The Written Word

The Light of the Ages
Isaiah 11:1-3

1The royal line of David will be chopped down like a tree; but from the stump will grow a shoot, a new branch. 2The Spirit of the Eternal will dwell in him—the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of purpose and strength, of knowledge and reverence for the Infinite— 3much to his great delight!

 The Light from a Teacher of Truth
I Asked for Wonder, Abraham Joshua Heschel

The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder and amazement. The root of religion is the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder and amazement.

Religion begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us.

It is in that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which humanity’s answer is elicited.

The Light of the Master Teacher
Luke 4:14-21

14Jesus returned to Galilee with a strong sense of the Spirit’s power within him. Everyone else could sense it too, 15especially when he spoke in their synagogues. The people were thrilled with him! 16The next Sabbath he went to the synagogue where he’d attended since he was a child. They asked him to read, 17and handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He stood up, unrolled it, and found the place where it was written:

18”The Spirit of the ETERNAL is on me. The Almighty has chosen me to preach Good News to the poor, sending me to bring healing to the brokenhearted, to pronounce pardon to the imprisoned, recovery of sight to those who cannot see, and freedom for those who are oppressed. 19This is God’s time, right here, right now!”

20He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. They couldn’t keep their eyes off him, waiting expectantly. 21So he spoke up: “What I’ve just read to you is happening… right here, right now!”

The Good Word

I think about death sometimes. It’s not surprising, given my age. But even when I was younger I would sometimes ask myself, “What will be left when I’m gone? What will I leave behind? “

Now that I’m 70 the prospects of ‘the ultimate’ seem nearer than ever before. When I mention it to friends they all say, “Oh, you’ll live for years yet…at least 20 or 30 more years.” Like that’s comforting!

I am reminded of a quote by Drew Sirtors, whose identify I’ve been trying to determine for some time now. Anyway, he said, “Watches are so named as a reminder ? if you don’t watch carefully what you do with your time, it will slip away from you.”

Jesus was concerned about time, too. For instance, he knew that his time was limited. I don’t mean that he had such fore-knowledge because he was the Son of God. But I do mean that he knew his life-course was going to put him on a collision course with the ‘powers that be’ and that every breath he breathed could be his last.

Any prescience he had about his future demise would not have had to be supernatural. He’d seen plenty of revolutionaries crucified and otherwise martyred, and he knew the stories of those who resisted the power of Rome and the establishment in Jerusalem, including plenty of men who thought themselves to be the Messiah.

So when he preached his first sermon in his hometown, he kept it short, even shorter than my ‘short-time-limit’ sermons. First, he stood and read from the scroll of Isaiah. Standing would have been the traditional posture for reading the Torah. Then he sat down, as rabbis did, to share his thoughts in his sermon. Here it is in its entirety: “What I’ve just read to you is happening… right here, right now!”

Twelve words in English. That’s much less than an average Tweet on Twitter! In Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, it’s only five words. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, it’s five words as well. That’s got to be an all-time record for sermon shortness.

The heart of his sermon is found in the first word, semeron: “this very day…” or “right here, right now”.

Jesus was referring to his reading from Isaiah, and he was saying that “preaching Good News to the poor… healing the brokenhearted…pardoning the imprisoned… recovering sight for those who cannot see… and freeing the oppressed…” was happening ‘in the moment, right here, right now, this very day!’

If we read a little further than our reading took us today we’ll discover that they went ballistic. He was claiming to preach ‘the acceptable year of the Lord,’ meaning that he was declaring a universal year of jubilee, when slaves were released, property was returned to original owners, and all manner of restitution took place; in other words, he was declaring the reign of the Messiah to be in effect!

No wonder they were agitated. Not likely he’d be asked to preach there again. In fact, they wanted to throw him over the cliff. He would be lucky to escape with his life!

What they missed by not listening carefully to him is the truth that God has not only worked in the past and gives a promise for the future, but that all God’s work takes place in the present, in the ‘right here, right now’.

There is one other point that Jesus makes by selecting his reading from Isaiah’s scroll. He began the reading by saying, “The Spirit of the Eternal is on me.”

God works in the present, and God works through the Presence, the power of the energizing Spirit. It was true in the life of Jesus, and it is true in the life of his church today.

Just as it was true for Jesus, it is true for us. God desires to work in and through us in this present moment, healing the sick and setting people free to reach their potential. We do it in the energy of Spirit within each of us and in all of us collectively.

Listen to Jesus promise in John’s gospel: “The truth is, the person who has confidence in me will do what I’ve been doing, and even greater things, because I’m returning to my Heavenly Source.” John 14:12

The question is: are we prepared to do what Jesus did, and more? Are we ready to believe that this is ‘God’s time’ for us to grow, to reach out, to bring healing, hope and help to our community and our world? Are we ready to spend our moments wisely, right here, right now, to follow our dreams and to touch the lives of others with Good News?

Steve Jobs, Apple co-Founder, once wrote: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Having recently battled cancer, he understands this truth thoroughly, giving himself now to a task he loves: producing innovative digital devices, including the newly-announced iPad. For him, to be alive is to be creative, and to be creative is to be alive!

Business motivational speaker Harvey MacKay tells us: “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”

There is no time like the present to be everything God has made us to be. We can be free to be all that and more in God’s ‘right here, right now’.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is empowering OdysseyChurch to “preach Good News to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to pronounce pardon to the imprisoned, recovery of sight to those who cannot see, and freedom for those who are oppressed.” We can and will become the voice for progressive, practical Christianity as we declare the message of the Master Teacher in the power of Spirit. 

I believe, as Jesus said, that “this is God’s time, right here, right now!” This is our time to be everything God has called us to be and to do everything God has called us to do! 

Are you going to jump in and go with the flow of the Spirit? Or are you going to simply stand on the banks of the stream and watch the rest of us go by? 

Are you going to join us in making this miracle happen? Or are you going to miss the opportunity of a lifetime? 

The Spirit is ready to anoint you for service, to bless you with strength and health and abundance. You can help “preach Good News to the poor, bring healing to the broken- hearted... and freedom for those who are oppressed.”

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman church, telling them and us: “Understand the time in which you live. Wake up! Don’t get drowsy! This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for...” Romans 13:11

Could this be “God’s time, right here, right now!” What are you going to do about it? It’s up to you...and that’s the truth! 

The Giving Word

Carl Sandburg tells us: “Time is the coin of your life.  It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.  Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

The Final Word

Author and lecturer Denis Waitely reminds us:  “Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow”