Fixed on Jesus
Luke 4:14-21
If you know the words and the tune, would you please sing with me – “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”
When I was in seminary, we were all expected to take a stand on the issues of the day. To be sure, there were many issues that called for our moral pronouncements. Some years, it seemed that most of what we did at Annual Conference was talk about petitions and resolutions on the various issues facing the world, and where the church stood on those issues.
One year, we considered petitions on energy use, conservation, support for area institutions, world hunger, ethnic minorities, Christian citizenship, the voting rights of lay pastors, the rights of children, assertiveness training, and the necessity for parenting classes. Over the years, we spent a lot of time on the issues of the day until we noticed that the world mostly didn’t care what the church had to say about the issues.
But, as I said, in the late 1970’s, everyone had to take a stand on the issues, particularly on the need for or the use of nuclear weapons. For those who are too young to remember this, this was a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a massive build-up of nuclear weapons. These weapons were, and still are, pointed at each other for the purpose of avoiding mutually assured mass destruction. The cost of this build up bankrupted the Soviet Union; and, by 1980, accounted for $9,000 per person in our federal deficit. There were a lot more issues associated with the Cold War, of course, but this was one that really captured the church’s attention.
As Methodists are wont to do, studies were published, our bishops wrote letters, and meetings were held in which the issue could be debated. The bishops’ pastoral letter was titled, “In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace.” It introduced a book by the same name, which laid out the bishops’ understanding of all the factors we should consider. The sections of the book had titles such as “The Heritage of Faith and the Call to Peace,” “The idolatry of deterrence,” “Nuclear weapons as a justice issue,” and “The politics of peacemaking.”
A meeting to introduce the book was held in Kansas City at the Blue Ridge Church, and I attended it. There were two presenters, who were traveling the country together, doing the same presentation over and over again. One advocated the position that these weapons were a necessary evil to stop the greater evil in the spread of communism. The other advocated for what was considered the social justice side of the issue, pointing out that the resources used could instead be used to build schools and hospitals.
After each presentation was made, the floor was opened for questions. If you have been to these kinds of events before, you likely already know that usually there aren’t any real questions asked. Instead, you get persons trying to help their side of the issue win the debate by asking for a point to be made a little more clearly or a little more forcefully. So we got questions like “how many hospitals could be built,” and “how much do people suffer under communism.” Then, as today, there was more heat than light generated by the meeting. This is true whenever people do not listen to each other or humble themselves to listen for the voice of God.
After listening to this go on for a while, I decided to ask a question. It was a simple question we were asked every day in seminary, though it got asked in lots of different ways. It was a question we were encouraged to ask whenever we were considering what God might be calling us to do. Since we were debating what God wanted us to do, I thought it would be a good question to ask.
So I was a little surprised, and disappointed, when both presenters looked at me as if I was speaking gibberish, or as if I had suddenly been transfigured into an alien life form with multiple heads. Neither one of them had an answer that suggested anything other than that the issue was much too complicated for such a simple and naïve question. Neither one seemed to understand why it was an important question to ask.
All I asked them was this: “What does this have to do with Jesus?”
Would you sing with me: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”
In our reading for today, Jesus had returned to his home region of Galilee. His fame increased as he taught in their synagogues. His reputation as a teacher, as a great thinker, grew as he traveled throughout the region. When he got back to his hometown of Nazareth, he went to the synagogue to teach. There, he read a passage from the scroll of Isaiah, from what we would later identify as chapter 61. Jesus said to them, and to us, “I am anointed by the Holy Spirit to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim the release of captives, to recover the sight of the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim that now is the time of God’s favor.”
We are then told that every eye was fixed on Jesus as he sat down to teach them what this all meant. Every eye was fixed on their homeboy’s face, a face they knew so well from having watched him grow up among them. Every eye was fixed on Jesus, so they wouldn’t miss the moment called for by the prophet Isaiah, a moment they are all expecting.
