I suspect that when the Right Revd Mariann Budde, Bishop of Washington, pleaded last week with Donald Trump` to show mercy to the marginalised, she knew what was coming. Sure enough, her gentle if impassioned homily in Washington Cathedral resulted in the leader of the Free World going ballistic later that day and disparaging her on Trump Social as a “nasty … Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who was “boring” and “not very good at her job”. A Republican congressman meanwhile demanded that, even though Bishop Budde is a fully-fledged American citizen, she should be deported. Where to?
In contrast with Bishop Budde’s address to the president, this morning’s readings contain a couple of examples of a person preaching then getting a reaction they really didn’t expect. Ezra, for example, in our Old Testament lesson, reads heart-warming Scripture to some of the Babylonian captives who have recently returned to Jerusalem. But rather than celebrating, they weep, then fall down on their faces, then stand up and raise their hands in despair. “No, no, no” say Ezra and Nehemiah, “you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. This isn’t a time for mourning, this is a time to rejoice, to recognise that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob is alongside us – this is a time to eat the fat and drink sweet wine.
St Paul, meanwhile, gets the opposite of what he hopes for when he writes his feisty letter to the Corinthians. Rather than his words (including the fabulous section starting, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love”) getting the church to admit it’s been a bit immature, they on deaf ears. When, sometime later, Paul sends Timothy to see how things are going on in Corinth, Timothy reports back that things are, not to put too fine a point on it, awful. Timothy finds that, with words of ridicule, the church has spurned Paul, and signed up with some other so-called leaders.
And then we come to Jesus. Revived and fortified after his forty days and nights in the wilderness, Jesus goes to his local synagogue where the temple leader asks him to read the day’s allotted passage from the Book of Isaiah. Jesus picks up the scroll,
“The Spirit of the Lord,” he says to an entranced audience, “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, and to let the oppressed go free.” Jesus rolls up the scroll, hands it back to the attendant, and then says, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled … in me.”
There is a gasp. “Wait. What? What just happened?” people ask each other, to which Jesus just smiles and repeats, “Yes indeed – today, this scripture is fulfilled, in me.”
Sadly, St Luke doesn’t record Jesus’ precise words, as to how he, the local boy, the son of Joseph the carpenter, is indeed the Messiah – the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy, but I imagine he says something along the lines of this:
“The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
To bring gifts of fabulous, fresh food to those who exist only on cheap KFC look-alikes because those are the only stores in walking distance from their decrepit estates, and to bring living water and assurances of a blessed future to the people of LA and of Sudan. The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to announce to the cleaners of company toilets that their chief executives have agreed to share their bonuses with them, and to liberate those who are addicted to drugs or overwork. And I’m here with Divine Blessing to restore complete dignity to those who live lives cowed by quiet, but pernicious prejudice because, for some reason or other, they don’t quite fit in.
I’m here today, empowered by the Spirit, to endow you with a sense of worth – worth that’s got nothing to do with your bank balance, CV, or family background. And I’m here to offer forgiveness for those embarrassing things that you’ve all done, which you pray no-one will ever know about.”
And then, as the congregation holds its breath, he continues, “And oh yes, I’ve also come to bring recovery of sight to the blind, to change forever the way people see those whose abilities differ from their own, and to illuminate to you the ways that selfishness and unkindness can tear at the fabric of your community. I am here, in God’s name, to give you again a glimpse the image of God in yourselves and others, to bring freedom to the over-worked and the under-appreciated, and to champion the ones who always get chosen last, the unloved, the despised, the msssing middle, and the unseen.
And then Jesus sits down.
St Luke tells us that initially the people are amazed, but pretty soon they come to their senses and do what Jesus suspected they might do to their local boy … they drive him out of town and try to throw him off a cliff.
There will be a time, both in the United States and the rest of the world, when the hungry and desperate will have all their needs met, and the military will need conduct raffles and appeals for donations in order to buy their fighter jets and nuclear submarines. There will be a time when refugees are embraced in welcome, and the environment is cherished as the dearest of mothers. But until then, we need prophets – prophets of hope to remind and encourage us to celebrate, prophets who come with words of warning that shape us and re-orient us, and prophets of mercy – prophets who assure us that, despots notwithstanding, God has done great things for us, and holy is his name. And his mercy is on those who fear him, from generation to generation. Amen.