, we then heard God’s voice thundering from heaven, saw Jesus turn water into wine, Jesus preach in his hometown synagogue and then almost get thrown off a cliff by the people of his hometown synagogue. And now Jesus continues about the business of his ministry. And with crowds following him, clamouring to hear him speak, he gets in to Simon Peter’s fishing boat and meets the most famous of his soon to be disciples.

As we hear this story, the drama of this scene might be lost on us prairie dwellers, unless we are regularly in the habit of going up to Gimli to go fishing. To our land lubber ears, Jesus seems to go for a gentle boat ride. We are used to tractors and pick up trucks, to eating cows and pigs. And so when we hear that Jesus gets into Simon’s, and then Jesus provides overflowing nets, its seems like a nice story, a quaint story about Jesus making life a little easier for Simon and his companions. But dig a little deeper, and we begin to see that this is not just about Jesus providing fish. Today, Jesus is almost as offensive as he was a week ago when he pushed the buttons of the people of the Nazareth Synagogue, and today, Jesus isn’t the only one in danger of losing his life.

As Jesus begins to get more famous, people begin to follow him around. The crowds press in on him to hear what he is saying. And this time they press him right to the edge of the Lake, and when Jesus can walk no further, he hops into a boat. Into Simon’s boat specifically, and from there continues to teach. Simon has caught nothing and is going home for the day. Yet when Jesus hops in his boat, he obligingly takes him out a few feet. Simon knows his place, and allows the important teacher a makeshift pulpit from which to preach.

Yet, when the sermon ends, Jesus doesn’t ask to go back to shore, instead he tells Simon to go out into the middle of lake. The preacher in the boat tells Simon the experienced fisherman to do exactly what fisherman don’t do. They do not go out on the lake in the middle of the day. They fish at night, near the shore, by lantern light. This is how they have fished for generations. Simon is not impressed with this wandering preacher sitting in his boat. In fact he begins to refuse, “Look teacher, we have been fishing all night, our nets need repair, maybe you should stick to speeches and let us do the fishing” Simon has just met Jesus, but it doesn’t take him long to use that impulsive mouth that he will become known for. But then, Simon changes his mind part way through his refusal and says, “Well I guess it won’t hurt, so if you say so Jesus”.

There is something very familiar about this moment between Simon Peter and Jesus. We have all been there when someone insists on an idea that we know won’t work. And we have all, likely, ignored our gut instincts and gone along with a bad idea regardless.

And yet, there is an even deeper familiarity that we know as well. In our dark and difficult moments, in our times of frustration and exhaustion, we too often wonder if God actually knows what is going on. Like Simon the trusty fisherman, we know the ease of sticking to routines and traditions, of sticking to what we know to be tried and true.

In fact, like Simon, we even know how to stick to what we know despite our empty nets. Safety and predictability even if we are starving. As we float near the shore in our fishing boats, we too often find out nets empty, we get stuck in the ruts of the shallows. We stay with the familiar and what we know, even when it leaves us hungry. Yet, God is calling us away from the safety of the shore, out to the deep water, out the unknown.

And so, imagine Simon’s surprise as he lets down his nets into the deep water and then begins to haul it back in. The weight of the net pulling back more than Simon ever expected, maybe more than he had ever experienced. And Simon tries to the get the net — and all the fish — into the boat, there is so much that he must call to his friends. But even with James and John there is so many fish that both boats begin to sink. If there was excitement at catching a lot of fish, it would have disappeared when the boats began to sink in the middle of lake. The wandering preacher might have guessed where the fish were, but it wasn’t going to do Simon any good if he drowned first.

And there out in the deep water, out in the dangerous part of the lake, out with Jesus who has commandeered our boat and is telling us to try new things… Jesus calls us to something totally unexpected.

Jesus calls us to drown in the deep unknown.

And today, that call seems as crazy to us as it did to Simon, who knew better than to go far from the shore. And yet, God is doing something totally unexpected. Something that does not make sense to us. God’s calling to drown is call to die to self. God calls us to be drowned in the waters of Baptism… But that drowning of our sinful, scared, inward looking, routine clinging self makes way for the new creation that God raises up and out of the waters. God also calls us out of our ruts, out of our routines, out of the water, out of death and into life.