Perhaps the people gathered in the synagogue were expecting position papers on the issues of the day. Perhaps they were waiting for his amnesty proposal to release the captives. Perhaps they were waiting for his health care initiative that would, among other things, bring eye sight to the blind. Perhaps they were waiting for his call to follow him into battle, so they could free themselves from the Roman oppressors.
Whatever it was that they were expecting, it wasn’t what Jesus said next: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
I imagine that some of them might have been disappointed in this word from Jesus. “Fulfilled? How? Nothing has changed. Where is the good news for the poor? Why are people still captive, blind, and oppressed? Where is the proof of God’s favor?”
People today still feel that frustration. How does Jesus fulfill this scripture? How can he say it is fulfilled when there are still poor people, and blind people, and captive people, and oppressed people? Where is the proof that Jesus is the answer and fulfillment of God’s will and purpose?
Would you sing with me: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”
This past Sunday, the Ministerial Alliance had a meeting to talk about what we can do as the church to help persons break the cycle of poverty. We had a presentation on the resources that are available to help persons help themselves. The meeting was, at first, our attempt to debate the issue of poverty, to make our stand on the issue, and to make our moral pronouncement. Is there poverty because the state fails in providing resources equitably, or is there poverty because a person fails to take responsibility for their own life? That is the way the arguments about poverty usually take form today. It is either all about personal responsibility or it is all about social responsibility.
I shared this distinction at the meeting we had at St. John’s UCC. I then shared with the people these words that come from our Book of Discipline. They are found in the section on our General Rules and Social Principles. We read:
“Our struggles for human dignity and social reform have been a response to God’s demand for love, mercy, and justice in the light of the Kingdom. We proclaim no personal gospel that fails to express itself in relevant social concerns; we proclaim no social gospel that does not include the personal transformation of sinners.”
And then there is this summary: “Support without accountability promotes moral weakness; accountability without support is a form of cruelty.”
Because it was an ecumenical setting, and because the Book of Discipline goes down best in small doses, that is where I ended it. But since we are all family here, I want to share the next paragraph with you.
“A church that rushes to punishment is not open to God’s mercy, but a church lacking the courage to act decisively on personal and social issues loses it claim to moral authority. The church exercises its discipline as a community through which God continues to ‘reconcile the world to himself.’”
That is the formal way theologically trained people say, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”
When our eyes are fixed on Jesus, good news will come to the poor in body and spirit. When our hearts are fixed on Jesus, release will come to those who are captive to sin and idolatry. When our thoughts are fixed on Jesus, the blind will be enabled to see the vision of God’s kingdom breaking in around them. When our strength is fixed on Jesus, freedom will come to all who are oppressed by the injustices and sins of the world. When our soul is fixed on Jesus, we will know that we have found God’s favor which is so abundant that it will overflow our lives and into the lives of those around us.
In the end, it doesn’t matter whether we support or oppose gun control, or abortion, or mutually assured mass destruction. It doesn’t matter because we do not save ourselves – that is the work of Jesus. It doesn’t matter because the competing visions of those positions are so much less that the vision of God’s kingdom that Jesus proclaimed was being fulfilled in their hearing.
When we keep ourselves fixed on Jesus, we live into God’s kingdom, where every child is valuable and precious because they were conceived in a loving and committed relationship. When we keep ourselves fixed on Jesus, we live into God’s kingdom, where every person is free to love and trust others, because we see in each other what Jesus died to save. When we keep ourselves fixed on Jesus, we live into God’s kingdom here, and in the hereafter, assured of God’s favor upon us.
It was that fixation on Jesus that enabled the apostles to share the good news in a hostile world, to humbly serve those who were in need, and to continue to lift up the vision of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. The scripture is fulfilled when we listen to Jesus. There are still problems in the world today – the answer to all these problems is found when we turn out eyes upon Jesus, and look full in his wonderful face. When we are fixed on Jesus, the arguments and problems of the world will grow strangely dim, replaced by the light of God’s glory and grace!
May we humble ourselves to fulfill the scripture today in the loving service of Jesus Christ!
UM Hymnal 581 “Lord, Whose Love Through Humble Service”