Week 2, Day 9 - J-Day

"He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners." Luke 4:18

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REFLECT

I've often asked myself what an "effective" sermon looks like and feels like. I'm continually drawn back to Luke's Gospel Chapter 4: 16-30 where Jesus speaks to his hometown crowd. What a sermon. We will come back to this scene in a synagogue described in Luke 4 numerous times in this fifty-day spiritual journey, so let it sink in now. Let's call it "J-Day", because it was the moment when Jesus revealed that he was the Jubilee.

Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River. He went out into the wilderness where he was tempted to grab for power and wealth and prestige. The next place he went to was the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth "as was his custom". It would not have been a large gathering, and everyone there would have known Jesus, the son of Joseph the carpenter. Jesus decided to stand up and read from a scroll handed to him, and on that day - that very important day when he was making one of his first public statements - he opened the scroll to Isaiah 61 and read these words: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." The response was "...they were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips." Ah, one aspect of an effective sermon is "amazement". Had Jesus left after that he would have been the home town hero.

But Luke tells us as he rolled up the scroll that "everyone's eyes were fastened on him" as Jesus said: "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Wow! Was it the way he spoke? Was it the tone of his voice or the look in his eye that caused everybody in that synagogue to be stunned by words of Scripture that were familiar to them, yet presented in a whole new way? Maybe it almost seemed like Jesus himself wrote the words.

Regardless, they were "un-done" by his words. The Scripture says that "All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this" and drove him to the edge of town to throw him over a cliff. Now I can't say that any message I've preached ever caused people to be so "un-done" that they would take me to the edge of Boise and throw me into traffic. But that is the effect that Jesus' sermon had on these hometown folks. Amazed and un-done!

Whether the people in that synagogue believed it or not, the line had been crossed - Jesus had made the proclamation, and he had the power to back it up. On J-Day everything changed, and everything has been different since. Oh the power of proclamation! The power of Truth!

Make It Real

Think of someone today who needs to hear the proclamation that God loves them. Write a note, send an e-mail, or tell this person today. Don't delay.

Day 10