To a people stuck in the ruts, in the routine of what is safe and known, Christ’s call to risk everything in the deep water seems like too much to ask. But there in the deep water, Christ is giving us life. Life in the form of fish for hungry, starving fisherman with nothing, and today for us, New Life in the Body of Christ.

We simply cannot hear the story of Jesus’ call to Simon out in the deep waters and not remember the words spoken over us as we were held above the waters of the font,

“By the baptism of his own death and resurrection, [God’s] beloved Son has set us free from the bondage to sin and death, and has opened the way to the joy and freedom of everlasting life”.

Out of death, God brings life. Out of drowning in the deep waters of baptism, God forces the breath of life back into our lungs and joins us into a community of newly alive people. Its no wonder that we are call our church sanctuaries Naves from the Latin for ship, for they are indeed the upside down boats that we have been dumped from into the waters of baptism.

In our upside down boat, where we are baptized and where we welcome the newly baptized, God makes the dangerous and unknown deep water the sign of God’s love given to each one of us. And this how our God operates, by using mangers filled with animal food, empty wine jugs, empty nets, even a cross, God turns these things into beds for babies, wine for celebration, abundant catches of fish and life as the response to death.

Today as God calls Simon to let down his nets in the deep waters, even as we wonder if Jesus knows what he is talking about Jesus is pulling us out of the water into new and abundant new life.

Simon Peter is surprised today when Jesus hops into his boat and tells him to go out into the deep. And as we go out into the deep waters too, we go knowing that God is in this upside down boat with us.

Theology & Culture

Resisting the Messenger

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Luke 4:21-30

21Then [Jesus] began to say to [all in the synagogue in Nazareth,] “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth… 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.(Read the whole passage)

We are about half way through this mini-season of green ordinary time after Epiphany. We have heard the story of the wisemen following the star to Bethlehem, the story of God’s voice thundering from heaven over Jesus as he was baptized, and then watched as Jesus revived the wedding at Cana by turning water into wine.

Last week we moved on from the fantastical to the more familiar, to Jesus reading from the scriptures in the synagogue… readings the lessons in church. And yet, as we discover today in part 2 of this story, the familiar action is also the most scandalous. It’s scandalous for the people of Nazareth, but it is the familiarity of this scene… of being in a faith community together, of going to church just as many of us have for years, decades and generations, that also makes Jesus’ actions scandalous for us.

We begin by hearing again the brief sermon that Jesus preaches after reading the scroll. “Today this is fulfilled in your hearing”

What is fulfilled? Good news for the poor? The freedom for the oppressed and release for the captives? Sight for the blind? The year of the Lord’s favour when all debts are cancelled?

Not exactly. Although it is easy to get focused on what those pieces of good news might look like for us. But rather, the fulfillment that Jesus is talking about is rooted how Isaiah begins the passage. “The Spirit of Lord has anointed me.”

Sounds innocuous enough in English, but heard in Greek or in Hebrew, the meaning of what Jesus is getting at might become clearer. In Greek the word for anoint is Christos. In Hebrew the word is Messiah. Jesus is standing in his hometown synagogue and claiming the title of Messiah, the promised one of God, sent to save and redeem Israel.

And so naturally, the people of Nazareth respond with beaming smiles and nods and nudges to their neighbour and winks knowing that their hometown son has made it. “Isn’t he cute and wonderful,” they say to each other. “What a nice speaking voice and good posture,” they comment. “Isn’t this Joseph’s boy?” they marvel aloud.

But then things seem to go sideways. Maybe Jesus doesn’t like to be thought of as the cute hometown son so he pushes back against the people of Nazareth. He pokes at their comfort and pride. “You just came to see the show,” he says, “Not to hear the message.” And then he invokes images from familiar stories… the gentile widow of Zerephath who demonstrated an openness Elijah when he had to flee his home country… and Namann the Syrian Solider who showed greater faith than the people of Israel that surrounded him.

