James W. Crawford Sermons

The Old South Church in Boston

How About This Inaugural?

Sermon by James W. Crawford

January 28, 2001
Luke 4: 16-30

In January, the chief executive officers of our city, state and nation prepare their programmatic agendas.Mayor Thomas Menino confessed himself proud of his label as “urban mechanic.” He promised to “keep caring about graffiti, litter, pot holes andburned out street lamps. He proposed extensive English proficiency assistance for immigrants seeking jobs, job training for those experiencing layoffs and a stepped up teacher recruiting effort. At the state level, Governor Paul Cellucci recommended a commission designed to enable residents of certain neighborhoods in the city to remain there amid the sky-rocketing assessments and costs.He wants state subsidies for threatened local health care institutions and new online servicesmaking state government more immediately responsive to the needs of our citizens. And of course, President George W. Bush proposed an agenda reclaiming America’s schools, reforming Social Security and Medicare, reducing taxes and building defenses. From these addresses we catch a leader’s vision, a sense of their person, the qualities that drive and sustain their leadership.

And, of course, when the address concludes, the pundits and protagonists, the skepticsand adversaries have their say, ranging from enthusiasm to cynicism. The leader elicits vigorous response to platform and agenda.

Luke presents us with a situation something like this in the Gospel passage we read this morning.Luke offers a picture of our Lord’s vision, person and agenda at the very beginning of his public ministry. In effect, Luke presents our Lord’s first and only inaugural address. Luke shows us Jesus in the synagogue, amid curious neighbors, preparing to outline his own program. Can you see him now? Hometown boy, peppered by folk who knew him as a toddler and teenager: “Hey, you’ve made a name for yourself. You’re the talk of the town. What are you up to? What’s aheadfor you, but more importantly,for us?

And Jesus? He rises in the synagogue and offers his state of the mission message, his inaugural address. Opening to the prophet Isaiah, Jesus reads:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.Jesus closed the book and gave it back to the attendant, the eyes of all were upon him. Today he said, the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

For Luke—for faithful churches and Christians ever since—that inaugural address by Jesus sets the tone; it outlines priorities, builds a platform. It includes the wide spectrum of human life embraced by the love of God we know in Jesus Christ. And the address is not simply a blueprint for the future. It is not some populist or liberal platform for the candidate’s next term. Hardly. WhenLuke transcribes Jesus asserting to that synagogue congregation, “Today, this has been fulfilled in your presence,” Luke announces a divine love even now penetrating our world, tilting toward, sprinting after, straining to liberate, restore, recreate those outside the camp: the losers, the irreligious, the troublemakers, the aliens. According to Luke, Christ bears a love breaking the envelope, flowing out in solidarity with the abandoned, the junked, the rejected, the forsaken. Luke affirms the very Love grounding your life and mine, and plays no favorites, smashes the boundaries of our tight and respectable circles to include—and perhaps even to side with—those we ignore, fence out, forget, consider our inferiorsor, yes, our enemies. Luke reveals Love making common cause with those who carry no stake in things as they are, who see noacceptance in our churches, no hope in our schools, no promise in ourold or new economy, those who rot in jail defended by lawyers who sleep at trials, those destined for military forces where they may be—and perhaps are—ordered to defend all that leaves them even yet at the bottom of the social heap.

There lies our Lord’s program, the essence of an inaugural address and its implementation: the Gospel vision for boundless human community.Powerful? Visionary? Gripping? Marching orders, I’d say. A clear mandate from our leader for ministry and mission.

But just a moment! Hold it! Luke is not finished with us. When Jesus closes his address and sits down, the people who hear him express amazement. This young man returns home, stands up in his own church, blows his family and friends away with a well constructed, impeccably delivered, profound and provocative speech. They cannot get over it. Luke infers however, they do miss the unique world-changing presence among them. They fail to see “the Christ” in Jesus. “This is simply Joe’s boy,” they believe. Just imagine: the kid who cleaned the shavings and sawdust out of his father’s carpenter shop; the guy who scared the life out of his parents when he sneaked out of the house to hang around with the religious big-wigs.Right here, one of our own with his fifteen minutes of fame.One of our boys making good!”

