God has helped you because God cannot help Godself.

Text: Luke 4:14-21

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.  He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.  When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He 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." And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

“God helps those who help themselves,” she told me.  “It’s in the Bible.”

Now, as much as I don’t mind a good debate with professors or other theology nerds, when welcomed into someone’s home who I do not know, I tend to be pretty measured in my responses.  I don’t like using the Bible to argue, to prooftext our own ideas, our own thoughts, because I’ve read too many parts of the Bible and though, “Nuh-uh.”  Virgin birth and resurrection aside, there is some really weird stuff in there.  But this woman’s quote wasn’t.  Not anywhere. 

“No it doesn’t.”  I said.

“Yes it does,” she said. 

We were starting to sound a little like toddlers fighting over a toy.  I kept my cool (unlike what I would have done with one of my friends or family members).

“Where?”

“I know it’s in there.”

Often, hearing only this part of the story with none of her background, we develop a certain picture of what this woman might be like.  But her reality, in light of this quote, seemed very odd.  She was poor.  She spent her days caring for her disabled sister while she herself experienced severe pain and physical handicaps.  She had been told her whole life that, if she just did it right, if she just did the things she was supposed to do, everything would work out for the best for her.  But her life was hard – really hard, and it wasn’t working out that well, as she struggled to pay her bills and care for her sister.  The hardest part for me was that she thought it was her fault and that she must be doing something wrong for God to allow her life to be so hard. 

What else was she to think?  We are lucky here at Peace, where we hear sermons that talk about God drawing near to us in all of our messiness, in all of our fear, in our sickness, in our poverty, in our humanness.  The fastest growing churches in our country tend to proclaim a different message: God wants to bless you, and if you just do what God wants (good luck figuring that out), God will send you blessings; namely, material blessings.  But what does that mean for people who are in a system of poverty that bind them? 

 

Jesus’ word – his first sermon, and the shortest sermon ever – sounds nothing like “God helps those who help themselves:” "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He 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."

Listen to these words again.  It’s beautiful, isn’t it?  Good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and it all being because of the Lord’s favor.  Favoring whom?  The poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed?  Yes, certainly. 

But…

Is it only the woman who was disappointed in her own inability to pull herself up by her bootstraps that is poor?  Is it only the person who is successful in their career that is rich?

Is it only the person who cannot see that is blind?  Is it only the person who notices color and shape and texture who has sight?

Is it only the person in prison who is captive?  Is it only the person who imprisions them that is released?

Is it only the person bent under the weight of persecution that is oppressed?  Is it only the persecutor who oppresses?

Part of the challenge with these pairs is that they imply a relationship between the two.  Rich and poor are defined in light of each other, as are the others.  So… what if it isn’t so much about rich and poor, blind and sight, captive and release, oppressed and free, but rather how these two are drawn together?  This story would be a lot easier if we could take sides.  We can guess the “right” side, and try to distance ourselves from the “wrong” side, but then we ourselves have entered into a situation where we determine the definition of poverty, of blindness, of captivity, and of oppression, taking into our own hands who we want to be “in” and who we want to be “out”.

The problem with Jesus’ words is that we cannot control him.  We cannot paint it all black and white so that we can comfort ourselves with simple truths and easy answers.  The truth is far more complicated.  The truth is that Christ has drawn us all into relationship with himself, claiming all that we are as his.  These words are deeply comforting.  Can they still be a source of comfort, though, when we realize that Jesus has also drawn into himself the rich, the one who thinks they can see all there is, the one who holds another captive, and the persecutor.  For Jesus to claim only one side leaves the world half-loved, half-redeemed, half-reconciled.  “For God so half-loved the world, that he kinda sorta thought about saving it once, so that those who believe in him might have a shot at being loved, at being accepted, at being whole.” 

The problem with Jesus’ love is that we cannot control it.  It’s a scandal.  It’s offensive that Jesus would love those who we’d prefer hate, and speak truth through those we’d rather not listen to, and set free those we’d bind.  The scandal was so great, so offensive, that the shape God’s love took was that of a cross.  This was the length to which humans would go to cut off relationship, and this was the length to which God would go to be in relationship.

Jesus proclaimed that the poor would be fed and exposed the poverty of the wealthy who refused to be in relationship.  He brought sight to the physically blind but also to the one who refused to see. He took on all of the systems that maintain these, freeing both oppressed and oppressor.  Jesus doesn’t invite us into relationship when it’s convenient or with people we would stand with; he draws us into relationship with all of humanity, for all of humanity was claimed as his. 

You are Christ’s.  In all of your wealth, all of your poverty, your ability to see and the things to which you are blind, in the things that hold you captive and the things you find hard to release, in the things you fear will crush you by their oppressive weight and the weight you place on others.  Why?  Because of this scandalizing love: it comes freely though we’d try to earn it and overflows though we’d try to limit it.  Jesus says: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He 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.”

“God doesn’t help you because you helped yourself.  God has helped you, because God cannot help Godself.”