Good News in Epiphany

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

The Episcopal Church of St. Paul and St. James | New Haven, CT

Third Sunday after Epiphany

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 191 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Luke 4:14-21

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What does "good news" look like?

This is the central question before us during this Epiphany season.

More than just Epiphany though, this notion of ‘good news’ is the foundation for the Church’s liturgical year. Several weeks ago, during Advent, we anticipated good news. Then, at Christmas, we joyfully celebrated the arrival of good news. And now, in Epiphany, we consider the manifestation of good news.

This is the pattern of Christian faith: retelling, reliving, rehearsing a story about good news. Now, like most people, I like a good story. But, to be honest, this notion sometimes lands on my ears as merely just another buzzword. The more I hear it, the less it seems to capture my attention.

But Epiphany provides new opportunity. It is an opportunity to reconsider what the goodness of the story means for our lives, toward what practical end and toward whom does it lead us, where exactly we are to discover it, and, importantly, it is opportunity to ask ourselves whether we are able to recognize its presence—or absence—in our lives?

What does it looks like when people encounter God’s word, and what does the Word of God means for our lives? This morning’s lessons provide two ways with which we might engage this question of Epiphany time.

In the Psalmist’s portrayal, God’s word is inherently about joy—and good news than would seem to be about out joyful living.

When the Word of God is revealed, it doesn’t just bring a good story to those who receive it. Something more is going on. More than good, in the Psalms, God’s word is beautiful even, it is a cause for delight. Just consider some of what we just heard:

“More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold, sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb.”

Now, if nothing else, the Psalmist sure has a way with words. For me, well, this isn’t always quite my natural reaction. I mean, to be clear, this poetic description is referring to God’s judgement.

When was the last time you thought to yourself, “Ya know, I just love the judgment of God: so delicious, so sweet.” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t exactly think of sweetening my morning coffee with a dash of statutes and commandments.

But this does seem to be the relationship of the Psalmist’s encounter with God. In Psalm 19, God’s law is understood as perfect, as bringing wisdom, as reviving souls, and causing hearts to rejoice. There’s something here that the Psalmist seems to understand; something the Psalmist knows, which we can be all-too-often slow to embrace. Woven through the entirety of the Psalms are two central assumptions. The first is that God’s desire for human life is provided in written form. And the second assumption is that aligning our lives to this desire matters. The Psalms understand God’s word as a gift which, alongside all of creation, reveals to us the grandeur of God. So, reading and studying God’s word matters. Seeking wisdom from and delighting in God’s word matters. All of it matters because through these humble acts we experience the goodness of God.

And these same assumptions are the very foundation of this story from Nehemiah. At the public reading of God’s written laws and statutes, everyone listening is transfixed. But at first, it is not recognized as good news. Rather, it brings grief. Upon hearing God’s word, like those times we struggle to know what it is that the Psalmist knows, the people weep. Now, as we hear our Gospel lesson this morning, it might be easy to respond similarly.

Our present social situation does not quite align with Jesus’ proclamation of the Lord’s favor. In a nation of great wealth and power, how can there possibly exist tremendous poverty and disparity, or the world’s largest incarcerated population, and all alongside a profound pandemic-like need for healing in all forms?

We are a people thoroughly seeped in a narrative that we are God’s shining city on a hill. And yet, somehow our moral imagination seems warped. We fall so exceptionally short in aligning ourselves to the proclamation of Jesus, and we either can’t see it at all or have comfortably nestled ourselves into the cognitive dissonance of pathological living.

This morning, as we read the Gospel of Luke, gathered together here on lands of oppressed and exiled indigenous peoples and nations, the Word of the Lord is one of judgement. How then can we not but weep?

In the Gospel’s portrayal, the tone of good news rings clearly as one of right living.

Luke provides no room for doubt of this emphasis. The Gospel presents the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. And it is quite a striking moment. Jesus enters the synagogue, reads words from the prophet Isaiah, claims them as his own. Everyone listening is transfixed.

This is but the outset of his ministry, yet Jesus displays unwavering clarity. He know who he is. He knows what defines his life. He has been anointed to “bring good news.” 'Good news’ is the foundation of who Jesus is.

And it is critical to note, good news begins here with the poor. It begins with those whose lives are all-too-often considered inconsequential—as not mattering. In reflecting, I can’t help but think about our legacy and current situation. Just last week, our nation remembered the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Each January, a public conversation unfolds about the ways Dr. King’s legacy is honored and/or dishonored. Much like the way the Psalms distinguish between the wise who delight in and enact God’s law and the foolish who reject and turn away from it, in January we are flooded with op-eds highlighting the hypocrisies of quoting Dr. King while largely ignoring, rejecting, and slowly dismantling his legacy.

What does ‘good news’ look like?

Dr. King once said, “There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will.” Certain things are by nature contrary to God’s desire for human life. Good news, as suggested Dr. King’s lifetime of wrestling with this Epiphany question, looks like the revelation and embodiment of God’s Word in our human reality.

This is no small task. Who could fault anyone’s impulse to weep or to quiver in the knees when considering it. But our world, as Dr. King said, is in “dire need” of some “creative maladjustment.” Proclaiming the life-giving and life-affirming good news of God stands in defiance of a world so-often intent on squelching and smothering, denying and disenfranchising, comprising and crushing, subjugating and suppressing human life.

But as in the words of Dr. King, “Through such creative maladjustment we may be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”

What Dr. King knows is what Nehemiah knows is what the Psalmist knows: how we live matters.

Our choices matter and they make a difference. Good news has something to do with more than just being written, read, studied, announced, proclaimed—it might actually be about whether it is embraced and manifested into reality.

As we consider this Epiphany question then, perhaps what good news looks like is not just about whether God creates life, God proclaims life, God affirms life, God desires we have life and have it abundantly—but whether or not we do.

Will we desire, create, affirm, and proclaim life?

Will we participate good news in a world longing for good news? In the Gospel of Luke, this is the critical question Jesus enters into—and invites us to also reckon with. When Jesus is revealed before all gathered in the synagogue, he doesn’t just proclaim that good news is coming for all those whose longing for life has been long-delayed. Rather than promising life is on its way, Jesus declares that it is so.

Good news is who Jesus is—and it is the very reality of what Jesus is.

When Jesus speaks we hear the very Word of God embodied. His proclamation of good news is God’s life-affirming desire for human life enfleshed. This is what good news looks like.

What the Psalmist knows, is this: condemnation isn’t the point. If when we encounter the Word of God we get caught up in how much we don’t measure up, we’ve missed the good news entirely.

These two portrayals of what good news looks like are one and the same. Rightful living and joyful living are two sides of the same coin. We cannot know one apart from the other.

To align ourselves to good news requires we be creatively maladjusted enough to learn and practice, practice and learn, both simultaneously. Living justly—while infused with great joy.

It is only in enacting all that Jesus proclaims—a reality where all have life and have it abundantly—that we can fully know the goodness of God. And we cannot do so apart from delighting in the goodness of God’s life-affirming desire.

Beloveds, in this Epiphany season, may we joyfully know and make known good news.

Amen.