In the days of my childhood if it snowed heavily on a school day the thing to do was to get up and listen to the radio. It was on the local radio stations that the list of school closings would be read. So if you woke up and you saw the kinds of piles of snow on the windowsill that we woke up to yesterday, and if it was a school day, you would huddle around a radio somewhere in the house to listen to the list of school closings, and hope with all your might that your school was on the list. The list had to be repeated, of course, every so often early in the morning, so that families tuning in at different times could still learn what they needed to know – the important information about whether or not school was on that day. So you listened to the list as it was repeated, and you waited for what you hoped would be good news.
Any half-attentive church-goer could easily be led to conclude that Jesus repeated himself often. Since we tend to read the same passages of Scripture over and over every three years, and within that three-year pattern sometimes we hear different accounts of the same story, it can seem as if Jesus repeats himself. “Take up your cross and follow me.” “The last must be first and the first must be last.” “A house divided cannot stand.” “Let your light so shine before others…” These phrases are so familiar; we have heard them more than once, surely Jesus must have said them more than once (I know I repeat good material when I have it). But actually, within the texts of the Gospels themselves, we seldom hear Jesus repeat himself in any one Gospel account. Maybe good editing accounts for this absence of repetition.
But today we hear Jesus repeat something that’s been said before. He repeats a stirring phrase from the writings of the prophet Isaiah. And when he repeats these words everyone in earshot sits up and takes notice. "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 favor."
Remember the setting: Jesus is in the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth, where he spent his childhood, where he was well known by many. His friends and relatives and acquaintances are there in the synagogue, and they hear something they are not expecting. What they hear is not Jesus repeating himself, nor is it even only Jesus repeating the words of the prophet. They hear something that makes them all stare at him in amazement. Whether they knew precisely what it was they were hearing is impossible for me to say, but they knew it was a moment of significance. For they heard God repeat himself – and that is a rare thing to hear indeed.
God repeats himself. But, to go by this example, maybe it’s only once every eight hundred or a thousand years, or more that he does so. So it is worth paying attention when God repeats himself, which is precisely what we hear happening in the Gospel reading today.
God repeats himself, and what does he have to say? He says: I have good news for the poor, release for captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. Period. That’s God repeating himself. That’s what God thinks is worth repeating. Interesting.
It’s tempting, this Sunday, to take advantage of Saint Paul’s eloquent and prescient teaching on inclusivity and diversity. Lord knows I am tempted to try to improvise variations on his themes in light of the recent statement from the leaders of our sister churches around the world in the Anglican Communion. Oh, how I would like to yield to the temptation!
But doing so would very likely detract from the important opportunity to direct your attention to God repeating himself: making promises to the poor, the imprisoned, the incapacitated, and the oppressed. If God is going to repeat God’s self, we might want to check our own preoccupations, to make sure we are being attentive to what ever God thinks is important enough to repeat.
Recently, a friend went to go visit the great Anglo-catholic parish of St. Mary the Virgin on West 46th Street, just off Times Square in New York City. There was no liturgy taking place at the time, the organ was not being played, no special exhibit of art was on display. It was a bitterly cold winter’s day, and here’s what my friend noticed: the pews were populated with dozens of homeless men and women who had come in to the church to find refuge from the cold. Pews are often maligned these days, but you have to admit that it’s easier to stretch out for a rest on a pew than it is in a chair. And I have no doubt that the old wooden pews of Smokey Mary’s were conveying good news to the poor in their own way that cold day.
At least once, God repeated himself. And what he chose to repeat was not a defense of marriage, or any other matter of doctrine or discipline. No! It was good news to the poor, release to the captives, relief to the suffering, and freedom for the oppressed! These are the things that God went to the trouble of having his Son repeat!
I sometimes find myself wanting to try to say that faith is simple, or religion is simple: all you have to do is love God and your neighbor. But I know that in reality neither of these things is simple to put into practice. You have to ask, for instance, “Who is my neighbor?”
God is not simple, and neither are we. So questions of faith and religion are going to be complicated from time to time: thus has it always been. But now and then we have to simplify things just to help us get through them
Which is all the more reason to sit up and take notice when God repeats himself, especially since it does appear to be rather a rare occurrence, and since the message he had was fairly simple.
"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 favor."
So you come to church on a snowy morning, and it’s not a snow day; you were right to come! But still you want to listen for the thing that is repeated … to make sure you don’t miss the Good News. You came in from the cold to get warm, and maybe you did not even know that you needed to hear this Good News. Maybe you were hardly aware of your poverty, your imprisonment, your blindness, or your oppression, until you stopped to listen to see if God would repeat himself.
And God does repeat himself, as you are settled into your pew. And by his grace, you may hear that this Good News is meant for you: so important that these words of hope are worth repeating.
"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 favor."
Pray, God, keep repeating it, until finally we have ears to hear!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
24 January 2016
Saint Mark’s Church Philadelphia