"One TODAY at a Time," the senior sermon of Jo Popham, Class of 2005, from the Diocese of Louisiana, delivered October 19, 2005, in Christ Chapel

Lord God, you sent your Son to teach your people about your Kingdom. We have read the text. We have heard with our ears. With the help of the Holy Spirit, may we listen with our hearts.
Amen.

This teaching -- the last line of today's Gospel reading -- is Jesus's first sermon in Luke. Imagine hearing Jesus's first sermon.
Jesus was not standing as I am -- in what our beloved professor of pastoral studies the late-Will Spong called this pulpit -- between a rock and a hard place -- Jesus was seated. He had just stood to read from the Prophet Isaiah:
Freshly anointed by the Holy Spirit, Jesus is sent by God to preach the good news to free the poor and the blind from oppression, to preach that the year of the Jubilee -- when all debtors and servants will be freed -- has come.

And then he sat, as was the custom in first century Palestine -- he sat to teach saying:
'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'

I have been trying to get into the mindset of the first hearers of Jesus's sermon -- first century Jews in the synagogue -- and the first readers of today's gospel -- Luke's audience who likely were Gentile Christians. How differently we hear things even from one generation to the next.

Every year Beloit College in Wisconsin prepares a list to give the faculty a sense of the mindset of the year's incoming freshmen. The people who started college this fall were born in 1985.

o The CD was introduced the year they were born.
o They have always had an answering machine.
o They have always had cable.
o They cannot fathom not having a remote control.

o Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.
o They don't know who Mork was or where he was from.
o They never heard: "Where's the Beef?"
o They do not care who shot J. R.

o Bottle caps have always been screw off and plastic.
o Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.
o They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.
o McDonald's never came in Styrofoam containers.

and

o Their lifetime has always included AIDS.

If I were compiling a list of cultural markers of Jesus's time just from today's text, I might say that the people of the 1st century:

o Never knew a time when there were no poor.
o That people always were held against their will.
o That there had been blindness always - true blindness and blindness to the needs of others.
o That those in power positions always had exerted that power to oppress others.
o And, the oppressed always had looked forward to the day of Jubilee.

If we had continued today's reading in Luke we would hear a very different tune from the very same crowd in Jesus's home town where he first preached. The song of praise that greeted Jesus at the very beginning of his Galilean ministry would turn to sour notes in a few short stanzas. Jesus's message was out of tune to the ears of those who heard him. The people seemed unable to adjust their way of hearing to resonate with Jesus's dissonant message. Why were his words so off-key, even jarring, to their ears?

Were not Galileans socially deprived and marginalized subjects of the Roman occupation? Actually, due in part to Herod Antipas's long reign that spanned all of Jesus's earthly ministry, the political scene in Galilee was relatively stable, particularly in comparison to Judea. The region was naturally fertile and yielded rich agricultural produce. The Sea of Galilee was a bountiful lake that supported many fleets of Jewish Galilean fishermen on one side of the lake and Gentiles on the other, fishing the same waters in harmony. Galilee was on the caravan routes and Nazareth was not far from these big commercial roads. Luke even calls Nazareth a city, so perhaps it was not so insignificant. Life appears to have been good, very good for Galileans. If all was so well with their manner of life, why were the people so upset at Jesus's teaching?

When the Gospel of Luke was written the Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed. The hearers of Jesus's first sermon were a conquered people as were the Galileans. Luke was writing to a predominately Christian audience, gentile Christians, perhaps even as an apology or defense of the Christian religion to the Roman world.

Could it be that the oppression of the Galileans was much more insidious than we have once thought? Or is Luke addressing true divisions among the people who first heard the Gospel? (Rhetorical questions to be sure, to which I would respond with the perennial seminarian answer "Yes - both, and.") As conquered people under the domination of the Roman Empire, both were in need of having the Scriptures realized. Jesus tells them both -- and us through them -- that 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'

What good news for 1st century people, the people of his home town and the first hearers of Luke's Gospel! What good news for us! Or is it? Jesus was preaching that the Kingdom was coming for those other people -- the poor, the blind, the slaves….

Oh, but we are not like the Galileans! We're not like early Christians, either! --- To borrow a phrase from the musical "Always Patsy Cline" Those 1st century Jews and Christians, they're more like us than we are!

Imagine that we always had been poor and oppressed and looking forward to God's favor. It is hard to get into that mindset TODAY here in this place. We who study and work together here on this campus are so blessed. Who are the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed among us?