And then the tone changes. Self-interest invades the raucous welcome. This congregation begins to stir. “Hey,” they plead. “The gossip is rife concerning your trips around our district. Our correspondents from up country report you’re stamping out epidemics, fighting the colonialists, recasting religion. Doctor, heal yourself. All those great things you apparently pulled off elsewhere, hey, how about pulling them off here, too?Come on. You’re one of us. You’re our flesh and blood. All politics is local, you know. Stay in touch with us. Do your thing among us, and when you run for public office we guarantee you’ll carry Nazareth. And don’t forget, charity begins at home!”

And Jesus? He shocks them. No apologies. No spin. No press release. “Charity begins at home?” he asks.Do you remember Elijah, who when famine ravaged our land, fed only a widow, and a foreign one at that?Do you recall Elisha who, from the glut of lepers in the region, healed only one, and that, a ruler of the enemy?

Jesus sets their teeth on edge. He startles them. He shakes them up. He indicates the God they wish to claim, to grasp, to contain among themselves smashes their hotly held perceptions. He tells them the God they assume will grant them access, will give themhome court advantage, will favor, just a little—maybe a lot—their church, their status, their heritage, their family. Jesus blows their assumption to smithereens.“No way you’re a special case,” he tells them. “No way you deservespecial treatment.”

“Give us a break,” they beg, “just a little privilege? Right here at home? You mean to tell us we’re not number one?”They are stunned. They are angry. Luke tells us “they were filled with rage,” incensed, livid, seething.

“Rubbish!” they cry. “Sold out by one of our own.” Insulted, furious, they run this two-faced, religious turncoat out of town. With murder in their hearts they drag him to a ravine’s edge, prepare to pitch him over and bury him with boulders. His family disowns him. His neighbors reject him. They count him no better than one of their worst enemies. “Of no account are we?” they fume. “We’ll see who’s of no account!”

Somehow Jesus escapes, because his time has not come. . . yet.How about that for an inaugural?!

Now, friends, I don’t know about you, but this encounter makes me very uncomfortable. I think I want to be in Christ’s corner. I think I want to follow and be loyal to Jesus. I come to church to commit myself to Christ. I come to sing, to pray, to identify with and participate with others who want to be Christ’s disciples. Here we all are, with our religious language, our hymns, our poetry, our symbols, our prayers. But amid all this, Luke—no, Jesus himself—catches me short! He indicates that I, anyway, and perhaps you too, participate not so much with him in that inaugural promise of love and justice embracing rejects and enemies, but rather with the smug, self absorbed, me-first types who assume they have it made because they claim God as an ally. Luke suggests strongly that I, and perhaps some of you, take the Lord’s name in vain most of the time. He says, if we really discerned the truth of the Gospel, we might conclude it comes not as “good news” but as insult, as assault threatening the religious, cultural, racial,sexual assumptions and claims we live by. If we really grasped the essence of Christ’s inaugural address and its implications for our lives we might resist it,bury it, ignore it, disbelieve it.After all “it’s only Joe’s boy,”because it turns inside-out the very things we treasure most.

Our patriotism, for instance. Our patriotism. It is normal. It is natural. And when patriotism seeks to make the ideals of Jefferson and Lincoln a reality for everyone, it can be invigorating and prophetic. But we need be wary. We need be wary of identifying our nation, its history and polices too closely with the endorsement of the divine. We hear the claim from every corner that we are the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world and few in public life can resist closing their speeches with the plea that “God bless the United States of America.”

