Sermon 01.19.2025: Free at Last!

Jesus preached a message that still changes the world. Dr. King received it and heeded it—God's undying promise of release, recovery and repair. 



Scripture

Luke 4:14-30

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

‘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 favour.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” ’ And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers* in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ When they heard this, 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 he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Sermon

Freedom From.

Sixty-something years ago, the Spirit of the Lord was upon a group of Latin American Catholics, leading them to develop a Theology of Liberation. It teaches us that all who call ourselves Christian, first and foremost must care for the poor and the vulnerable.[1] To the oppressed, liberation theology offers relief from powerless suffering. For affluent Christians of good conscience, liberation theology can give us purpose. Liberation theology urges us not to become “pew potatoes”, to preach the gospel with our actions. 

Freedom To.

Liberation is freedom from—freedom from disease, from fear, from oppression. Today, we wait in hope for the cessation of war in Gaza. A ceasefire is freedom from fighting. But how free are people who have lost everything but their breath? Freedom from is step one. It must be lead toward freedom to. In John’s gospel, Jesus says that he came so that human beings might have life and to have life in abundance—freedom to thrive as our True Selves, instruments of God’s peace, to welcome home the outcast, to proclaim the day of jubilee, to forgive debts and to restore sight to blinded minds, to speak truth to power, to go where the pain is greatest and to love, like Jesus. To love it all, the whole spectrum of experience, good and bad. 

Societal Virtues.

Freedom, argues Timothy Snyder, is the highest societal virtue. Freedom encompasses other virtues like abundance, humor, courage, mercy. Human dignity would be nothing without freedom. Such freedom must include selflessness and a faith that never gives up. Freedom values truthfulness and equal justice under the law. No one will be free until we live peacefully as equals. Today’s gospel lesson 3 offers a deep understanding of freedom. God’s brand of freedom calls people to reconcile and live together with respect. 

Sermon at Nazareth.

Did you notice how, at first, Jesus impressed everybody with his hometown performance art sermon. How often have I wanted to get up in front of everybody, read a killer passage from scripture, like Jesus did, Isaiah 61. Mic drop. Deal with it. You heard the Bible. Do that. By reading from Isaiah 61, Jesus comes out as God’s anointed advocate for the outsider: poor people, disabled people, women, non-citizens, oppressed people, and incarcerated people. AT first, the congregation was impressed.

Hometown boy’s done good! Jesus laughs it off, telling them that they will eventually find something to object to. They loved me over in Capernaum, but prophets are never accepted in their hometown. And then to make his point, he keeps on preaching. (Always a bad idea. Stop while you’re ahead. Land the plane. Do not circle in search of a better landing strip. Land the plane!) Jesus kept on speaking from his seat in the congregation. An important symbol. The Word matters more out there than up here. The Word must be preached through the actions of people [2]. What happened to turn the crowd on Jesus? Sam Candler writes: 

Well, what happened is that Jesus declared…quite plainly, that his mission would go far beyond the comfortable confines of Nazareth, and far beyond even…the Hebrew tradition. Jesus was hinting that he did not belong to Nazareth, did not belong to his parents, did not belong even to the synagogue! [3]

Jesus recounted some inconvenient history using two biblical examples: 

Ex. 1. There was a great famine in the days of Elijah, leaving countless widows in Israel. But God sent Elijah to a widow in Sidon, outside of Israel! 

Ex. 2. While there were plenty of lepers in Israel, Elisha was instead sent to somebody from Syria! Syria is not part of the chosen people! [4]

God’s mercy extends outside the family, crosses the border, ventures out on the margins to people who don’t look or act like us. God’s love is too big for tribalism. God’s love is too inclusive for nationalism. The Nazarean congregation’s boundary defenders glared at Jesus, crossed their arms, sucked their teeth. 

Coffee Talk. Can you imagine the talk at coffee hour? 1) “Well, Lordy, how about that! I remember back when Joseph brought him and that girl home from Egypt. What’s her name, begins with an M?

Doesn’t Matter.

Who ever thought he’d come back so, I don’t know, reprogrammed.” 2) “He’s a little uppity if you ask me. He’s says that he’s just back from a hippy-dippy retreat out in the wilderness. He fasted for 40 days and came to grips with his demons, whatever that means.” 3) “Why would he choose that scripture anyway? Good news for the poor? Prisoners running free? And that last verse about the year of the Lord’s favor, you know that means total debt forgiveness, don’t you? That’s not fair to me! I paid off my loans. Sounds woke.” 

DEI & Dei.

Calvary’s communications director, Jess Churchill, recently pointed out to me that DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) [5] is also the Latin word for God—“Dei” as in deity, or the term imago Dei, our foundational belief that the image of God is imprinted on every human being without exception. Let that deceptively-shallow fun fact counterbalance some of the San-Francisco trolling that is certain to come.

In 2025, it’s next to impossible to name a moral virtue that does not sound “woke”. It seems that some billionaires and their algorithms are just fine with wrong and right trading places. Societal morals? Meh. Fact checking? Why bother! [6] The same flavor of misguidedness made the people want to hurl Jesus off a cliff.

MLK.

At the time of his assassination, Dr. King was the most hated man in this nation. [7] To borrow Isaiah’s words, he was despised and rejected. [8] Stanford philosopher René Girard argued [9] that every story about Jesus can be understood through a lens of rejection and reconciliation. Every time, Girard identifies a scapegoat (or outcast, a powerless person, a straw man) that Jesus restores to a better life. Jesus heals them, restores their vision. He lets them walk again, feeds them, saves them from death. Jesus brings home the lost. Jesus eventually becomes the scapegoat of the Empire and the religious gatekeepers. God reconciles Jesus to this realm, resurrected and alive. Reconciliation clears the path to freedom. 

