We are Not Alone and We Belong to Each Other!

Reflections on Luke 4:14-21

This week, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, an Episcopal bishop from the Diocese of Washington asked President Trump to have mercy on those in our country who are scared at this time and place. It’s pretty rare, in my experience, for any sermon to be remembered. I learned this early as I gave a sermon that used shoes to make a point which I can’t even remember, but all people ever did was talk about the shoes, not the excellent and now forgotten point I made. But Bishop Budde’s sermon will be remembered. Here’s a quote from the under-quoted part of that sermon: “Jesus of Nazareth, in his Sermon on the Mount, exhorts us to love not only our neighbors, but to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us; to be merciful, as our God is merciful, and to forgive others, as God forgives us. Jesus went out of his way to welcome those whom his society deemed as outcasts.”

We know these words as part of our Episcopal experience. There’s that collect from Pentecost 18 (you can find it in your prayer book) that begins like this: ‘O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity.’ There it is. Mercy. Or what about that form in the Prayers of the People, where we ask God to have mercy and the congregation responds, “hear our prayer?” Or the times we say our baptismal vows, where we reaffirm our faith and we promise to love God, our neighbor, and to respect the dignity of every human being? Amen! I will with God’s help. Of course this doesn’t happen in an instant. It’s a slow climb, hard work. It takes our effort and our participation, our care and our intention. But we’re working it. It works if you work it.  

Mercy and love and liberation are also in our texts this morning.

Jesus is giving his inaugural sermon. It’s the beginning of his ministry. He’s been baptized, he spent time in the wilderness fasting, and then we’re at today’s story. We don’t even hear the full of it, the whole of it. We hear the good part, the hopeful part, the heart-warming bit. And usually, if everything was normal – which we know it’s not for so many reasons – we’d hear the 2nd and hard part next week, the part about everyone being furious and Jesus almost being lynched, on this day of the inauguration of his preaching. (Next week is a special feast). 

But in the midst of our text this morning, there is that theme again, that theme of mercy. “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.” 

Such hope-filled words! Such vision for the way that our world could be. Can anyone hear these words and not yearn? These words of Jesus enliven his audience. This, they think! This is what we want! We want this liberation from the Romans! We can see it! It’s only just around the corner, because today this scripture is fulfilled in our hearing. 

It’s nice to think that this is a theme for others. But it’s for us too. Today this scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing. 

It’s no wonder that all spoke well of him after that message! It’s the equivalent of a fluffy cloud on a beautiful, blue sky summer day. No one can argue with that! 

Yet living out liberation, like love, is complicated and messy, full of pitfalls and heartbeat. It happens to us, like the prophet’s words, and more often than not, we’re taken aback and overwhelmed. 

For me, my greatest moments of liberation have also been the hardest. It was the fall of 2010. Everything was going alright. After so many years of struggle, things were less hard. My children were finally happy after making the move to Orlando, FL. I was working as a priest and I loved it. My husband was finally a professor in a small college less than a mile from our home. We were busy, but happy. That’s when the floor fell out. My husband decided he didn’t want this life anymore. He didn’t want to be married. He didn’t want “the suburban life.” He didn’t want a wife who was a priest. He didn’t want any of it. So he walked. 

I can tell you this story now without crying, without emotion, at least right now I can, but I’ll tell you, it was the hardest thing that had ever happened to me up until then. I stopped eating because I couldn’t. I could hardly manage my life, much less my children’s life. I was almost always overwhelmed. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up a year from that date. But I did what I could – I’m a midwest girl - y’all know what that means. I did what was needed. I grocery shopped and we ate food. I took my children to school and picked them up. I paid my bills, barely. I went to therapy on my day off. 

It took me years, a decade even, to understand that this rupture in my life was actually liberation. 

Now please do not hear me saying that anyone should leave their marriage. No! Please no. But I needed it and I would have never left. Our relationship was not healthy and when it fell apart, I worked it. I worked it in my community, in my parish. I participated in the darkness even when I didn’t want to. You heard my words. The hardest thing. Floor falling out. Rupture. It was devastatingly hard. But then, little by little, new life emerged.

Here’s another truth. Liberation is not only for one person, it’s for all of us, because all of us need it. Sometimes we think that this work of the Spirit is for others. Others need mercy. Others need to be freed from their oppression. Others are immigrants. Others are blind. Others are poor. Others are LGBTQ+. But that’s not it at all. 

What does Paul say? If one member suffers, all suffer together with it: if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. And the the truth is that we’re all captives. We’re all blind. We’re all oppressed. We all need the year of the Lord’s favor. We are all poor. 

And we all belong to one another. And I mean the Church, but I’d also push it further. All of us, in the world, we belong to one another.  

Because the second we say or think that we don’t have need of one another everything falls apart. 

Because this is the mystery of Christ’s work in the world, the strange beauty of the world that God has given us, the world where Jesus came down from heaven and was made man in the flesh of Mary his mother. This is the world where he was crucified and died and rose again. This is the world where God sent God’s Spirit to be with us so we can do the work that is required of us. This is the world where we all belong to one another. 

The mystic Thomas Merton tells this story: “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine, and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world…this sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud…I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around, shining like the sun. 

Then it was as if I suddenly saw secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more harried, no more cruelty, no more greed. 

When one thrives all thrive. When one struggles, all struggle. To quote that old Anglican John Donne, “no human is an island.” We all need one another and we’re all in need of mercy. 

This is the good news on this the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany. We are not alone and we belong to each other! Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing and this is our light.