Scripture: Luke 4: 16-21
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, 17and 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 favor.’
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.’

—

In this scripture, Jesus is getting political. Politics is not a nice word, particularly when we think Jesus as so nice and sweet and kind. No one hears the word politics and thinks warm and fuzzy thoughts. Politics has become a dirty word; we say things like the stench of politics, saying someone is a “politician” isn’t a compliment anymore and receiving a political answer means no one answered your question. We are suspicious, often for good reason, of the “room where it happens” and the folks who want to be there. We think about backroom deals, swamps to drain, and we compare politics to making sausage (and not small craft batches with ingredients that make you really proud). But the hard truth is, if politics is dirty then it is our own fault and failing, born of our own collective inaction. Because deciding how we live in community is important and powerful; and it should be beautiful.

Politics is a part of life, it is a part of our country and our state; our communities and churches. Families have politics and workplaces have politics. The question isn’t how do we escape politics, it is how do we engage in a way that is healthy, loving, and born more of hope than fear.

My high school civics teacher said, “This is all about how we decide who gets what, when.” I think Mr. Wiles wanted us to care about government, even if at that point we were mostly concerned with getting our own stuff and our own 'whens'. Deciding who gets what, when, is hard work, because it requires us to to engage, to care, to lean into the needs of others, and balance this wildly diverse social fabric.

I realize it can be tender when church folks engage the politics of the world and it should be done with care, prayer, and intention. But I have heard of folks saying things like, “Preacher, you should stick to the Bible.” And I want to say, “Have you read the Bible?” It is full of leaders who fail and love and do everything wrong. It is full of prophetic voices saying, "remember the vulnerable," even if the words are usually widows and orphans and folks who want to "make Israel great again". When you hear someone angry at a preacher for getting too political, it probably means that the preacher was on the “wrong” side.

Our faith invites us into values that are meant to be embodied in the world around us, faith is lived and it is an act of building the world, perhaps as Jesus prayed, on earth as it is in heaven. Mary is political in her magnificat, lifting up the lowly, tearing the mighty from their throne, sending the rich away empty; that’s political and that probably why we sing it in Latin, so no one has to hear it. The early Christians said all kinds of things that were intensely political. “Lord of Lords and King of Kings," "Prince of Peace," "Savior of the World;” these are all phrases for Caesar and it is a bold political statement to say some crucified, peasant rabbi takes his place. This passage in the Gospel of Luke is something of Jesus’ mission statement. It is at the very beginning, Jesus has been baptized by John, a spirit descends like a dove, and Jesus is driven out to the wilderness (a bit of a silent retreat if you will). He gathers himself and begins this work. He heads home, stopping at his home town synagogue, as is his custom, and they hand him a scroll, and he reads from the prophet Isaiah. I sometimes imagine him in the wilderness, thinking and rethinking through this passage.

18 ‘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,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

It's a mission statement. No church ever needs to spend money on a consultant to choose one; it's right here. My introduction to theology professor made us begin each class with this passage. He asked us to memorize it, a sign that he was Baptist and not Methodist, and he even tested our memory, literally with a test. Why? Because this is the plum line, the guidance and the measure of our practice. Are we bringing good news to the poor, because doing that can make you pretty unpopular. Are we about the release of captives? Jesus was surrounded by a community held captive by the Roman empire; taxes were established to keep people in debt or debtors sold into slavery. Jesus is surrounded by people who need healing and recovery, he brings this and, while we may have a different technology around healing, we are called to be a part of ensuring everyone has access. From the very start, Jesus looks at the world around him and begins teaching and illustrating how it could be good news to the poor and how we could let the oppressed go free. In a world of scarcity, he sat thousands of people down on a hillside and suddenly a few fish and a few loaves of bread turned into a feast. He didn’t just talk about abundance, he showed people how to open their baskets and share, that feast was a real miracle, not manna from heaven. This is why he was a threat. No one ends up crucified for running a few prayer circles and preaching self help. Jesus prays, he teaches prayer, he studies the scripture, and it is “his custom” to go to the synagogue, but this transformation is more than personal, it is for a communal good.

See at the end of this passage, Jesus says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” This is a mic drop sort of statement. Can you imagine that, someone coming back from college and saying, “Boom, we are doing this, changing it all. It’s getting real now.” The story continues, folks start talking, isn’t this Joseph’s boy, the carpenter, who does he think he is, and by the end of the conversation the people who taught him Sunday school are trying to run him out of town-- and perhaps off a cliff.

This is the faith we inherit-- history has made Jesus meek and mild, and salvation personal and individual-- but when we dive down we find our call as the church. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said, “There is no holiness without social holiness." Our movement, which began as a campus ministry small group at Oxford, engages the spiritual practices, and the means of grace for the intention of changing the world. Early Methodists, studied scripture and worked to abolish slavery, they prayed together and set up health clinics, they spent time in small groups and they built schools for children who did not have a place to learn to read. They set up micro-lending and programs for the folks in poverty and they rallied to change the British tax structures that created poverty. They changed themselves and the world for the better.

We carry this in our very DNA as a church. As a modern church, we gather every four years at General Conference to debate, create, recreate, study and re-cast the Social Principles. They are guidance more than church law, they are a public stand and a commitment. They cover creation, community, our economic systems, our social fabric, the political community, and the world community. They are divided into six sections and they cover everything from human rights, reproductive rights and health care, to ending racism, sexism and ableism. They represent a set of interests that are beyond our own individual interests. They are a part of the values we pass on to the next expression of our Methodist movement. They are not perfect and I am certain every Methodist does not agree with every part of them. And there is work that is ongoing to align the church with God's love, particularly in regards to heterosexism.

As we prepare to read and study, Rev. Neal Christie offers three important thoughts to guide our exploration and engage the political world. First, the church is called to be principled by not ideological. We are not aligned with a party or with a candidate. We are called to make an ethically and theologically informed public statement about the brokenness in the world. The Social Principles offer us a way to respond to the pain in the world. The church is called to be clear and civil. We are called to advocate for justice through a process of self-reflection. The ends and the means are both important, they are to be just, direct and compassionate. We are not called to heap pain on debates through harsh words. Bishop Will Willimon said it well at the Festival of Homiletic's when he said he was limited. When asked about immigration (by his proctologist…mid-appointment) he said, “I’m a Christian. I’m limited. The Bible is clear about welcoming the stranger, treating the alien as resident.” Finally, the church is called to be engaged but not used. We engage in dialogue with every institution in society; state, county, and country; with school boards and non-profits, with civic groups and with businesses. We are here to be a voice for justice in all of these conversations, seeking more than making a difference, but rather making a different world. Often churches are the first stop for helping, we host food banks and serve meals, we show up to help in a thousand different ways, but we are not here to be a balm for a wound the systems of the world intend to keep making, we are here to heal. So we must ask, why are people homeless? Why are people immigrating? Why are people struggling with medical debt? Why are people hungry? We are here to make more than a difference, we are called to make a different world.

The work before us is hard. But we have the gifts to deploy and the community to walk beside. We are seeded with resilience and courage, gifted with the stories of the past and called to write new chapters to God’s song. 

May it be so. amen.