This sermon preached by The Reverend Laurel Dykstra on Sunday January 16, 2022 for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21
One of the Great Gifts of the Revised Common Lectionary is that the largest number of Christians since the reformation are all read, contemplate and pray over the same texts
Which given that this is the week of prayer for Christian Unity this is no small thing.
Between the seasons of Advent and Pentecost there is an intentional unity of theme in the lectionary readings
broadly this week the theme is fulfilment of scripture
But there is another perhaps less intentional theme that is revealed in these very different passages. In fact in 4 passages we have 5 different generas: history, song, letter, gospel and prophetic oracle.
The Unity hinted at in verse 4 of Psalm 19
19:4 their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world
Each of the scripture readings today demonstrates a different way that God speaks to us, God’s people.
Nehemiah
In Nehemiah the Israelites have returned from exile in Persia where much of their culture was deliberately destroyed
The books of the Law (Genesis to Deuteronomy) are rediscovered and the community receives it and gains a renewed sense of their identity as a people beloved of God that the weep.
8:3 early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.
There are a couple of things that are worth paying attention to:
First of all, is an expansive understanding of the community
It is not just men who are gathered but
Men
And women
And those who could understand
We don’t know if that means people who were considered neither men nor women -eunuchs, (the Septugent -the Greek translation of the Torah that was used in Jesus’ time says Nehemiah himself was a eunuch) -people who now we would now describe as non-binary
in the previous chapter the ancestral houses of those who came out of exile are enumerated -including a man who took his wife’s name
Then thousands of slaves and hundreds of singers are enumerated
Or perhaps those who could understand were Children?
The more than human world
This passage reminds us that something Feminist and Indigenous and Black and Gay and Lesbian theologies and biblical scholarship have taught us in recent decades
that we understand scripture better when not just one group reads it.
So they heard it together, the whole community standing for hours
But they didn’t just read it
Verse 8 says, “they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”
–translation and teaching.
God speaks to us in Scripture –but we need community to understand it.
Psalm 19
Now Psalm 19 is gorgeous celebration of a very different way that God speaks to us:
The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.
their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
In the heavens God has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and nothing is hid from its heat.
The voice of God speaks to us
Heaven, Earth, Day, Night
and the joyful, powerful course of the sun through the sky
The voice of God speaks to us in creation, in the more-than human world
In the epistle we return to the discourse on spiritual gifts from last week and the metaphor of body parts.
One of the ways that we know god, that we experience God’s presence is in one another, in the diverse gifts of community
-our children
-our partners
-neighbours
In friendship
In those who help us
And in those who we help
-in those who we consider least valuable, most vulnerable
God’s Revelation is relational
This brings us to the gospel which actually tells us about two different ways that god speaks to us.
The first and most obvious -or at least that Christians are most likely to focus on is “Jesus as the fulfilment of scripture, Jesus as messiah”
For Christians our great shared identity is that God is made known to us in a unique way in the person of Jesus. -his life, his death and his resurrection.
-incarnation is the heart of our faith
God is made known in flesh, in a human body
The other aspect of this passage is the scripture from Isaiah-what exactly is being fulfilled in the sight of the gathered congregation?
good news to the poor.
release to the prisoners,
recovery of sight to the blind,
freedom for the oppressed
-these are the elements of God’s Kingdom -Jesus’ core message
-the year of the Lord’s favor -refers to Jubilee -a periodic Super -sabbath focused on justice, that the law called for every 50 years
restoration of land and economic resources,
cancellation of debts
freedom to captives and prisoners
So God speaks to us in concrete actions for social, political and economic justice -profoundly in the world, now.
-again emphasising that revelation is relational –not primarily about an individual vertical relationship
The thing that I find most profound and powerful about this lectionary mash up, or smorgasboard, or convergence is that it is evidence of God’s great desire to connect with us, to communicate with us. To be known, to be in relationship
Do you relate best to God through:
Tradition, study, words, instructions, parables, wisdom literature,? -got it
Are your heart and spirit moved by:
The intricacy, power and complexity of the more than human world, the created order
Check
Maybe you are someone who loves people and finds god there:
Community -the ministry and gifts of the people around us? -family chosen and bio, church, friends?
And the diversity of ways that community ministers to each other -teaching, preaching, healing, leadership
Rejoicing and suffering together
-check, check, check
Knowing god in the life of Jesus? -also check
In his death and resurrection? -Amen
Experiencing God in work for justice in the world -God’s kingdom, liberation
All of these and more are the ways that God desires to be in relationship with us
And almost all of these are also involve relationship and connection outside of the 1-1 Jesus and me
Make no mistake sometimes we need to be alone and to nurture that connection but not only.
At Pentecost we celebrate the miracle not that persons from all the known world and language groups could understand a crowd of Galilean hillbillies, but that each person heard and understood God’s deeds of power in vocabulary, expressions, and grammar that had meaning for them.each one heard them speaking in the native language of each when the Spirit speaks, each person hears in the words that they know from birth
Today we celebrate that even more than in language -God is always reaching out to us, speaks to us in the ways that we best understand –actions
Meets us where we are
1 how ever you do it you are doing it right (you don’t have to try to be what and who you are not, just more of who and what you are)
2. but so’s your neighbor -who knows God in a different way
3. Lastly and most importantly these passages show us that it is God’s desire to be more and more deeply known by you.