Last week for instance, we walked through the presidential inauguration of George W. Bush.Preceding George Bush’s address, The Rev. Franklin Graham delivered a prayer of invocation. The prayer is thoughtful and reverent. In closing, Dr. Graham prays, “Now, O Lord, we dedicate this inaugural ceremony to you. May this be the beginning of a new dawn for America as we humble ourselves before You and acknowledge You alone as our Lord, our Savior and our Redeemer. We pray in the name of the Father and of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

During the course of his Inaugural address, President Bush, after an eloquent and considerate address, closed it with the words, “God bless you and God bless America.” Bush was followed by Kirbyjon H. Caldwell of the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas. Again, a thoughtful, reverent, sensitive prayer calling for reconciliation among human polarities, and closing, “And Lord lastly, we thank you for favor. We thank you for your Divine favor. Let your favor be upon President Clinton and the outgoing administration. May they go forth in spiritual grace and civic greatness. And of, course, O Lord, let your divine favor be upon President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Welsh Bush and their family. We decree and declare that no weapon formed against them shall prosper. Let your Divine favor be upon the Bush team and all Americans.With the rising of the sun and the going down of the same, may we grow in our willingness and ability to bless you and bless one another.We especially submit this humble prayer in the name that’s above all other names, Jesus the Christ.Let all who agree say Amen.”

Does that inspire you? Does it confirm your faith in America’s founding and destiny?Does it give you a sense that through everything we are on God’s side and God is on our side, that Divine favor does, or should rest upon us?Careful. We are the richest nation. We are the most powerful nation. We are a nation identifying frequently with a divine destiny. But if I read this vivid narrative of our Lord’s inaugural rightly, what happened last week on the capital steps may have its prayers for favor and protection and blessing upside down and backwards. On the basis of that inaugural of Jesus, Providence stands with those who have nothing, while we have everything; it sides with those, not so much eager for nuclear missile defense, but those threatened by our nuclear arsenal; it sympathizes with the masses going hungry in our world while we take acreage out of production;it magnifies those who live on a hundred dollars a year while we spend a hundred dollars on dinner; indeed, it affirms those who do not know one whit about the New Testament or care a hoot about what we in the churches are doing and saying. We need be wary of identifying the body of Jesus Christ with national wealth, our success, our power. According to the inaugural address of Jesus, God offers favor neither to those of us who claim it, nor to those of us who rest complacently on the assumption that we deserve it.

And yes, a further reminder, in a letter from Sandra Baler-Segal in Tuesday’s Boston Globe. She wonders if “those who do not consider Jesus Christ to be their God or savior were once again relegated to some other level of humanity.” She suggests, both asJew and as a teacher in the public schools, looking “at a sea of faces that reflect cultural and religious beliefs of great diversity,” she suggests a prayer over the nation ought to be more inclusionary, or there should be silence. I think Ms. Baler-Segal puts her finger on something salient, startling, unsettling: God is surely is not an American, but neither is God a Protestant, nor even Christian.

Oh my friends, what Jesus says in his Nazareth inaugural is this:people unlike ourselves, racially, sexually, religiously, ethnically, politically,—you name it—belong to the one we callGod.Indeed, those we perceive to be most alien to ourselves, most distant in skin color from Black to White, those, whether Bhuddist, Hindu, Moslem, Jew,or atheist, those loyal to Saddam, or Arafat, Barak, or Putin, those hetero-, homo-, or trans-sexual, they are our flesh and blood, men and women different though they be, indeed, even those we tend to label “enemy,”all are members finally, under God, of our own kind.

Some years ago I remember at one of those spectacular Sheraton Boston breakfasts in memory of Martin Luther King’s birthday,the Reverend Joseph Lowry, President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, made a plea for the universal unity of the human family. Near the close of his speech he addressed himself to what he called his African-American bothers and sisters. Some of us white folk began to relax; he wasn’t talking to us. We would get a little inside gossip.Wrong! Dr. Lowry included us all as African-Americans: all of us, black and white, red and yellow.All, he said, are African-American. Then he continued.All of us are baked, he said, in the oven of God’s love. Some of us are a little bit rare, and tend to be pink.Some of us, God kept in the oven for a few more hours, and they are somewhat bronzed. And some, he said, God left in the oven over night and pulled them out in the morning—you can guess—well done. But all of us, he insisted,all of us are cooked in the oven of God’s love. Those citizens of Nazareth, religious, pious, church-going citizens of Nazareth could not stand the thought of their coming out of the same oven with anyone else. And at our Lord’s inaugural, they do not celebrate him, they seek to lynch him.