When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove [Jesus] 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.
~Luke 4:28-29
 
“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
~John Locke
 
“There is no such thing as an innocent reading, we must ask what reading we are guilty of.”
~Louis Althusser
 
It was such a lovely beginning! The local boy made good, reading the scriptures among the hometown folk. Sitting down, as was the custom, to then begin the discussion, according to custom. But it does not go where the good people expect. The story is told “slant”—a new interpretation of an old text—and in the blink of an eye they want Jesus to go vertical.
 
What just happened?
 
Jesus challenges their feel-good insider story with a reminder that God’s love extended outside their accepted relational bonds—to a widow outside of Israel when many were in need on the inside, to a foreign general, an enemy of the people, to a people like us who do not own this story, but are grateful recipients of it. What do we make of this kind of love? 

Enter into worship.

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So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading… all the people wept when they heard the words of the law.
—Nehemiah 8:8, 9b
 
[Jesus] stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.
“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.”
...The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
—Luke 4:16b-19, 20b
 
The book of Nehemiah tells about returnees from exile in Babylon. They are trying to rebuild, but the future is anything but certain. Enemies from outside and internal social fracture work against renewal. They gather. Ezra begins reading the Torah (essentially the first five books of our Old Testament) early in the morning. He doesn’t finish until noon. Everyone is listening and paying attention. And together the people weep.
 
We don’t really know why. Are they overwhelmed with grief? Despair? Possibility? Has the weight of the moment finally visited them?
 
Things happen when our eyes are opened. We will see over the next two Sundays what happens when Jesus reads what is essentially his—or Luke’s—mission statement for the Christian faith, and the response of “his hometown” when he puts the story in context. But for now, they too, are together in their attention to a reading that is for all of them, together.
 
With an astonishment we have probably lost over the years, Paul says, we are one body in this Spirit—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free (1 Corinthians 12:13). What happens to us when we truly hear and understand this good news?  

​Enter into worship

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Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.
~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
~John 2:11
 
Watch for the details in this wedding story! It happens at the party—not the ceremony, near the end, when many have already had a little too much, when most have already stopped paying attention. It is a frivolous act, this the first of Jesus’ signs of the kindom. And it means everything. Don’t look away. The servants don’t. They are in on the act from the beginning. They know. The steward, the wedding party, they have no idea what or even that anything unusual has happened, that God’s glory has been revealed. And still they are blessed!
 
Many of us are shaped to imagine we are the ones in the know, but there is extraordinary knowledge to be gained as we learn how to listen more deeply and to voices so often silenced in our company. A variety of gifts. One Spirit. Learn to listen. Listen to partner. Be open to the gifts of the Spirit all around.
 
Enter into worship

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Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.
~Acts 8:14
 
We might just blow right by this little story in Acts. This second book of Luke’s two-part gospel story is filled with early Christ-followers going all over the place as the movement exploded across the ancient near east and the Mediterranean. And this comes across as just another routine instance according to the writer’s pattern.
 
But Samaria. There is fire in this word! There is a deep history of animosity and fighting dating back hundreds of years. Red and Blue on steroids, over centuries, born from a shared trauma. It hints at the ridiculous lengths to which God’s love and our baptismal identity and calling goes.
 
Enter into worship. 

Sunday's Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7 † Psalm 29 † Acts 8:14-17 † Luke 3:15-22

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“Truth is a matter of the imagination.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin,
The Left Hand of Darkness
 
“…this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things;”
― Ephesians 3:8-9
 
It seems to Paul that the birth of the Christ is an act of God that reaches out to ridiculous lengths—farther than we imagined before—to affirm the claim of God and the blessing of God on all people, not just a single tribal group or coalition or a few insiders of another kind. This is an astonishing notion for Paul—one that changed his life, one that deserved every corner of it and every ounce of his strength and energy. Do we understand the extent of this love, and its implications? Awake my soul!
 
Enter into worship. 

Sunday's Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6 † Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14 † Ephesians 3:1-12 † Matthew 2:1-12

We continue to keep our financial commitments to our mission partners and staff. If you are not yet able to join us, thank you for remembering to send in your financial pledges and offerings or donating here. ​