The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is Upon Me
Bishop LaBelle wrote this to all the clergy in the diocese, that it needs to be talked about.
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle
Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 26, 2025
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 ;
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a ;
Luke 4:14-21 ;
Psalm 19
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always acceptable in Your sight, Oh God, my strength and my redeemer.
Amen.
We are blessed with how much scripture we get to hear every week in the Episcopal Church. We get an Old Testament lesson, we get a Psalm, boy that was fun to sing the whole psalm today, and we get a New Testament lesson and a Gospel lesson. That feels sometimes like a lot, and a lot to have to hear and struggle with and think about, what does that mean, and all of that. But today, in the story from Nehemiah, oh my goodness! Do you know what they did on that day with Ezra the scribe? They got up early in the morning and handed Ezra, they said, “go get the scriptures”, Ezra came back with the scriptures, and they stood up and they started reading. All the men, and the women, and those old enough to understand heard him read the scriptures for the whole day! Can you imagine what that would be like? This story is actually fascinating because it has a history to it.
The scriptures got lost for a while. There were things like exiles, and moving, and wars, and storms. The scriptures were lost, and they found the scriptures again! People were so excited about them that they wept. I cannot imagine that joy, and that level of “oh my goodness, look it, God has formed this covenant with us, and has formed this relationship, and has told us He loves us and has rules for us, and has all of this for us! Now, let’s understand it, and let’s grow in it".
We are blessed that we have what we have. If you would like to arrange a day where I get up, and Anna and I can share this, she’ll read the gospel portions, and I’ll read the others, and we can spend the whole day doing this if you like! [voice from congregation: “That’s not covered in your Sabbatical…] But we’re not going to do that. I just wanted to talk briefly about Nehemiah because the importance of scriptures and what it has to say to us, and where we go with, how do we respond to all of that that God gives to us. It’s such a wonderful question.
So, here I am, on this Sunday. It’s been a week, hasn’t it. It has been a week. I have a friend who posted on Facebook on Saturday, he said “this is the most difficult month of the first month after an Inauguration that I can remember. Oh, it’s only been a week”! We have had a week, and I promise you, in case you are starting to pack your bags, and think “I’m going to leave, she’s going to get political” [voice from the Congregation: “no no no, we like this”], you like this? Okay, good! Remember that when this is over. But I got a letter from my Bishop this week, saying “it’s been a week, and I want you to preach it on Sunday”. He wrote this to all the clergy in the diocese, that it needs to be talked about. I have taken my wisdom on preaching on political questions from Michael Curry, our former Presiding Bishop, who said “you must be political, but never be partisan”, so I would never tell anyone how to vote. I might tell you to vote, but I won’t say how to vote, and for whom to vote, or anything like that.
But this week, on Tuesday, the Bishop of Washington D.C. got up at the National Prayer Service, and called the president out, and said “please have mercy and compassion on people who have no power, on immigrants, on refugees, on LGBT, on various groups, please”. The president was not well pleased with the sermon, so I am going to preach about that. We have the best Gospel lesson we could possibly have to talk about this question. How do we proclaim good news to people who don’t always have power? How do we proclaim to people in power?
Our Gospel lesson today is Jesus going into the Synagogue, as was His habit. It was a Saturday, and He was an adult male Jew. He went into the Synagogue and decided it was His turn to read from scripture. So, He got up and the Rabbi, the head of the Synagogue, or whoever was there, handed Him the book of Isaiah, the scroll of Isaiah, what would now be Isaiah chapter 61 verses 1-3. Jesus took the scroll and read from it.
First of all, we think “okay, he’s going to take the scroll and unroll it, and do all of this”. Well, in the Synagogue, there is a fascinating thing, a little instrument that looks like a back scratcher. It is a stylus, and on the end of the stylus is a hand, and the hand has a pointing finger. The Rabbi would hold this pointing finger to where the reader is going to read. I wanted to know what that’s called, you know I googled that? I said, “what is the pointing finger called in a Synagogue”? It’s a yad, Y-O-D or Y-A-D, I couldn’t get it to bounce back up to check my spelling. But it’s a yad, because the Scripture is so holy that you don’t just touch the scriptures, the scrolls. You just use the pointer. My Bible, you should see my Bible, it has yellow, green, and pink underlining, notes in the margins of when something is important and why. It’s written all over, I am not following that rule, I guess.
