“Today!”
Luke 4:14-21
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
1/17/16
After asking the right person to take care of something, you
might hear the phrase, “It’s as good as done!” That assurance is meant to give
you the freedom to live in the present as if the thing is, in fact, done.
When the thing to be done is straightforward, like asking a
trusted neighbor to water your flowers, living in the realm of “as good as
done” is fairly easy. But if the surgeon you have just met says, “Don’t worry. I’ve
done this procedure hundreds of times! It’s as good as done,” you may feel more
nervous rather than less.
Hebrew prophets declared clearly and often: Prepare for
the year of the Lord’s favor! God will deliver
Israel and make all things right!
Now, imagine yourself worshiping in Nazareth the Sabbath that
Jesus comes home for a short stay. The attendant hands Jesus the scroll of
Isaiah. He searches briefly, then begins to read God’s great promise of Jubilee
– good news to the poor, release to the captives, and the oppressed, recovery of
sight to the blind. Then he sits down, looks at the expectant congregation and
says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
It’s as good as done,
he declares. Here and now. Today.
“Such a smart boy,” say all the folks who remember Joseph
and Mary’s boy when he was just a little thing.
Hearing this ancient prophecy re-announced with such
authority by one of their own flatters the Nazarenes. And while it reminds them
of ancient expectations, it seems that Israel has, for generations, lived in a
kind of suspended anticipation. Their storied hopes and reasonable prospects never
agree. Israel has waited so long that the life of faith itself seems to have
become one interminable, unconsummated wait.
Then Jesus says, “Today
this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Forgiveness of debts,
release from captivity, the end of blindness and oppression, these things are
reality now. The kingdom of God is no longer the hope, but the new reality. But
even we are still waiting, aren’t we?
Aren’t folks still lining up at food pantries and homeless
shelters? Aren’t people still grasping for hope in Powerball tickets? Aren’t bullies
still manipulating the nations through greedy violence? Aren’t there still
places, from Jonesborough to Johannesburg, where people of one group are being
oppressed by another, more powerful group? And doesn’t spiritual blindness
continue to encumber all of us?
In
the face of such concrete and bitter realities, doesn't this glorious promise
of Today ring hollow? Isn’t
trying to live in the midst of the great Today proclaimed by Jesus just wishful thinking? It seems to me
that we cannot answer such questions with theological arguments describing our
hope. True hope lies in our willing acceptance
of Jesus’ dare to put his as good as done
promise into practice – Today.
Living in Jesus’ Today
does not mean that we no longer see, or experience the poverty, oppression,
blindness, and enslavement which he proclaims defeated. Just the opposite: It
means that we follow his example of engaging it. We deliberately live over
against it, even when those realities seem to have the upper hand. We live
boldly in the power of the Holy Spirit who anoints
us to become inhabitants of and living witnesses to the kingdom of God.
There are all sorts of examples of folks inhabiting heaven
in the midst of hell. And as Jesus-followers, we are certainly called to oppose
anything that encourages fear, prejudice, greed, and that does violence to God’s
magnificent self-revelations of Humankind, the Earth, and the wildly varied
communities within them both. But this morning I want to introduce you to
Sharon Carr.
The
Carr family were members of the same church my family attended in Augusta, GA.
Sharon was about three years younger than me. A precocious student, she was
also gifted with a thoughtful and exuberant faith, and blessed with remarkable
literary talent. Together, Sharon’s writing and her faith empowered her to do
something at a very young age that many far older people cannot do. It helped
her to die with grace, dignity, hope, and even joy.
One summer Sharon began to experience persistent and excruciating
headaches. The diagnosis came quickly. An aggressive tumor had lodged itself in
Sharon’s brain. This oppressive, blinding, impoverishing, enslaving cancer
made the next four years very difficult and painful for Sharon and for those
who loved her. And it would eventually kill her, but it never destroyed
her.
Through all the treatments, all the frustration, anger and grief,
Sharon clung to her faith. She continued to write, and through that spiritual
discipline she continued to live in the great promise of Today, knowing that her true healing
was “as good as done.”
Sharon wrote what I think is one of the most compelling
witnesses to the power of the Holy Spirit to anoint us with faithful hope, to
anoint us with gratitude and courage for living in the reality of God’s
promised “Today” even when such a life would appear to be a denial of reality.
I am going to read to you from a book published by Sharon’s
family and her professors at Emory University after her death. Listen to a
young woman’s witness to the power of Today
in a poem she wrote for others to hear at her own funeral.
Epitaph
by Sharon M. Carr
I had to love today,
because you couldn’t promise me tomorrow,
and my wealth is in the glimpse of the beyond
that escapes the indifferent
eye,
flashing,
twinkling in the tease of sunlight
or
the gray dewshine of raindrops…
I had to hold tightly to
purpose,
because you might not give me time for carelessness,
and lifeblood
is too precious to spill on selfish whim;
I had to cherish hope,
I had to cherish hope,
because you couldn’t guarantee light
amid despair
and I was tired of hurting--
I am sustained by what I
cannot see,
and reassured by a comforting grasp that is all in all,
ever powerful, ever good.
Because I was forced to live life boldly,
Because I was forced to live life boldly,
thankfully, lovingly and joyfully,
death is tender,
and life was a triumph.1
1Sharon Carr, “Epitaph,” from Yet Life was a Triumph: Poems and
Meditations. Oliver Nelson Publishers, Nashville. 1991. P. 160.
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