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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
A little more than one week ago, a sister in Christ forwarded me an email full of pictures stating various truisms. One of the pictures listed three things in life that, once gone, never come back, and one of those three things was “words”. Once words are out of our mouths, they do not come back. Once we have said something, we really can never take it back. Too often we say hurtful things about someone else to people we have no business saying them to, or we may even say hurtful things about someone right to his or her face. Until someone I know called me out on it, I used to think I was clever in saying “I was going to say” right before saying something I probably should not have said at all. For us to avoid saying something we might regret later, People suggest such things as first counting to 100, putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, writing a letter and then tearing it up, or, the more-modern equivalent, writing an email and then deleting it (just be sure not to click on “send” accidentally instead). In contrast to such unfit words that we might need to “delete” are the “Gracious Words” that today’s Third Reading describes as coming from Jesus’s mouth. Thus, this sermon’s theme is “Gracious Words”.
Last July, in the middle of the Pentecost season of that Church Year, we heard St. Mark’s account of Jesus’s preaching and rejection at Nazareth, and today, The Third Sunday after the Epiphany in this Church Year, we hear St. Luke’s account, seemingly of the same event. By divineinspiration, St. Luke gives us many more details than either St. Mark’s or St. Mattthew’s accounts—details such as the Old Testament text from Isaiah on which Jesus preached and one of the things Jesus said about that text. St. Luke alone describes Jesus’s words as “gracious”, and St. Luke alone tells us how Jesus quoted a proverb, possibly one going back to the Greek playwright Euripides, and then warned the people with God’s Word, with the result that the people wanted to throw Jesus down a cliff.
The English Standard Version of today’s Third Reading says that “all spoke well of Him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from His mouth”. But, that is not quite what it says in the original Greek. The Greek says all “bore witness” about Him, and the context suggests that what they said about Him was not all that positive. Even their “marveling” at Jesus’s Epiphany is less like faithful believing and more like skeptical “wondering” whether this Person they thought was Joseph’s ordinary son could possibly be the Messiah promised by the prophets. Even if what they said was more positive, as the ESV translates it, as Allknowing God in the Flesh, Jesus knew the rejection that was in their hearts. As a warning, Jesus pointed out how their Jewish ancestors’ rejection of the prophets Elijah and Elisha resulted in God’s grace being withheld from them and instead being shown to the non-Jews. But, instead of letting God’s Word, as intended, call them to repent, the people of Nazareth moved to murder.
How do we compare with the people of Nazareth? When we “bear witness” about Jesus with words and deeds in our daily lives, is the bearing witness for better or for worse? We may not have grown up with Jesus, thinking He was Joseph’s ordinary son, but do we have our own issues with Jesus? For example, is He the kind of Messiah we want Him to be? Even if we honor Him with our lips, are our hearts far from Him (Matthew 15:8)? Does what proceeds from our hearts come out of our mouths and defile us? When God’s Word, such as today’s Third Reading, calls us to repent, how do we respond? Do we turn in sorrow from our sin, believe God forgives our sin, and want to do better? When we who are poor, captive, and blind so repent, then we have the Good News, liberty, and “recovering of sight” proclaimed to us.
Those of us who use computers for word processing and other applications may be familiar with an “undo” button or command, intended to cancel out whatever we have done last. Some of Microsoft’s newer operating systems even have a big “undo” capability called “system restore” which one writer in effect likens to “bending the laws of space and time” to get back to normal if new programs, system files, or other changes created problems and cannot otherwise easily be undone. In a similar but much better way, God’s forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Jesus Christ undoes the eternal problem created by our sin and ultimately restores us to the perfect condition our first parents were in when God created them “good”.
As prophesied by Isaiah, God the Father anointed the Man Jesus, the Father’s one and only Son, with the Holy Spirit not only to proclaim the Good News, liberty, and “recovering of sight” to us but also to actually set us free from our oppressive sin. Jesus’s “Gracious Words” are not just “charming” words or even just words about grace, but they actually give the grace earned by His death and resurrection. In the Man Jesus, God-head and humanity are, as our Opening Hymn put it, a “union supernal” (Lutheran Worship 78:1). So, the Man Jesus passed through the midst of the Nazareth mob, but He went away to His death on the cross for you and for me. There He met our greatest need: our need for the forgiveness of sins. And, He gives us that forgiveness here.
The Third Reading tells us of Jesus’s “custom” of going to the synagogue on the holy day to participate in liturgical worship. While Jesus was without sin and went to the synagogue on the holy day to fulfill the law, we who are sinful come here on the holy day to participate in liturgical worship and so have our sins forgiven. In the synagogue, Jesus read from the Holy Scriptures and preached on the reading, as is done here. And, as then, so now, God fulfills the Scriptures in our hearing (literally, in our ears). God fulfills the Scriptures of setting us free from our oppressive sin by the very words of the Scriptures not only in preaching but in all their sacramental forms: Baptism, Absolution, and the Supper. Today’s Second Reading (1 Corinthians 12:12-31a) reminds us that all who are baptized are baptized into one body. Today’s Third Reading twice speaks of “liberty” using a form of the same word Jesus uses when giving pastors the authority to forgive the sins of those who privately confess to them seeking individual absolution. And, as today’s First Reading (Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10) tells of a special feast on a holy day, we think of the Supper in which bread that is Christ’s body and wine that is Christ’s blood give us forgiveness of sins and so also life and salvation. Baptism, Absolution, and the Supper—“Gracious Words” attached to things we can feel, hear, and taste and thereby be forgiven.
So forgiven, instead of unfit words coming out of our mouths, we let our words, like Jesus’s, be gracious. Humanly speaking, we cannot ever really take back unfirt words we have said, nor can we undo things we have done. Yet, divinely speaking, God with His “Gracious Words” can and does take back our unfit words and undoes the things we have done, restoring us as His perfect creatures. In Him there is forgiveness for all we have said and done, even for our “hidden faults” that we confessed in today’s psalm (Psalm 19). Perfect reconciliation with those whom we have hurt and with those who have hurt us will not come until eternity, but in Christ it will come. Then, we and all in Christ will “ever” rejoice, in the words of our Office Hymn, “With wond’ring gratitude and praise” to the Lord “for boundless grace” (Lutheran Worship 314:5).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +