January 27, 2013 | 8:00 a.m.

The Inauguration of Jesus

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 19
Luke 4:14–21
1 Corinthians 12:12–31a

The ministry of Jesus is the unfinished business, the ongoing work, the high and holy vocation of the church.

Eugene Bay

The fifty-seventh presidential inauguration last Monday was a national occasion built on tradition. It drew on history as it made history. President Obama took his oath of office placing his left hand on two Bibles his wife Michelle held. One was the Bible Abraham Lincoln used at his first inauguration in 1861. The other was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s when he began his ministry as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Obama’s inauguration coincided with the federal holiday that celebrates the life of Dr. King. And it is the 150th anniversary of the year of the Emancipation Proclamation. Both were recognized. References to the Constitution permeated Obama’s speech, particularly the phrase “We the people.” The president and his family attended a worship service that morning, just as all the presidents have done before him. Per tradition, the president hosted a traditional luncheon with key legislators.

Each of the people who spoke or sang or prayed during the ceremony was carefully chosen. The widow of a civil rights activist, a Cuban gay poet, a Hispanic pastor, musicians from different eras and styles of music conveyed the diversity of our nation. And, of course, the “look” for the First Lady, from each of her fashionable outfits to her bangs, was intentionally chosen. Likewise the words the president spoke were very deliberately chosen. Though Obama’s speech was considered short compared to some, the commentary on it was long. Much analysis was made of the themes he included and also what he did not reference. Obama used his inaugural address to mark the beginning of a new term in office, setting forth his vision for the nation and making clear what he hoped to accomplish in his second term in office.

In some similar ways Jesus marked the official beginning of his ministry, according to Luke. The time and place were carefully chosen. The words he spoke were deliberate and intentional. He drew on the prophets who went before him, and he built on the traditional practices of the faith community. He set forth his vision for his life’s work.

We don’t know why Jesus chose to begin his ministry at the age of thirty. Perhaps, like Moses, he had been moved by the suffering of his people. Or the preaching of John the Baptist may have prompted him. The stirring of the Holy Spirit in his heart is a mystery to us, as it may have been for him.

But in his thirtieth year, Jesus laid down his carpenter’s tools and sought out John the Baptist to be baptized. After his baptism, Jesus spent an extended time in the wilderness preparing for his life’s work. There he no doubt wrestled with the meaning of God’s words to him: “You are my Son, the beloved.” It was a time of soul searching. What did it mean that he was God’s Son? What was he to do? How was he to do it? And also, what would he refrain from doing? What approaches would he not use?

After this time of discernment, Jesus went back to his hometown of Nazareth. It’s like a politician who returns to her childhood home to announce she is running for some office. On the sabbath he went to the synagogue where he had grown up. In that time, synagogue services consisted primarily of prayers, scripture readings, comments, and the giving of alms for the poor. Any adult male could read from the scripture and comment on the reading. Jesus took the scroll of the scriptures and read a portion from Isaiah 61. It was a passage that would have been very familiar to his hearers, just as “We the people” is to us. Those gathered in the synagogue no doubt expected Jesus to say what many rabbis had said before him about the text: that it is a prophecy about what will happen someday. They knew it was a “one of these days” proclamation. But instead Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He claimed the present moment as “this is the day” and that the promise would be fulfilled through him.

First impressions and inauguration addresses send strong signals and establish the tone for others’ expectations. There were many scripture passages Jesus could have chosen to launch his ministry, but Jesus purposely aligned himself with the prophetic tradition, specifically with Isaiah, with these words:

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.

Jesus chose these words to make clear God’s—and his—vision for the world and what he hoped to accomplish in his life and ministry. His was a very short speech, but it stirred quite a reaction, for Jesus was proclaiming that he himself had been anointed, or commissioned, for this work and that beginning right then and there, life was going to be different for the poor and the captive, the blind and the oppressed.

