Today



“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21).  In Luke’s Gospel the first word spoken by the public Jesus other than reading from Isaiah is “TODAY.”1—not yesterday, not tomorrow, not someday.  Blair Monie in his commentary writes,
            A stress on immediacy pervades Luke’s Gospel. 
            The time of divine action is always now.
            This today continues throughout Jesus’ ministry.
            Now is always the time
                        to release the captives,
                        to give sight to the blind,
                        to free the oppressed,
                        to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
            Too often the prophetic word is followed by those who will answer,              
                       “Tomorrow” —or simply, “Wait.” 
            History is full of examples of how people of faith have been tragically slow
                        to embrace the cries of the prophets or the opportunities
                        to ‘do justice, love, kindness and walk humbly with God’ (Micah 6:8).2

When Martin Luther King Jr. gave his clarion call for racial justice, some wanted to be supportive of his cause but feared acting too soon.  Their message was, in essence, that it was a good idea but the time was not right.  They told him to wait. Then, in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail, he replied,
                        “This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.”
                        We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists,
                        that justice too long delayed is justice denied.”3
           
The time for justice is always today.  Luke’s and King’s words resonates and give power to Jesus’ opening words in Mark.
            “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15).
Today, God’s reign is here and coming, repent and believe.  In Luke, Jesus gives definition to God’s reign with Isaiah’s vision of justice, liberation from bondage, sight, and the year of the Lord’s favor. What every Jew would have recognized as the Jubilee, commanded in Leviticus 25.4

            
Repent, turn around, enter into the joy of God’s household, God’s ways, God’s economy. Repent from dividing up society and the church in partisan interest groups right and left, Christian right and Christian left.  

This Thursday morning for the first time that I've noticed, NPR Morning Edition had a segment on the Christian left. For the past 35 years of my ministry, since Jerry Falwell launched the Moral Majority, the media has covered only the evangelical Christians. There has been little media mention of social justice minded Christians. Until Rev.  William J. Barber II launched the Moral Mondays in North Carolina, and then with Rev. Jennifer Butler, the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.  NPR's segment on Thursday interviewed Jennifer Butler, a Presbyterian minister.   Their story was about the emergence the Christian Left's  progressive agenda.  Rev. Butler, however, pointed out that this is not a progressive agenda, but an agenda which pervades all of Scripture, grounded in the Torah, lifted up by the prophets, and by Jesus in his  inaugural sermon to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.  

Everyone in that synagogue in Nazareth who heard Jesus that day would have understood "the year of God's favor" to mean the Jubilee year commanded in Leviticus 25.  Once every 50 years, the economy would be rebalanced, set back to God's default, in which every family had their fair share of the land.  Loans were to be forgiven.  Property returned.  Prisoners set free.  Returning everyone to the blessing initiated when God gave the land to the twelve tribes of Israel.  Like rebalancing an investment portfolio.  

It’s time for US Christians to stop labeling each other right or left, but as the body of Christ, one in Christ.5  We all have convictions grounded in faith.  If we keep our focus on the Lord…we are one in Christ, following the way that ushers in God’s way, God’s reign of mercy, justice and peace, all empowered by love, which is the very nature of God.
            
I learned this lesson in my first call.  Doc Miller, an elder, taught the adult Sunday School, while I preached at the other church in my charge.   We approached the interpretation of Scripture differently.  Unlike me, he understood the Bible literally.  However, because he took scripture so seriously, he recognized the social justice call permeated Scripture from beginning to end.  Like going in a circle in opposite directions we got to the same place of love and respect, justice and mercy by honoring scripture through the focusing lens of Jesus ministry.

And Jesus launched his public ministry saying, "TODAY, the time is fulfilled in your hearing."  When you hear that, say, "Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us."         
Repent our partisanship.
            The time is fulfilled. Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us. 
Repent of policies, rules, laws, customs that benefit some at the detriment of others.
            The time is fulfilled. Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us.
Repent of turning a blind eye to white privilege, and the notion that white persons
            are by nature superior to people of color and are to be served by them.
            The time is fulfilled. Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us.
Repent of the heretical value of individualism, the self-made person.
            God created us to be interdependent and at times utterly dependent on others.
            The time is fulfilled. Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us.
Repent of the notion that some are more important more valued than others.
            Paul used the body as an example of our communal nature.
            Each part is intricately connected, and critical for the functioning of the whole.
            The time is fulfilled. Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us.
Repent of the greed that has led to the disparity of rich and poor,
            Between CEO multi-million compensation and the minimum wage.
            Today is the Jubilee for resetting a living wage base line where all are blessed.
            The time is fulfilled. Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us.
Repent of an economy which places low wage/slave like work in other communities,
            other countries, where we do not have to see it the inhuman work conditions.
            Today is the Jubilee, time to honor work wherever it is performed and rediscovering 
             what it means to be a community, a healthy, blessed community where all are blessed.
            The time is fulfilled, Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us.
Repent from a racial injustice present in our criminal justice system,
            which perpetuates a school to prison pipeline for disadvantaged boys of color.
            The time is fulfilled. Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us. 
Repent of the carbon footprint, the shipping of food and consumer goods around the world.
            If we are to survive, we must radically reduce our carbon footprint now, today.
            
This week I accompanied my wife, Eileen, who spoke at the Eastminster Presbyterian Church in East Lansing, at the first in their series on understanding the environmental climate crisis.  And then we heard Mary Robinson speak at Western Michigan University.  She is the former president of the Republic of Ireland, their first woman president of a pretty traditional minded country.  And then later she served as a high commissioner with the United Nations, who brought together indigenous people from around the world.  She learned from these people who have worked the land how much the climate has changed from what they have known for generations as normal.  She learned that people in undeveloped countries and islands are the first to suffer the effects of climate change, and they were not the ones causing it.  The industrialization and carbon emissions in developed countries are the cause.  She wrote the book "Climate Justice,"  telling their personal stories of the impact on their lives, and their communities.  

It's time we face our impact, to rebalance, to repent, to turn around now, today!  Robinson learned on her visit here in Kalamazoo, that WMU's strategic plan is to be carbon neutral by 2060.  That's not good enough, she said.  We must all act now to reach carbon neutral by 2050.  This is an existential crisis for humanity.  

The time is fulfilled. Today, this scripture is to be fulfilled in us.
Today, together working together, united in Christ, empowered by the Spirit.  TODAY! 
           
1 Luke 4:14-21 
2 Luke 4:14-21 Connections: Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching, Year C Vol. 1, (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2018) p.207
3 Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 83
4 Leviticus 25 8-41
            “You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years gives 49,
            …You shall hallow the 50th year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land
                        to all it is inhabitants.
             It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property
                        and every one of you to your family…
            I anyone of your kin falls into difficulty and sells a piece of property,
                        then the next of kin shall come and redeem what the relative has sold…
                        but if there is not sufficient means to recover it,
                        what was sold shall remain with the purchaser until the year of jubilee,
                        in the jubilee it shall be released, and the property shall be returned.
             If any who are dependents on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves to you,                              you shall not make them serve as slaves 
                        They shall remain with you as hired laborers. 
                        They shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. 
                        Then they and their children with them shall be free from your authority,
                        they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property.
                                    (Leviticus 25:8-10,25,28,39-41 NRSV).  

5 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a            


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