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Sermon Last Epiphany 2021

We are used to thinking of our Holy Scriptures as the Word of God, and rightfully so, but in a very particular way of understanding that phrase. Our Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are inspired by God and contain all that is necessary to lead us to salvation, so we affirm in our catechism. But there’s a greater truth at stake here about what, or more accurately, who is the Word of God. We believe in the Episcopal Church, with all orthodox and catholic Christians, that Jesus is, was, and has eternally been the Son of the Father, begotten from eternity of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father, through him all things were made. Then we have John’s account of the Gospel that begins with those resonant, majestic words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” These are central, core beliefs in what it means to be a Christian. The deeper truth is that Jesus is himself the Word of God, the definitive and final revelation of the nature and character of God the Father, prior to and greatest of all other revelations about God. 

Yet we often hear, don’t we, especially in theological debates, the phrase “well, the word of God says…” followed by a proof-text to affirm one perspective over another, usually with the intent to debase or cudgel someone into submission. But there can be no more odious and sinful use of the Holy Scriptures than to wound dominate or to wound another soul made in the image of God.

So, just what does it mean that Jesus is the Word of God?

Over the last several Sundays, we’ve heard the Gospel proclaimed to us:

“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, and

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And:

Jesus came down with the twelve apostles and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them who came to him.

And again:

Jesus said, “I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

In the first reading I just quoted, Jesus freely edits the words of the prophet Isaiah, exchanging “day of God’s wrathful vengeance” for “the year of the Lord’s bounteous favor”. In the second, Jesus freely heals even those whom the Holy Scriptures declared to be unclean and enemies to the covenant people of God. And in the third Jesus commends to us a way of living that freely gives up the right of vengeance and judgement. 

In these, and in so many other passages from the Gospels, Jesus freely and confidently takes the Holy Scriptures and corrects them and reinterprets them in ways that both enraged and confused people. His hometown neighbors tried to throw him over a cliff in his home town over it! Yet he goes on in Sovereign majesty, revealing God the Father to the delight and the dismay of those who heard him speak or witnessed his miracles. He used his prerogative as the Son of God, the Living Word of God, to proclaim the inner councils of God.

In today’s gospel reading, we find Jesus with Peter, James, and John, gone to the top of a great hill to pray, and to the utter bewilderment of the disciples, Jesus is transfigured before them, revealed in his eternal glory as the Son of God, the living Word of God – God’s most intimate and ultimate self-revelation in the flesh. And to show the apostles that Jesus has the authority to reinterpret their words, Moses and Elijah show up, too.

The gospel writer notes how they are speaking with Jesus. It is often understood that they have come to give Jesus courage to face his coming persecution and death. But there is something more subversive, more life changing going on here.

Elijah and Moses both were great heroes of faith, and did miraculous things; but they are also indelibly marked by acts of vengeance and sacrificial violence expressed towards other humans.

But not Jesus!

Jesus did not come with a spirit of wrath or a willingness to sacrifice others. He came with the Holy Spirit of loving and humble self-sacrifice, and to confront the spiritual powers of wickedness that continue to this day to hold the human family locked in never-ending conflict. Jesus did not give free reign to wrath or the desire to dominate others; rather, he let himself be sacrificed by those who practiced such abominations in the name of God, and God’s raised him from the dead to bear witness to the love of God, and the futility and grotesqueness of such sacrificial ways of being. 

Think back to the gospel just proclaimed to us; when God the Father speaks, he does not say of Moses or Elijah “this is my beloved son, listen to him”. No, God in Jesus reveals himself again once and for all time. Only by listening to him, to Jesus the Word of God incarnate, may the way to our salvation and joy be opened. It remains the express purpose of the earthly body of Jesus, the Church, we who are gathered here this morning, to continue his ministry of reconciling all people to God, confronting boldly that which we allow to separate us, to name that which possesses us and our cultures. And by following his example of self- offering love, we are called to draw all people to God in Jesus Christ.

To do this, we must make a central priority of learning to read the Scriptures and the Christian tradition through the lens of Jesus, the only one of whom God ever said from the heavens “this is my beloved son, listen to him”.

We must learn to interpret all of life and all scriptures in a way that is faithful to Jesus, the living Word of God, and finally prune from our understanding of God all violence and the desire to create winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, or his approval of it.

This is the challenge to proclaiming a loving, completely nonviolent God through the Holy Scriptures, the right relationship between God’s self-revelation in Jesus and our Scriptures. We must read the Law and the Prophets, and the New Testament, in the light of Jesus. So, if Moses instructs capital punishment and Elijah models violent retribution, we must remember the Transfiguration and the voice from heaven that said of Jesus, ‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him.’

The final testimony of Moses and Elijah is to hear the voice of God and to recede into the background so that Jesus stands alone in the end, revealed in glorious splendor as the full and true Word of God. Jesus is what God has to say. Jesus is God’s perfect word spoken into human life, and that word is Agape, self-sacrificing love, and only in this, in Jesus, can God be truly known. 

How do we do bear witness to God’s self-revelation in Jesus our Lord? How do we sustain this pilgrimage of following Jesus, which is often counter- intuitive or seemingly irrational at times, or even self- defeating? We do it by committing to coming together each and every Sunday, to sing, pray, and receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and then to go out into the world transformed and empowered by love so that Jesus might become known, adored, and loved by all, a love made so winsome to the soul by revealing the love of Jesus that is made visible in us through our love for God and for each other. What an amazing calling that God has placed on our lives. My prayer is that today, we may make a new start of living into this amazing vocation.

Amen.