(Luke 4: 14-21)

Our text should not be read or studied apart from next week's text, 4:21-30. They are all part of one scene in Luke.

The announcement of Jesus ministry as the fulfilment of God's salvation-time,

A statement about the content of Jesus' ministry based on the quotation from Isaiah,

The foreshadowing of Jesus' final suffering and rejection,

The foreshadowing of the movement of the gospel from Jew to Gentile.

Who precisely are the poor, captive, blind and oppressed to whom the good news is preached and for whom the acceptable year of the Lord has arrived? Good news is only good news when it meets the needs of the people - You don't throw a drowning person sandwich. However good the sandwich may be, it just doesn't meet that person's need.

There are two reasons why you might not automatically understand the significance of this passage. The first reason is that coming to church Sunday after Sunday can leave you feeling that your role as a Christian is entirely passive – I give and you receive. I talk and you listen. I am the person with the power, the only person who can consecrate the bread and the wine. All you can do is to ‘take and eat in remembrance that Christ died for you’.  In the sermon all you can do is to listen. There is no opportunity for you to come back to me and say what you do or do not agree with. The sacramentalism within the church means that we have a Eucharist every week. I am the person who can consecrate the bread and the wine. All you can do is to "take and eat in remembrance that Christ died for you". Church is seen as a safe place and it is comforting to think that. The danger is that religion then becomes an extension of consumer choice where what is important is how we felt and what it meant to us! The more you think of church in terms of what it does for you, the more you are cast adrift into an entirely passive role. The idea of actually shaping and making your faith becomes more and more distant.

The second reason why you might not automatically understand the significance of this passage is the tendency to see our religion as entirely spiritual rather than physical and material. There is assumed to be a divide within our society between public truth and private truth. Public truth is science and politics and facts. Private truth is feelings and values and opinions. Religion is firmly anchored in the private world and ends up as a form of spiritual good manners. The working assumption about religion that we take on board from society is - “I don't have the right to comment on what you feel and you don't have the right to comment on what I feel”.  It is each to their own as long as they do not hurt anyone else. Christianity is something more than this – God is a personal God but never a private God. The ministry of Jesus depicted by Luke as the fulfilment of Isaiah is meant to be understood spiritually and metaphorically as well as literally and actually. It is not one or the other but both.

I want my Christianity back. We are loved by God and have received richly of God's grace, but this is not so that we can become sponges simply absorbing more and more of the same. Please don't let us get stuck into roles where I am giving and you are receiving. There is an assumption of competence that I will always know what I am talking about and I will always cope. I don't always cope - epilepsy sees to that, and so if we are to continue to walk in faith together then I need much much more from you than you would ever be able to give to me. This should not be too hard because there are 60-70 of you to only one of me, and many of you have offered fabulous friendship since Sylvie and I moved to Shepherd's Bush.

The second way in which I want my faith back is that I want help in the public sphere. I want help to reach a conclusion about the war in Iraq, global warning, third world debt. If my faith does nothing more than make me feel better than it has got nothing to offer in these areas. It is a travesty to think that the message that Jesus Christ came down to earth being crucified and then rise again suggests that religion and politics should be kept separate. Don't we know by now that the Iraq war was wrong. Thousands of soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens. The country appears torn apart by civil war yet, know this as we may, we are preparing to re-elect the same government (with Gordon Brown instead of Tony Blair as Prime Minister).

It is all too easy to underestimate what a jewel we have in the Christian faith and in a god who has chosen to reveal himself through Jesus Christ. When they were negotiating the new constitution in South Africa the women would go to the conference hall and pray on the chairs before the delegates arrived. The passage for today is partly about us receiving good news for the poor but it is also about us being the Good News for other people. I spent New Year with a friend who is a Christian youth worker. She is working with children involved in street prostitution. She was explaining to me the difference between a child abused in a home and a child abused on the street as a prostitute. In the home context you would have Social Services coming down like a ton of bricks. On the street the children get next to no protection with the police either unwilling or else unable to get involved. Who other than a Christian would be doing this?  I get frustrated when the church does not get credit for the standard of education it is providing through church schools. Christian living is fabulous – it is like a jewel in a muddy field tarnished only by over familiarity (Mt 13:44).

I want my Christianity back! Another way that I want my faith back is for us to be active doers and not just passive receivers.  All the verbs in this passage are active. There is a pattern of "sending" "proclaiming,” "sending" "proclaiming". ‘For evil to win all that is needed is for good people to do nothing’. This has been illustrated in the racism row in the Big Brother household. Jade Goody has been reviled as the face of racism calling Shilpa ‘Shilpa poppodum’ and telling her that she should f** of back to the slums. Jade Goody is not the issue at hand – there will always be people like her. More chilling still was the behaviour of the rest of the house mates who did nothing to interfere and stop the thrust of the argument.

I want my Christianity back and I want it now! Today is an important word for Luke. It occurs 12 times in Luke and only 9 times in the other three gospels combined(1). We often avoid the changes of today. Some try to continue to live the past. "Remember the good, old days." History is important. We constantly need to look back and learn from our mistakes and successes. But we can't live in the past. We can also avoid changes of today by dreaming of the ideal tomorrow. Someday the oppressed will be set free. Someday poverty will be ended. Someday all people will have heard the gospel. God will do all that someday -- so we don't have to do anything today to help the oppressed out of their plights. Someday I'll loose weight. Someday I'll quit smoking. Someday I'll start exercising. Someday I'll take a college course. And we do nothing today to help make that future come true. For Jesus' listeners, and for us, the word today is terrifying. Yesterday can look glorious. Tomorrow can look so glamorous. But today is so ordinary. Today is a terrifying word.

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(1) It occurs in such familiar passages as: "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you." "Today you will be with me in paradise." And twice in the Zacchaeus story: "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay in your house today." And, "Today, salvation has come to this house." And in our text: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." For Luke today is a moment of radical change. The shepherds come and see the savior born in Bethlehem. They return rejoicing and praising God. They had been changed. After Jesus' visit with Zacchaeus, he is changed. He says: "Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount." We can suppose that the eternal life of the thief on the cross was radically changed by Jesus' words. He is promised eternity in paradise.