Sermon for January 26

Sermon for January 26, 2025 Third Sunday of Epiphany

Good News

Friends in Christ, Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen

When my daughter Sara was three years old, I had to leave her with a babysitter while I went to work. I was indeed fortunate to have a neighbor, someone just down the block as a babysitter. When I would arrive home, I would walk up the block to get Sara and take her home. Sara got so she knew when I would be coming and she would, weather permitting, wait out in front of the babysitter’s house. She knew she had to stay there and could not go down the street. But when she would see me, she would yell at the top of her three-year-old lungs, “Mommy! Mommy!” and spread her arms wide and run to me. And I would yell, “Sara! Sara!” and spread my arms wide and run to her. We were taking the good news to each other that we loved each other and we missed each other and that was great good news for each of us and not something we were quiet about either.

Children have a wonderful exuberance and spontaneity about them and if they have good news, they tell you about it. They can’t wait. They must speak that good news right now. I hope each of you has a small or large person in your life to tell you the good news that they love you. And yes, that usually fills our hearts to overflowing and we usually have to tell them back the good news that we love them too.

When Jesus preached in the synagogue at Nazareth, he had good news to share. He could not keep it to himself. He stood up to read the lessons of the day at worship and proclaimed from the prophet Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord was upon him and he had good news to bring to the poor, freedom for the captive, and sight for the blind. And the best news of all was that that very day this scripture had come true right before their eyes. He was the one to bring this good news to fruition!

Unfortunately, the people who heard him that day were not very receptive to his message. They couldn’t really believe that he, the home town boy, could really be from God with that good news. Their reaction may come in next Sunday’s lessons, but you need it today too. They tried to throw him off a cliff.

This was the start of Jesus’ ministry according to Luke. He had been baptized and driven out into the wilderness to resist temptation. After temptation he comes to Nazareth and lays out his mission statement in this wonderful proclamation of good news. And he even tells the good news to those who are not receptive to his telling. It is important that he tell the good news.

And we who follow Jesus, we also have good news to tell. We have a God who loves us and promises to always be with us no matter what happens in our lives or even within us. That’s good news!

I once visited an ageing gentleman who could no longer get to church. He told me that all through his life God had been present with him and he had never been alone. Through wars and struggles and near-death experiences, he knew he was never alone. It was the good news he held onto, and he told others that good news too.

It is in the man, Jesus, that we know most clearly the presence of God who will never leave us alone. It is in the man, Jesus, that we see God come to be with us. You know that. Your church name is Immanuel, which means God With Us. We follow Jesus. He proclaimed good news and our ministry too, is to be with people, to be present with them that all might know that no one is alone.

Jesus was anointed to bring good news to the poor – not just the spiritually poor – the poor – the dirt poor – those who have little or nothing but want and privation in their lives. Throughout the Bible we repeatedly hear the message that those who have much are to share with those who have little.

Last Monday, besides being presidential inauguration day, was Martin Luther King day. Martin Luther King Jr was one who took Jesus’ message of good news to the poor seriously. His “I Have A Dream” speech galvanized people with a vision where the character of our children is more important than the color of their skin or the state of their finances. I know, that last phrase, “the state of their finances, ” was not in the I Have A Dream speech. But that speech was not the only thing Martin Luther King Jr ever said. Martin Luther King Jr spoke not only about race relations in America. He also spoke about the issues of poverty. He said, “Any religion which professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry as dust religion.” I think the one who proclaimed himself to be anointed by the Spirit of the Lord to bring good news to the poor smiled upon the one who brought good news to the poor with those words in the 20th century.

And who is to take good news to the poor in this century? You and me. I found out a little more about you by worshipping with you last Sunday from your announcements and also from talking with some of you following the service. Good on you, as my Australian friend would say.

Good News. Good news of God’s loving grace and presence in our lives. Good news for the poor, sharing the abundance of God in concrete, real terms. That’s a good place to start. Release for the captives, all kinds of captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, healing for all those who need healing are other places to go too.

Good News. Jesus had news too good to keep to himself. He proclaimed that good news to people in word and in action and in his very life blood poured out for you and me and all. And he gave that good news to us, not so that we might keep it hidden in our hearts where no one can see it. He gave it to us to take into all the world, even to people who may not be receptive to it.

The mission of the church is to carry the Good News out from the church into the world. And there is a distribution channel for this good news already in place. Every member of this congregation – every one of you and me too – out in the world today – is God’s good news messenger. Each one of us is a conduit for the pouring out of good news, not just here in this church building but wherever we go in our daily lives.

I had lost track of where a good friend was until I met her here after church last Sunday. When I said that to her, she asked, “Well, where you been?” She has been active in the Synod in ways I have not been active since I retired.

I have always had a heart for the people who are not in the church. I also have always loved the outdoors. So, when I retired, I turned into a long-distance hiker, like, thousands of miles of long-distance hiking.

Many hikers are unchurched, some hurt by the church. Unchurched people have a need for Jesus’ unconditional love, even if they don’t know it. I’ve met a lot of people on my travels. And I’ve had opportunities for prayers with hikers on the Appalachian Trail, on a pass in the Sierra on the Pacific Crest Trail, sharing Holden Evening Prayer at shelters, in my tent, or in homes of people who helped me. Also just being a safe, listening ear on some trail somewhere when hikers learned my hiker name, my handle on the trail, is Medicare Pastor. That really just means old lady retired pastor.

I’m not telling you this to say I am so great. I’m not. I often get foot in mouth disease, fail to say the right thing, and get so excited about what I’m saying that I don’t listen too well to others. What I’m trying to say is we are all called to share the good news Jesus outlines for us in whatever way we can, wherever we are. In and through our church homes and outside of the church too. We are called in our ministries to follow what Jesus did in his. He took that good news into his very self and it went with him wherever he went – in a synagogue, on a hill, in a boat, at a banquet, to the sick, to the poor, to a wedding party, to a hill far away on a cross anointed with his own blood, to a grave and past a stone rolled away, into your life and mine. And everywhere he went he brought the good news of the love of God for all of us.

I’m glad I have gotten to come here for a couple Sundays and seen a bit of the ways you share the good news at Immanuel.

We come together at worship, called by God, to hear about and share and praise God for such great good news. And we go out into the world to take that good news. It’s too good to just keep to ourselves.

Can we, in some way, each one of us, every one of us, be like three-year-olds who run down the street with arms stretched wide? Can we share the love we have received, the good news of God’s love and forgiveness and grace and healing and presence with those who need to hear it in the world around us? Can we follow Jesus and make his mission and ministry shine in us? Even to those who don’t think they need it?

Jesus’ ministry is ours too. Yes. Even at the risk of being thrown from a cliff. For we follow Jesus, who loves us all. Thanks be to God, Amen.