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Epiphany 3

25 January 2004

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
I Corinthians 12:12-31a
Psalm 19
Luke 4:14-21

Today's Gospel and next weeks' run together. You may wish to read the two preaching notes before you write the two sermons.

I would run a series of parallels between the people of Nazareth and the people of your town. It depends on how brave or foolish you are as to how far you push the parallels. You could paint the picture of that Saturday Sabbath in Nazareth and allude to how similar it is to our Sunday Sabbath in your named town.

Nazareth - an ordinary little village with no great claim to fame. The people of the town came to worship as we do and followed the liturgy through, same as last week, warmly caressing the souls of the participants, but keeping the story alive in a secular world that does not care about the story. For both their's and our stories have been expunged from the public arena and have been consigned to private, in-house conversations.

The then super power imposed its will, its economic power, its military power, its institutions, language, its view of the world and life, designed to serve the super power, as Rome spread its influence across the globe. Religion became the silent handmaiden to the abusive politics rampant in the land. Life for the people of Nazareth was a life of compromise and humiliation, made tolerable by denial and accommodation to the secular world.

Formal religion had lost its public voice and so had lost its abrasive and transforming edge; the people had lost their focus for life outside, and had shifted the focus to inside. Get the worship service right! Every move, every word, every sequence, every reading, every prayer - not too long, not too short - get it right. Worse, indulge yourself, let its syrupy piety fatten your soft soul into ill-exercised apathy.

The new boy came to Synagogue that morning - one of ours. Let's see how he conforms to the liturgy as laid down by the forebears. Jesus reads from the prescribed scroll - Isaiah 61. There is a dramatic pause as the scroll is re-rolled and handed back. An anticipation of what our local boy may say. We knew his father, you know.

'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.' - A stunned hush! 'Today...?' '... has been?'

Jesus has unhitched from its historical mooring an Isaiah saying, and floated it past this congregation. Jesus has said, 'We once lived this stuff outside these walls, but now we settle for an in-house soul-massage parlour. Today, might we look and live outside these walls to make a difference for God's Commonwealth in the world!' 'It is fatal to guard the borders of the Church to protect the inside. Our life takes its cue from here but lives out there.' Who is in and who is out is not ours to manage - that's God's business. Our task is to count people in, not out - the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed out there, whoever they may be - they are our concern.

The bias of the Bible is to focus on neighbour questions, not correctness questions or discipline questions. One institution doing that now is Presbyterian Support - see Dennis Povey's publication through PSS Otago and Southland How Much is Enough?

Jesus had the courage to unhitch Isaiah's text from its historical moorings and let it float past the Nazareth congregation. It seems they let the rope go, and it floated by. Today the same text floats by this Church, and the lines are thrown out for catching:

• rich ones and poor ones are neighbours together,
• free ones and captive ones are neighbours together,
• seeing ones and blind ones are neighbours together,
• lively ones and the oppressed are neighbours together.

Will we catch those lines and hitch the Isaiah text to our living story, daring to neighbour ourselves with the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed?

PRAYER

Neighbour care...?

O God, we know what it is to be un-neighboured
- to be alone in a city, a Church, a family even.

We know un-neighbourliness tears at our souls, and thrusts us into the forgotten class,
and heralds an illness of heart which soon emerges as illness of body.

And if we know that, the rest of the world knows that,
and suffers from un-neighbouring.

So this day we pray for communities suffering from neighbour-neglect and neighbour fracture.

With global perspective we pray
where neighbourliness excludes the Catholic, the Protestant, the Muslim, the Christian,
the black, the Afrikaner, the Pakeha, the Maori, the Pacific Islander.
With local perspective, we pray
for the close to home ones where selective neighbourliness excludes the Provinces, the rural, the south, the old, the young, the women.

We pray for those who wander our streets suffering neighbour neglect
- alone because of bad parents or no parents,
- alone because of skewed circumstances or malfunctioning body,
- alone because the current ideology demands no money be spent on offering neighbour care.

We pray for those who soon enter into new neighbouring
- for new classrooms of new students, and the teachers who teach them,
- for new entrants into kindergarten and Playcentre, and the J1 class,
-  for newcomers who seek a neighbouring community and neighbouring Church.

And in Jesus' contribution to today's liturgy we pray
 rich may neighbour poor,
 and free ones neighbour captive,
 and seeing ones neighbour blind,
 and lively ones neighbour oppressed.

Usher us into neighbouring future we pray
and give us your Spirit energy to sustain us beyond our good intention.

In Jesus' name, AMEN.