This week our headlines about Barack Obama’s inauguration address said “Gay rights, immigration, equal pay for women.” Or “climate change, gun violence, the economy.” Think about the headlines that could have followed Jesus’ speech. They might have said “Prisoners, the poor, the blind.” Or “Healing, freedom, justice.” In other words, hope for those marginalized by society. At first his hearers were amazed at his words and the authority with which he spoke. But then Jesus went on to say, “You are probably saying, ‘We have heard you did some healings in Capernaum. But can you do that here in Nazareth?’” Capernaum was mostly a Gentile community. Nazareth was a little rural community, all Jewish. So his hearers wanted to know, will you do for us what you did for foreigners? Jesus answers them in rabbinic fashion. He again quotes scripture, citing that the prophet Elijah was sent to a widow of Sidon. The prophet Elisha was sent to heal Naaman the Syrian. Both were Gentiles. When his hometown crowd heard, this they were so angry they dragged him out of the synagogue to a cliff, ready to throw him over if he hadn’t escaped. Jesus knew well that no prophet is welcome in his own hometown.

Jesus moves on and does indeed minister with the most down-and-out people—the poor, the enslaved, those in need of healing and liberation. He includes those outside the Jewish community. He mingles with lepers, eats with sinners, engages outcasts, embraces women as whole people, consoles the suffering, speaks approvingly of the despised Samaritans, and at the very end, hanging on the cross, welcomes a convicted criminal into the kingdom of God.

When John the Baptist was imprisoned and questioned who Jesus was, he sent a messenger to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus responded, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” All this echoes his inauguration address and describes what Jesus had done since he went back to Nazareth to begin his ministry.

There was much talk the day of President Obama’s inauguration as to how much of a political window he has to try to implement his hopes and goals. It being his second term has some advantages. These first few months are prime time. Some say perhaps the president has eighteen months to take action before legislators begin campaigning for their next election. Not a long time.

Jesus only had three years. Or did he? We know that Christ calls us to follow him. The church is the Body of Christ. We are to embody his teachings, to love those he loved, to act on behalf of the dispossessed as he did, to be instruments of hope and justice as he was. God blesses us with the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ, to carry on his work. His ministry has become our ministry. The inauguration address of Jesus sets forth the mission statement and core values for the church. It is now our calling to release the captives, addressing the mass incarceration of men of color. We are to let the oppressed go free, breaking the bonds of human sex trafficking that happens in our city and ending slave labor that persists in parts of our world. We are to bring good news to the poor, lifting up those who are homeless and hungry and ensuring access to affordable housing. We are to bring recovery of sight to the blind, stopping the tragedy of senseless gun violence.

God’s work is not limited to the years that Jesus physically lived on earth. The Holy Spirit compels and strengthens our generation, and many generations, to bring about God’s vision for all people, loving God by loving our neighbors.

The Reverend Eileen Lindner, who is a lifelong child advocate, was moved by a story about a young mother of one of the children killed in the school shooting fifteen years ago in Paducah, Kentucky. “When the mother heard that there had been a shooting, she prayed, ‘Please God, not my child: And if my child, please may he live.’ When the mother arrived at the school, she learned that her child was one of the ones who had died. Medical personnel asked the terrible but necessary questions about harvesting and using the child’s organs, and the anguished mother agreed.”

Months later Eileen read a follow-up story. Somehow the mother learned the identity of the person who had received her child’s heart. “It turned out to be a minister whose life was saved by the heart transplant. The mother contacted him, and they visited and talked and wept together and prayed and talked some more. As [the mother of the donor] rose to leave, she made an unusual but understandable request. Could she please put her ear to his chest and hear her child’s heart beating, giving life” (quoted in a sermon by John Buchanan, “Godneighbor,” 2 November 2003).

Eileen Lindner says the story reminds her of the church—“the church, the Body of Christ, in which beats the heart of God’s child, Jesus Christ. The church to which God on occasion bends down to listen for the heartbeat.” May we bring joy to God by being a body to which God can indeed bend down and hear the heartbeat of Christ, giving life, loving neighbors.