3 Epiphany, Year C 2025: Luke 4:14-21

When I was a seminarian, there were two times in those three years when I was applying for church jobs at the same time as my entire class of fellow seminarians. The first time was toward the end of my first year, when we were all “church shopping” for our field education sites. In this process, there’s one particular “bid day” where supervising clergy are to call and offer you their seminarian “job”. It’s meant to make it more fair - it helps keep positions from “filling up” because supervisors can’t just hire the first seminarian they interview, but it can make the waiting feel like it lasts forever. The second time was at the end of my last year, when everyone was applying for their first jobs out of seminary. These times are stressful for two reasons: first, it feels like all of your friends have now become your competitors. Although this is not entirely true since we all bring different gifts, perform liturgy differently, and will be better fits for different parishes, it still feels that way. Second, there’s an end date. For most jobs after your first job, if you don’t get the job it’s ok, you stay where you are and try again. But we all not only had basically the same end date, we were all on the same couple of Episcopal clergy job boards.

Each time, I had one place where I really felt called. I had interviewed for field ed at St. Mary’s, and later for my first post-seminary call at Grace and St. Stephen’s and was in the middle of the waiting game. But then I was talking with other classmates and the calendar kept moving, and I got anxious. So I panic interviewed at other parishes. For field ed, I really didn’t want to have to go to the field ed office and tell them I didn’t have a placement because I put all my eggs in one basket and only interviewed at one church. But for my first job, the stakes were higher yet. So two weeks after my interview at Grace and St. Stephen’s, I interviewed at another parish. During that interview, I was asked about preaching politics from the pulpit. A loaded question. Oftentimes when politics from the pulpit are brought up, at its best it’s a concern about being partisan. But at its worst, it’s a cop out. It is an attempt to keep the preacher from challenging our daily lives in a meaningful way by labeling calls to action as “political” and therefore, since that’s not the job of the preacher, we can dismiss that which is challenging by declaring the topic taboo. I wasn’t quite sure which direction the interviewer was coming from, so I decided to go all in. I said that Jesus died a political death. He was executed by the Roman state as a criminal. Therefore to declare politics an off-limits subject is to deny the circumstances surrounding the crucifixion. 

I did not make it to the next round of interviews. And, that’s okay, because I stand by that answer. Jesus was a political creature, as we all are. When I say political, I don’t mean partisan - what partisanship means and looks like has changed drastically within our own political system over the course of just the last few decades and certainly the 250 years of our democracy, let alone when compared with first century Palestine. Any comparisons done by historians requires footnotes to explain what a Whig party president was - we’ve had four - or what it means to be a Democrat or a Republican compared to a hundred years ago. But to exist among other people is to be political.

One of the most enduring and applicable concepts I learned while earning my degree in Political Science is that everything is political. A claim to not be political is political. Opting out is a statement of privilege. It says that the person opting out is so comfortable that they are unconcerned about any potential changes in the status quo affecting them. But it is also a statement of callousness, because by opting out they are also washing their hands of whatever might happen to those affected by changes - or of those who are currently hurt by the status quo.

A hallmark of Jesus’ teaching ministry was to call the people to systemic change - that’s what the promise of the Messiah held. And Jesus does so in today’s text when he articulates his mission in the context of the prophet Isaiah. By declaring “the year of the Lord’s favor” he is declaring a year of jubilee and restoration, as in Leviticus 25. People were to work the land for six years, and then give the land the seventh year to rest. After seven of these cycles, there would be a year of jubilee - one year dedicated not only to agricultural rest but to freeing enslaved people, forgiving debts, and returning land to its original owners. By declaring his own ministry a jubilee year, Jesus gave listeners an idea of what might be required of them to be his followers.

And if you stop reading Luke at the end of today’s Gospel lesson, it seems like things went well. Jesus arrived at the temple, read, taught, and everyone was transfixed. Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” But “fulfillment in your hearing” does not guarantee acceptance, because later in this chapter all in the synagogue were “filled with rage. They got up, drove him 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. But Luke tells us that he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” “Hurl him off the cliff” may imply the stoning of a heretic, but here, somehow Jesus went on (Greek poreuomai) his determined way. This verb, poreuomai, is the same verb that describes Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. In Luke 9, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem, and it takes him 10 chapters to get there. On that journey to Jerusalem, this same verb poreuomai, describes that journey four separate times. Today’s text, the beginning of Jesus’ teachings, is part of the redemptive work that is eventually completed in his death, resurrection, and ascension.

Which means that these words from Isaiah are linked to those events as well. If Jesus is the year of the Lord, then every year is a year of the Lord, which leads to a radical shift in the world now, not in 50 years at the next jubilee year. If Jesus is fulfilling this text from Isaiah, it makes a strong statement about the world in which he is calling us to live. But these shifts tend to be politically unpopular and require much of us. So then we tend to simplify Jesus’ message into a trite and simple interpretation of “love one another”.

But the love Jesus calls us to is not simple. It is not a feeling. It is not warm fuzzies or simply not wishing others ill. When Jesus says in John 13, “love one another as I have loved you”, he says it after washing the disciples' feet and on the cusp of betrayal and crucifixion. This massively unimaginable sacrifice of self is how Jesus has loved us. Furthermore, the word he uses for the “love” he both proclaims and demonstrates is “agape”. A love that is selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional. This is in line with the Lucan Jesus who proclaims a jubilee. A jubilee requires sacrifice from those who have accumulated land, property, and wealth. In a jubilee year nothing beyond the normal sacrifices is owed to God. What is owed is owed to each other. Consequently, to be in right relationship with each other is to be in right relationship with God.

Jesus’ proclamation in today’s reading flies in the face of an incorrect theology that all Jesus requires of us is “believing in Jesus” in this life and all we have to work toward in this life is life after death just by believing, with minimal concern for our actions in this life. Jesus begins his ministry here by declaring he is bringing good news to the poor. The good news isn’t that if you hold on long enough you’ll be rewarded once you die. The good news is a jubilee! You will be cared for now. This life matters to Jesus.

A constant jubilee requires a massive change in who we are, what we hold onto, and how we relate to one another. A shock to the political system. To be a follower of Jesus is to opt in to caring - selflessly, sacrificially, and unconditionally - about the lives of those around us, especially the poor, the outcast, and the oppressed. To be in right relationship with God now means we are to constantly assess what we have and how we are to use what we have to serve one another. To let our prayers change us into the hands of Jesus that he is calling us to be. Amen.