Readings: Nehemiah 8.1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12.12-31; Luke 4. 14-21
Jesus 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. …
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.’
Luke places this scene at the outset of Jesus’ ministry. By virtue of his skilful story-telling he grabs our attention. Something tremendous is happening.
2025 is a tremendous year for the Church of God. Four things stand out.
2025 is the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea. That council of bishops and the Emperor Constantine produced what we know as the Nicene Creed which we occasionally use in our worship here. It is one of what are called the Catholic Creeds – a Creed of the whole church. It is one of the great treasures of the Church. As one theologian has said, ‘What the Bible says at length, the Creeds say briefly’. It is a corporate confession of what the one Church believes and lives by, and a foundational teaching document.
Secondly, this year the Western Church, of which we are a part, and the Eastern Church, the Orthodox churches, celebrate Easter on the same day – April 20th. Mostly they don’t since the date of Easter is calculated slightly differently in these churches. Jesus prayed that as he and the Father are one so might his followers be. Grievously, his prayer has yet to be answered by the churches.
Thirdly, this year our sisters and brothers in the Roman Catholic Church are keeping a Jubilee Year. Following the Old Testament commandment to keep a year of remission, a year of re-setting, every 50 years, so the Pope has opened the Jubilee Year of 2025. The theme is ‘Pilgrims of Hope’.
Lastly, in our own Church, in this Diocese of Peterborough, our Bishop has designated this year as a ‘Year of Prayer’. Prayer is both corporate, it is what we are doing now by celebrating the Eucharist, and it is personal. They are two sides of the same coin. Praying is being in a living relationship with God.
All these four things, the Nicene Creed, the shared date of Easter, the Jubilee Year and the Year of Prayer – all these four things bear upon our gospel reading this morning. They wake us up to the faith of the Church, the oneness of the Church, the mission of the Church and the prayer of the Church.
Jesus, in the synagogue in Nazareth, announces his own mission using the age old words of the prophet Isaiah. Most of what he quotes comes from Isaiah chapter 61. Jesus, filled with Holy Spirit at his baptism, proclaims that his mission is a divinely ordained Jubilee: good news for the poor, release for those chained up, restoration for those who cannot see, freedom for the oppressed. It is a year of God’s favour.
One of the main issues at stake at the Council of Nicea in AD 325 was who Jesus was. Was he divine? Perhaps not, perhaps only ‘sort of divine’, perhaps only part of God’s creation, like a very special angel. Nicea proclaims loud and clear: Jesus is fully divine. In its own words:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
I calculate this makes the point that Jesus is divine in nine ways. This has been the settled belief of the Church for 1,700 years. So who is speaking these words in the synagogue at Nazareth? It is the one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God’. So, dare we ignore these words? Dare we ignore these words that come to us straight from the Father’s heart where Jesus abides and speaks to us now as we gather like those in the synagogue 2,025 years ago?
Those words were read out by Jesus as his own mission statement to that congregation in Nazareth. That was a moment in history. But, like all the moments of Jesus life, they are, as someone has written, ‘mysteries of revelation, permanent possessions of humankind’. The one Church of God, this year keeping Easter on the very same date, receives this revelation from Jesus’ lips and holds it as a permanent possession. As we listen to Jesus’ words of proclamation at Nazareth as we ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them’ we do not do so alone. We do so in the company of the one Church through time and across all nations. The one Lord Jesus is speaking, summoning his one Church to faithful learning of what he is about.
And what is he about? What is his Church, his body, to be about? It is about the Kingdom of God and its dawning.
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor. …
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
All this is the work of the Kingdom of God. This idea goes right back to the Old Testament and is encapsulated in the commandment about the Year of Jubilee, the re-setting year, in the Book of Leviticus. (Leviticus was part of the Law which Ezra read to returned exiles in our Old Testament reading.) Given that the Roman Catholic Church keeps this year as a Jubilee year I am bold to quote Pope Paul VI writing in 1975: ‘Christ first of all proclaims a kingdom, the Kingdom of God; and this is so important, that, by comparison, everything else becomes ‘the rest’, which is ‘given in addition’. Only the Kingdom therefore is absolute, and it makes everything else relative’.
Jesus brings in the Kingdom of God and so assures us that its values will find consummation at the end of time when all things are gathered up in Christ. The values of the Kingdom are justice, and righteousness, – right relations with God and neighbour; peace – the flourishing of all all regardless of race and social standing; and mercy for God is known chiefly for his compassion, justice, peace and mercy.
Jimmy Carter, when he took the U.S. presidential oath in January 1977 took it on his family bible open at Micah 6.8
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
So to our fourth and last angle of vision on our Gospel reading this morning: our Bishop’s ‘Year of Prayer. Prayer is like the boiler in your heating system. If there is no boiler the rest is useless. Prayer is our relationship with God. It’s like the flow of love and care between friends, partners and spouses. Our relationship with God, our prayer, is corporate, something we do together. We gather here for the Eucharist, The whole of the Eucharist is one great act of prayer. It is a place, an action, in which God promises to meet us and we seek to meet with God. Here we encounter, as far as we are able, the Creator of all, the one Lord Jesus Christ and the Fire of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, the one God. through hymns of praise, penitence, intercession, thanksgiving and the prayer-action of communion in which we offer ourselves to God and are transformed. Together in Eucharistic praying we own the kingship, the Kingdom of God, which alone is absolute.
Our vital relationship with God finds expression also in our individual praying. In such praying we learn that way of praying that is unique to us. Each of us has a way of praying that only we can pray. That’s because each of us is uniquely a temple of the Holy Spirit and together we build up the one temple of the Church, the body of Christ. So each of us, through our praying, learns to own the kingship, the Kingdom of God, which alone is absolute.
Together and individually we are in a living relationship with the one Lord Jesus Christ who proclaims to each and to all in his one Church:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor. …
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’
And the Spirit in our hearts says,
‘You – yes, you – are part of Christ’s body. Go and do likewise. Proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
Service: Canon Bill Croft. 26th January 2025. (St John The Baptist Church Peterborough UK)
Readings: Nehemiah 8.1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12.12-31; Luke 4. 14-21