It has been a struggle for this privileged white woman before you to identify with the oppressed. But it was a sermon on the healings of Jesus that cured me of my blindness -- my inability to see what it was like to be oppressed. Susan Dolan-Henderson likened Jesus's healings to being freed from the oppression of an illness. I can relate to oppressed people -- if only through illness.

We all can relate somewhat to the poor -- even the poor in spirit, for we all have given up much to be here. We have all come to this campus leaving behind our families, some of us our entire family, others have left significant family members, and we all have left our church families and very vital ministries in our home parishes. Yes, we have been enriched in our work in our internships and at our field assignments, our work with Austin Interfaith and other social justice organizations, and our various Jan term trips in this country, on its borders, and across the ocean . But for the most part we have been students and observers of ministry rather than ministers. We are in that liminal place where our ministries cannot yet be realized fully. We seniors are starting to look forward to our ministries beyond the walls of the seminary, just as you juniors were so anxious to get down to the task of real seminary study this past August. But what about today? Shouldn't we be living into our vocations right here, right now? Today! If the Scriptures are to be fulfilled right now -- TODAY, we are the ones that will have to help bring in the Kingdom. We are Jesus's hands and feet and voice TODAY.

Miss Scarlett's words "Tomorrow is another day" just won't do. Today's Gospel calls us to start living out our ministry today -- right here on this campus.

If you pick up any one of my text books you might find all sorts of marginal notations, but the most recent recurring notation is YBH : Yes But How?

Well, we have some models of how to live out our ministry today right here at seminary. We ARE family for three years. We have

o bandaged one anothers' bruises sustained in the classroom and on the football field
o we've cried with one another when we lost a wife, a mother, a father, a brother, a son, a daughter, grandparents, an uncle, a nephew, a friend, even a pet
o we have laughed til we cried over silly mistakes made too loudly
o we've shared many wonderful meals together and sometimes some not so wonderful wines
o we have lifted each other up when we have fallen down
o we've cared for one another when we were ill
o we have ministered to each other in the hospital
o we've prayed with and for one another and for the unity of the church.

Here on our campus, home of LSPS and ETSS, we have experienced births and deaths together, we have shared our joy AND our sadness. Yes, we have had and will continue to have our tensions. Perhaps we needed a list handed to us like they do at Beloit College when we first arrived to help us get into one another's mindsets. But even without such a list, we have managed to live through our tensions. Most -- no ALL -- families have conflict. It is how we live in the tension and get beyond our conflicts within our community that matters. Yes, this IS the community where our ministry ought first be lived out. Here today we must continue to model the lives we are living into tomorrow. I am not suggesting that we ought to be in relation only with one another. It is precisely because we focus on living into our ministries beyond these walls that we need something solid to lean on here today -- especially today.

As you all know, the Windsor Report -- the Eames Report or "A Call to Graciousness" as we call it at our house -- came out yesterday. This report may give new direction to the Anglican Communion. In thinking and praying about this possibility, let us remember that in today's Scripture lesson, Luke had Jesus stop just short of preaching on Isaiah's next phrase "The day of vengeance of our God." Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote "those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community." And as we live into our ministry together in our Christian community, we also must continue "To bind up the brokenhearted" -- the other verse from Isaiah that Luke omitted.

Jesus's preaching on Isaiah begins with "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing"
Today the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
Today I bring good news to the poor.
Today I proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.
Today I set the oppressed free to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Fred Craddock said that 'today' must never be allowed to become 'yesterday' or to slip again into a vague 'someday.'

YBH - YES BUT HOW?

When Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson of the ELCA recently spoke at the Blandy Lectures on "Growing Together, Growing Apart" he called Paul the first systems theorist when he described the church as the body of Christ, each part functioning in relationship to the whole while retaining its particularity.

We can be the body of Christ, his hands, and feet, and, yes, his voice -- together -- today -- one verse of the song at a time…..

In closing, I ask you to listen with your heart as I pray for us all using a few verses of one of Rusty Edward's hymns that sang to me and helped me hear with my heart an answer to my YES BUT HOW question. In the silence that follows the sermon and during Rusty's musical reflection, I invite you to think about how we might live into our ministry today right here and in the larger church - singing our own notes, but always in harmony.

If Jesus's church is like a choir.
or ever hopes to be,
we must begin to change our tune
and sing in harmony.

Grant me the will to hear your tones,
and may your ears hear mine,
if as a church we watch our sounds,
the song will be divine.

Sometimes one has to sing off-key
to be in harmony;
to listen, then to move one's pitch
until both notes agree.

Amen.