What I would like to do is read to you from Isaiah 61, because Luke chapter 4 has a shorter version. This is what Jesus would have read:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because The Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, release for the prisoners. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, the Day of Vengeance of our God. To comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow upon them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim, release healing, hope, transformation.”
And then Jesus said this wonderful line at the end of His reading. He looked at everyone in the Synagogue, and he said:
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your midst”
That’s a verse not to be forgotten, and I’ll go back to it in a little bit. The first time I heard this scripture, I wrote it down in my Bible in yellow and pink and said “boy this is important”, and I thought, “isn’t it so wonderful that the Holy Spirit came on Jesus and He had the boldness to preach that”. And then, suddenly I heard, “and the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on you to preach and proclaim Good News, and to do the things that bring that good news into being”.
I am now going to preach and proclaim to you, that the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on you too. To do these things, to work, to proclaim, to be bold, to be a Bishop Budde, or I don’t know how to pronounce her name, sadly, and to be bold in the face of death threats, which is what she’s receiving right now. To bring the transformation and change into our culture and society that we are called to bring and to be.
So, I’m speaking maybe a little controversially for you. If anyone is uncomfortable with what I am saying, please talk to me about it [you can email rector@goodshepherdfw.org if you have questions!], I am going to be at a birthday party later and then an annual meeting, and then I am available. But I have two stories that go with this, with the importance of this proclamation and change. The first story is that I have a great hero of the faith, his name is [in German pronunciation] Deitrich Bonhoeffer, if you are an America his name is [in America pronunciation] Deitrich Bonhoeffer, but for me it’s [German] Deitrich Bonhoeffer. How many of you have heard of Bonhoeffer? Ah, about half of you. He was a Lutheran pastor, he was German, he was high in the Lutheran Organization, and he lived in the time of the Nazi party in Germany. The Nazi party said “Church, you are under our control, and you are going to preach what we tell you to preach and do what we tell you to do, and if that means rounding up the Jews in your neighborhood, you are going to do it”.
The Nazis said, “you have to stop saying that Jesus was a Jew, because that just wouldn’t be right”. They had many rules for the Church, I’m talking Catholic church, Lutheran church, there weren’t any Episcopalians or Anglicans in Germany at the time, but all of you had to follow this rule, and Bonhoeffer said, “No! I am called to preach what Isaiah 61 says, I am called to preach what Luke chapter 4 says”. He eventually founded what’s called “the confessing church” and said that “we will stick by our confession of the truth”. He was arrested for that, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp and was executed five days before the end of World War II, the end of April beginning of May 1945. His most famous book is probably The Cost of Discipleship. There is a cost to being bold and to being willing to speak the truth, to speak to proclaim the good news.
My second story is, how many of you have heard “the already of the not-yetness”? Oh, I love to watch faces go [contorts her face, imitating that of someone bewildered]! The already of the not-yetness is a theological construct that was put together about 60 years ago by a theologian named George Eldon Ladd, I even remembered his middle name [although the transcriber had to look it up]. He said, “Let’s look at two verses. One is from Luke chapter 4, where Jesus says, “today this has been accomplished, has been fulfilled”, the second is from Jesus’ words on the cross, “it is finished”. What does that mean? Well, if you take the words and what Jesus had done, it means that salvation is accomplished, healing is accomplished, forgiveness is accomplished. No more tears, no more crying, no more suffering”.
Is it accomplished? Eh, it really isn’t, but Jesus said it was, and I’m not going to disagree with Jesus! But Ladd said what we have here is the already of the not-yetness. It is accomplished, but we’re living in a time when it is not fully done. There is work to be done to add to the accomplishment, so that there won’t be World War III, so that there will be peace, so there will be these changes. We live in that strange time of the already of the not-yetness, and his example of this, in case you’re fascinated by this, is D-Day.
D-Day, the 6th of June 1944, the allies landed on the beaches, the war was won on the 6th of June 1944. Experts on history and war say it was won that day. When did the war end? [voice from the congregation: “it never did!”] Well, there’s one point, but its declared peace was May 8th, 1945. We have the Battle of the Bulge, we have the Coldest Winter in Europe, we have all of that yet to happen. Yet, people knew that it was over, a victory was on its way. That’s living in this in-between time.
We live in this in between time. It’s finished, it’s fulfilled, but we still need to be proclaiming freedom and healing and release and hope and comfort. By we, I would love it if all of you said “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me”
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me.
Amen.