Unfreedom.

Nestled deep in the Appalachian foothills of northwest Georgia lies my hometown. Plainville. Population 310. Plainville is further north and smaller than Plains. It is home to at least eight churches, most of them some variation on Southern Baptist, but the Floyd Family attended the United Methodist Church with the sophisticated hillbillies. Travel with me back in time to the early seventies. I am eight or nine years old. My parents in their late thirties. My mother drives a Ford Galaxy, my father an Oldsmobile, the company car. 

It is a Sunday afternoon. That morning during worship, the Methodist preacher, Parson Lash, from Upstate New York, had informed us that the AME church was invited to worship with us at a special revival service Sunday evening. Although no one drove Parson Lash out to a cliff for hurling, they wanted to. Everybody called my mother that afternoon. At one point, she got so tired of listening, she laid down the receiver and walked off. When she returned, the caller hadn’t noticed a thing. My mother interrupted. “So, are y’all going tonight, cause we are. Okay then, we’ll tell you all about it. I hope Mrs. Waters comes, too. I just love her. Bye now.” Mrs. Waters was a big cinnamon-colored woman who did babysitting. Everybody loved Mrs. Waters. On reflection, I’m sad that I don’t remember much else about her, other than when she brought food to share, it was the best to beat my father to it. 

My mother, Barbara, and her friend, Annie Ruth, agreed to dress up that night as a sign of welcome. “Now, Bah-bra,” that how Annie Ruth said my mother’s name. “Bah-bra. The colored people [10] dress up for church more than we do. Do not wear pants to church, like you did this morning.” When we got there, some people were already gathering on the lawn in front of the church. At the foot of the red brick steps, the AME [11] pastor led his congregation to kneel. There was a charged silence. Then he lifted his voice in prayer, that God might make them worthy to enter this White man’s church. Some of the women cried and prayed aloud for God to forgive them for violating this mysterious sacred place. 

I wouldn’t understand what had happened until much later, but something in eight-year-old me knew to pay attention. I don’t remember one thing from that revival service, but I do remember that afterwards my mother railed in the car, “Who told them that? Why do they think that? Do they really think that?” And she cried. Because of her own growing-up problems, she had never been challenged to live an examined life. The local school curriculum was controlled by people who chose to exclude the sad parts of history like slavery, Jim Crow, the Klan, even the mass expulsion of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. 

Consequently, these descendants of slaves had been conditioned to accept the lies of racism. Justice delayed is more than justice denied. It’s psycho-spiritual abuse. While the dominant society puts off doing what is right, the scapegoats of society begin to think they might deserve their lot, that they are indeed defective pariahs. 

Has society taught you to fear yourself? To accept second class treatment? To apologize for having convictions? As an out gay man, I have tasted the poison of discrimination, but my faith has freed me to give back so that others might have better lives. 

As long as the abuse of trans children is encouraged by law, the church has a duty to demand justice. As long as there are immigrants who are used and dehumanized as scapegoats in service of an intentionally-broken system, the church has a duty to demand justice. As long as women are deprived of equal rights of healthcare and equal pay, the church has a duty to demand justice. As long as there is exploitation of the planet entrusted to our care, the church has a duty to demand justice. 

In 1963, Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail spoke directly to the mainline White church, the moderates who kept delaying. Sixty years later, I wonder, is Dr. King’s letter still timely? Now I ask you sincerely, who was freer, the powerful Grand Wizard and his Klansmen or the incarcerated Dr. King and his freedom marchers? The gospel of Jesus Christ offers everyone (without exception) a freedom that cannot be contained. 

Affirmation of Faith.

Let us rise and affirm our faith with words written sixty-one years ago by a persecuted Christian in Birmingham, Alabama. 

Though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? 

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. 

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. [12] 

1 Dault, Kira (January 22, 2015). “What Is the Preferential Option for the Poor?”. U.S. Catholic. 80: 46. Archived from the original on July 10, 2020.

2 St. Francis of Assisi: Preach the gospel at all times. Use words only when necessary. 

3 “Jesus and His Hometown” sermon by Sam Candler, St. Philip, Atlanta, 2013, accessible online at< https://www.cathedralatl.org/sermons/jesus-and-his-hometown/> 

4 Ibid. 

5 The opposite of diversity, equity and inclusion would be uniformity, inequity and ostracism. Uniformity is antithetical to reality, and essential for fascism. Inequity empowers racism and sexism, Islamaphobia and transphobia, and all the well-constructed lies that seek to divide us as human beings, systems that rely on ostracism (scapegoats) to establish and maintain cohesion. 

6 Zuck. < https://www.npr.org/2025/01/12/nx-s1-5252739/meta-backs-away-from-fact-checking-in-the-u-s>  

7 < https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-king-had-75-percent-disapproval-rating-year-he-died-180968664/> 

8 Isaiah 53:3 

9 René Girard, The Scapegoat, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. 

10 Dated language that was actually progressive in the early 1970s rural South, unacceptable now. 

11 African Methodist Episcopal, historically Black Christian denomination < https://www.ame-church.com/>  

12 Adapted for this liturgy from Letter from Birmingham Jail by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963. < https://letterfromjail.com/>. The PC(USA) is considering adding Dr. Kings Letter to our Book of Confessions. Amen to that.