And with those jabs from Jesus, the beaming pride of the people of Nazareth turns to rage. Who is he to tell them what is what, he is a lowly carpenter’s son… just another boy from town… In their rage, they drive Jesus to the edge of a cliff, ready of cast him out into oblivion.

Now, while the shift from a happy and welcoming crowd to a raging one seems sudden… there has been something off about the folks in Nazareth from the beginning. Both their pride in their hometown kid and their rage at Jesus come from the same place. Both responses to Jesus and his message are resisting what Jesus is actually saying. Both responses focus on the messenger and resist considering what the content of Jesus’ message might mean for them.

This is, of course, the spot where we uncomfortably identify with the people of Nazareth. Whether we like it or not, it is a very human reaction to resist hearing the hard but needed messages from those that care about us. Whether it is at home, at work, in our neighbourhoods or in church, we know what it is like to balk at the message and focus on the messenger. We know what is like to resist when someone tells us that we need to get things together, to be open to new ideas, to try new ways of being, to find healthier ways to live in community. And like the people of Nazareth we often respond in the same way.

“I don’t need to exercise more!”

“Those people won’t fit in here!”

“We tried that already!”

“What do you know, you are too young, too old, too new, too stuck in the past!”

“It’s too risky!”

“What would people think?”

These are all too often our responses to those around us, calling us to account. All too often our response to the spirit prompting us to new possibilities. All too often our response to the call to be transformed for the better.

And who can blame us?… we are human after all. It is simply human to resist. Just as Adam and Eve resisted the creator by eating of the fruit in the middle of the garden.

And so we too end up often, standing on the edge of cliff, either real or metaphorical, ready to toss the messengers of divine good news into oblivion, because we aren’t ready to hear the message. Because what if what Jesus says is true, and that he is the Messiah. What if God is calling us to a new thing, to new ways of being, to welcome new people and new ideas into our community? What if the Kingdom come near ask that we re-orient ourselves and the way we see the world?

Casting out the messenger is always the safer option.

Yet despite our resistance, God does not abandon us. Jesus does not run, or hide or escape.

Luke does not offer a trivial ending to the story, the way that Jesus deals with the angry mob is significant. Jesus passes through the midst of the people. Jesus stays with the raging, resisting crowd. And Jesus continues about his business. He continues on to cast out demons, to heal and cure many, and most importantly continues announcing the coming Kingdom of God.

And yes, this story of a mob praising the one known as the Messiah in one moment and ready to kill him in the next is familiar. It will not be long before Jesus is driven up another hill, and an angry mob will call for his death again… and that time there be no passing through. Because Jesus’ business will be staying with the rage of the crowd, standing in the midst of murderous example of sinful and selfish humanity. Jesus will be nailed to a cross and cast into oblivion.

But just like in Nazareth, Jesus will still go about his way.

And his way will be three days later to walk out of the empty tomb.

To rise again from the grave.

To meet Mary in the garden.

To appear to the disciples in the locked room.

To walk with others to Emmaus.

Jesus way is to show us, to reveal to a fallen and dying humanity, that God is coming to us with new life.

Despite our resistance, despite our focus on the messenger, despite our murderous rage.

Jesus is the anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ is coming to us with new life.

Coming to the people of Nazareth and coming here to us today.

And in our midst, Jesus will be about the business of Messiah.

Jesus is preaching good news to poor sinners here, opening the scriptures and speaking to us in familiar ways.

Jesus is announcing release to those held captive by sin and death, freedom found in forgiveness for us.

Jesus is giving us sight, allowing us to see that we have been named and claimed in the waters of baptism.

Jesus is proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour, the great abundant feast of bread and wine where we are all given a place at the table and fed for the work of the Kingdom.

And Jesus is doing all of this in the most familiar of places, right here among us as a community of faith. Right here in the midst of our flawed and human tendency to resist.

And Jesus is reminding us again, that God’s promise of salvation is fulfilled today.