Nancy E. Petty

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

January 21, 2007 - Third Sunday after Epiphany

Text: Luke 4:14-21

The Anointed Ones

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done!

This modern day parable depicts what many of us experience in our work places, in our homes and currently in the world. I have a confession to make at this point. As hard as it might be to believe, even here at Pullen on Tuesday mornings, when the staff gathers for staff meeting, we sometimes play out this everybody, somebody, anybody, nobody scenario. Whose job was it to make sure somebody knew that the mailing was to go out first class instead of bulk mail? Was somebody going to tell anybody that Room 114 needed to be set up for the Thursday night meeting? Did anybody tell somebody that nobody had locked the back door? Sound familiar at your place of work? How about at home? Everybody thought somebody would pay the phone bill but nobody did because they thought somebody would. Now, nobody talks on the phone and everybody is angry.

It seems this phenomenon has moved beyond our places of employment and our homes and is permeating our political culture more than usual. I can’t remember in my lifetime a more important job needing to be done than the one that faces us today—ending an unjust war and restoring hope to our world. But instead of doing what we know is right and what needs to be done, we have fallen into the “whose job is it” mentality. As citizens we are sure that our elected leaders will do it. I fear that our elected leaders think that the people will rise up and do the job that needs doing. Everybody thinks that somebody will do it but some days it feels like nobody is doing what anybody could be doing. Pollutants from large power corporations are devastating our environment and our health in unprecedented ways and everybody thinks that somebody is paying attention. And some of you are—but not enough of us. The elderly in our communities are lacking the daily nutrition and health care they need and everybody thinks somebody is doing something for them. And some of us are—but not enough of us. People are still discriminated against in our world, in our cities, in our churches because of the color of their skin, their ethnic origins, their education level, their economic status, their sexual orientation and everybody thinks somebody is making this different. And some are—but not nearly enough of us.

And I wonder why that is. Is it just that we don’t have enough time—that we are already stretched so thin that we find it hard to attend to ourselves much less anyone else? Is it that after doing so much for so long we are weary—weary of society’s systems that don’t seem to work, weary that change for the good seems to happen at a snail’s pace? Could it be that we are tired of being chided for not doing enough instead of hearing more often, “Well done my good and faithful servant?” Or could it be that we are not reminded enough from our spiritual leaders that we, like Jesus, are the anointed ones blessed by God’s spirit to do the task before us: to bring news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, restore sight to the blind and let the oppressed go free?

In our scripture this morning, Luke paints us a picture of what Jesus had already been doing throughout Galilee and the surrounding countryside and what now he had returned to his hometown of Nazareth to do among his family and friends as he begins his public ministry—to proclaim the “good news.” As the people gathered in the synagogue that Sabbath day, the rituals and words were not much different from what we have already experienced in our worship this morning. Although we do not know exactly what transpired in the worship of a Jewish synagogue of that time, we do know that the Shema would have been read, there would have been a reciting of the Decalogue, the eighteen benedictions would have been read along with Scripture including the Psalms, the exposition or sermon as we call it, and the blessing. And much like our worship, various people would have been asked to lead in reading and praying. Usually, the attendant in charge of the scroll would unroll the scroll, hand it to the rabbi and the rabbi would read the passage where the scroll had been opened. It seems however, that for this particular worship, Jesus chose his own text. He turned to Isaiah 61 and began reading.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God had anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

When he finished reading, he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. At this point he would have translated the text to Aramaic and began his teaching. The importance of the reading of Isaiah in this scene can scarcely be exaggerated. It stated the social concern that guided Jesus’ work and allowed the hearers to understand all that Jesus did as the fulfillment of his anointing by the Spirit.

Now here’s the interesting part of this text for us modern day hearers. The reference to the anointing of the Spirit connects these verses with the baptism of Jesus. It does not signal a separate anointing. As long as I have read this text, I have assumed that those words from Isaiah were specific to Jesus. It never occurred to me until this reading that Isaiah 61 is about us, too—you and me. For each of us who claim to be people of faith, who have been baptized, however that looks in our various traditions, we are the anointed ones. The Spirit of the God is upon us. God had anointed us—each one of us—to bring good news to the poor. God had sent you and me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Think about that. Let it sink in. We are the anointed ones just as Jesus was. I don’t know how you hear that—whether it scares you to death, or inspires you to action or blesses you with hope. For me it does all of those. We have by our very nature as God’s children the blessing and the authority to proclaim good news to the poor. We have the blessing and the authority to release the captives, to restore sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. It is our job as people of faith. We can see it as a blessing or a burden—but it was intended as a blessing.

Like the folks in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth, we can read this scripture as a promise of God’s exclusive covenant with them, a covenant that involved promises of deliverance from their oppressors. Or we can hear this scripture as Jesus proclaimed it—God’s promise of liberation for all the poor and oppressed regardless of nationality, gender, or race. We can hear it as only Jesus’ work to do. Or we can hear it as it was intended—to be our guide in all matters of social concern. More than ever, the poor of our world need to hear the good news—that all are worthy, that every person deserves the dignity of a job that pays fair wages, that every single person regardless of the color of their skin or the language they speak, or the size house they live in, or how much education they have, or whom they love are entitled to equal rights. The poor of our world need to hear the good news that they, too, deserve and have a right to good health care, equal paying jobs and they don’t have to eat fish from streams whose mercury levels are so high that they can kill their children. As God’s anointed ones, we must not only proclaim this good news but we must work for it. It is our job to restore the sight of those who have been blinded by the lack of hope because of discrimination. It is our job to release those who have become captive to a social system that seems to only take care of those who have. It is our job to say to those whom the church has said, “You don’t belong in the kingdom” that they are free—free to be the person God created them to be. It doesn’t matter what you have done in the past, the mistakes you have made, the sins and struggles you carry—in God’s love and grace you are free. We are the anointed ones. God’s spirit is upon us. And there is a world out there waiting to hear from us the good news of the gospel.

Lest any of us leave this place today wondering how we can fulfill our role of being the anointed ones, let me remind all of us that there are a million ways to proclaim the good news. “We sell God way short when we forget that, when we try to force ourselves into a narrow mold or fall silent because we cannot speak. Every now and then we may be called upon to stand up in some public place and give account for the hope that is in us, but nine times out of ten our proclamation of the good news will be the quiet kind: reading a psalms to a sick friend, telling the truth to someone who has asked for it, ending a quarrel with words of forgiveness, writing a note that restores hope, listening to an old woman’s story, laughing at a young boy’s joke, inviting a stranger to come in—those are all proclamations of the good news, and if we are ever stuck for ideas we can remember all the ways good news has come to us.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine)

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done!

As the anointed ones, God’s spirit is upon us—each one of us—to proclaim the good news. It’s not intended to be a burden, but rather a blessing. There is an important job to be done and anybody can do it.