Am I my neighbor’s keeper?

      6th Sunday of Epiphany   February 16, 2025

The Texts for this sermon are Isaiah 58:1-2, 6—7, 9b-10, Luke 4:16-30 and Matthew 22:34-40

I’ve been thinking a lot about what has brought us to this new day in American society and governance. And asking myself how these things align with what we say our Christian faith is about. There’s so much insistence that we are a Christian nation, but what is that, really? There’s so much talk about Christian values, but what are they, really? 

I’m not going to go through a whole litany of things but rather, I want to highlight some Biblical fundamentals that govern our Christian faith in the hopes that they will give us some grounding to guide our responses to what’s unfolding.

It doesn’t matter which political party or candidate you favor. I want to speak to what God has already laid out to anchor us for such times as these when there are so many mixed messages.

We start first with our Old Testament text where Isaiah tells God’s people why their prayers aren’t being answered; how they’ve lost their way. The passage opens with God’s word coming through Isaiah saying:

Speak out like a trumpet, Isaiah

Declare to my people how they’ve sinned. 

Even as they pray thinking they are a nation that is righteous: [aka a “Christian nation”]

God, through Isaiah, continues by giving them a litany of what it is God considers righteous.

It isn’t going through the motions of prayer and worship.
The righteous are those who turn from wickedness that has inflicted 
oppression and choose instead to lift up and free the oppressed.
The righteous share their bread with those who are hungry.
The righteous share their homes with those without a home.
The righteous make sure people have the clothes they need.
The righteous are not selfish.

God, through Isaiah says: 

Stop pointing fingers of judgment at each other and saying things that are 
not right. rather goodness comes when you attend to the hungry and 
satisfy the afflicted.

I find it interesting that there are no qualifiers for the oppressed, the hungry, the homeless, the naked; they aren’t required to be of The Chosen, nor even believers. [They are not required to be authorized immigrants or align with some contrived list of Christian values.] God’s concern for the needy of any origin is a drumbeat repeated throughout the entire Old Testament. In fact, at one point God tells God’s people that they are worse than the people of Sodom. And God doesn’t say a thing about their sodomy. No, God says 

As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.  “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 

Ezekiel 16:48-49

It was The Chosen’s lack of hospitality, their failure to seek the welfare of the other that condemned them; their refusal to care for the poor and needy, to receive the stranger and offer hospitality and sanctuary to them.

Now I know you all know this. You live into the kind of righteousness God seeks from us. But there are all too many who invoke the name of God, who pray and attend church, quote the Bible and yet don’t want to allow immigrant children to attend school; who don’t want immigrants to receive medical attention; who don’t want them living here at all. 

There are all too many who invoke the name of God, pray, attend church, quote the Bible, who want to pound the heads of those who are like square pegs into the acceptable round hole. You know what I mean: those who veer too far afield of what’s considered normal.

There are all too many who invoke the name of God, pray, attend church, quote the Bible who want the 10 Commandments posted in every classroom yet do not seek the welfare of their neighbor and, in some cases, actually castigate them.

Hold that thought as we remember how Jesus defined ‘neighbor’ and as we turn now to Luke chapter 4.

Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth. He grew up in Nazareth. They had watched Jesus grow to manhood. Everyone knew who his dad was. They could tell stories about him when he came to their houses after school.

And now, as an adult male he is allowed to read from the scroll in Sabbath worship. And he’s given the scroll containing the account and words of Isaiah. He unrolls that scroll to this text:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
Because God has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim freedom for prisoners,
sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed.
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Isaiah 61:1

The text tells us that the audience is transfixed. Jesus says to them: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” And while the text does not give us his entire sermon, we believe there was more because Luke says that the people were amazed at the gracious words they heard, some maybe thinking “Ah, we will be blessed with the Lord favor.” And they were amazed in part because these words are coming from Joseph’s son. A child who’d played in the streets of their town.

Sensing that they couldn’t accept him as anything but an ordinary hometown kid, and that they didn’t really comprehend Isaiah’s words, his sermon takes a turn. He reminds them of episodes in their history.

Remember in that 3-yr famine during Elijah’s day when Elijah was sent to Sidon where he helped a gentile widow; leaving behind all the people of Israel? Remember in Elisha’s time, when many in Israel suffered from leprosy, Elisha doesn’t heal any of them, yet he heals Naaman the Syrian.

The folks in that synagogue rose up in a rage upon being reminded of God’s favor passing over them and falling upon the Other, the Not Them. They rose up in a rage and pushed Jesus out of the synagogue and on to a cliff edge where they had every intention of murdering him.

What did Jesus do in that sermon? He spoke the truth to them. He confronted them with the truth that the coming of the year of the Lord wasn’t just for them, that they were not God’s sole concern. Jesus was telling them a truth about themselves they did not want to hear. He’s reminding them what the year of the Lord is really about.

It is an account of what happens when one speaks the truth to power – when one names how askew the established order is, how deluded and self-congratulatory it is. People don’t like it because it threatens to upset how comfortable and privileged, they are with things as they are. 

We witnessed this very thing on Jan 20 when Bishop Bodde appealed to the new administration to be merciful, and the backlash that was unleashed on her. 

But there arose a counter to this backlash when on Sunday, Jan 26, people flocked to the National Cathedral to hear her preach and rose with standing ovation. Rev Jen Butler, who was in attendance said “The more we fear a tyrant, the more power they have, the more we stand up in compassion, the less power they have. [Bishop Marianne Bodde] did what needs to be done…”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/bishop-budde-sermon-trump-supporters-washington-national-cathedral-1235249696/   written by Antonia Juhasz, 1/29/2025

So, my friends, I invite you to hold dear these two texts as the coming days roll on. 

Because as people who sincerely want to be righteous and do what is righteous, it falls to you, to me, to speak truth to power if you will. To speak truth to any effort to subjugate others, to speak truth to any effort that denies the dignity of others, to speak truth to any rationale that says it’s okay to starve, strip, shun, harm, expel, dehumanize another human being. 

This is what I suggest: if in your lives, in your encounters here and there when you hear someone praise some action or idea that oppresses some person or group, some action or idea that purports there’s not enough money to educate every child residing in this country, or enough money for school lunch programs, or some idea that holds the homeless should just get their act together, or some policy that seeks to roll back help to starving, besieged peoples here and abroad, know that you stand firmly on the side of God when you simply say:

“I can’t agree with you on that.” or  “I don’t think that idea lines up with loving our neighbor as ourself.” (and, given the situation, you could add), “Do you?” 

And, if you’re open to doing more, keep the emails of your senators and representatives handy and object to those things that do not align with loving neighbor, advocate for things that do. 

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 

 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. 

I am the Lord your God.

Do not steal.

Do not lie.

Do not deceive one another.

Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. 

I am the Lord.

Do not defraud or rob your neighbor.

Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight.

Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, 

but fear your God. 

I am the Lord.

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism 

to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

Do not go about spreading slander among your people.

Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. 

I am the Lord.

But love your neighbor as yourself. 

I am the Lord.

Leviticus 19:9-16,18c

An eternal Word for this our time.

L Quanstrom, Pastor 

Cornelius UMC