Remember Our Story - Sermon for the Third Sunday After Epiphany (January 26, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Nehemiah 8:1–10 | Psalm 19 | 1 Corinthians 12:12–31 | Luke 4:14–21

“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.’” (Luke 4:20-21).

What’s your story?

We all have a story we live within. Whether we think about it much or not, we all tend to see our world, and our place within it, not simply as a random series of moments and events, but as a story… a narrative that connects all of these moments together… giving them a greater sense of meaning, and direction… and helping us make sense of our pasts, our present, and our future… a sense of where  we’ve come from, and where we’re headed. Of the challenges we’ve faced, the friendships we’ve forged… and the hopes and fears ahead of us.

And we don’t only have our personal stories… we have our communal stories too. The stories that shape our relationships, our families, our neighbourhoods… and our nations. St. Luke’s has a story… a way of understanding where have we come from, and where are we headed now.

We also share in the stories of Southern New Brunswick, the Maritimes, and Canada… as well as all of the other places we’ve lived, and the groups that we have belonged to. 

We all have a story, a way of seeing our world, and our place within it. And right now, a lot of our stories, and those of our neighbours are being shaken up by events far from our home, and by people that we’ve never met… people intent on spreading their own stories about the world… using fear, and prejudice, and selfishness to try to seize as much of the world as they can for themselves.

And it can be really frightening and disheartening when our stories get shaken up… when others challenge the way that we see ourselves and our world… threatening our hopes for the future, and filling our hearts and minds with new uncertainties and worries.

And as unsettling as this can be, we also know it’s nothing new. Bullies and tyrants have always been making use of their own stories to try to crush the wills and intimidate those who might otherwise stand in their way. Propaganda and outright lies have long been spread to reshape how everyday people understand the world, and our place in it… twisting the truth to convince us to just go along with their plans.

For some light reading, I’ve recently been working my way through the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich… an account of how the Nazi Party rose to power, and then eventually fell apart. According to this author, it seems that so much of their so-called success came about through blatant belligerence and outright lies offered again and again until most people either agreed with them, or gave in under the pressure and just went along, trying to appease the insatiable self-centred greed and pride of those driven by their terrible quest for power.

Eighty years later, we might see a few parallels with some current events at work. I don’t think there’s much need to get into specifics, or focus on stoking up fears. I bring this up mainly to make this point: how do we chose not to get swept up by these kinds of stories? To not let them reframe our understanding of our world, and of our place within it?
How do we not give ourselves over to the lies of tyrants on the one hand, or on the other hand, how do we not become so fixated on them, that we spend our days paralyzed by fear, or frantically trying to distract ourselves, and regain some sense of control?

I believe that one of the most important things we can do in times like these is to remember our story! 

To remember that, regardless of all the lies and the threats that the tyrants of today may say, and whatever they may do, we have received truly Good News that they can never undo. Good News that offers to us all a very different vision of our world, and our place within it. The Good News that the Living God alone is Lord of all, and His Good Kingdom will never end.

Our first reading this morning from the book of Nehemiah, takes place at a crucial moment for the people of Judah. They had just recently returned from Exile in Babylon, and had begun rebuilding not only the buildings, and structures of their ancient homeland, but were starting to rebuild their whole way of life as God’s covenant people.

Remember, the people of Judah had lost everything. Decades before the days of Nehemiah, the Kingdom of Judah had been devastated. Most of the people of Jerusalem and the surrounding region had been deported by their proud and powerful neighbouring nation, the Empire of Babylon. The Holy Temple of Yahweh, the Living God had been desecrated and destroyed. Their kingdom and royal line had been overthrown. The Promised Land that God had swore to give to their ancestors had been completely overrun by their enemies. 
 
We might see some more parallels here to many other stories both in the past, and today. Think of Poland in 1939. Or Eastern Ukraine or Gaza today. Places where entire communities have just been wiped away by war. And think about those who continue to make use of outright threats of violence, or other forms of oppression and exploitation to try to gain power for themselves. 

But then, against all expectations, the Empire of Babylon fell… and it fell hard. God did not allow them in their pride and quest for greatness, to carry on forever. They were overthrown suddenly by their neighbours to the East: the armies of the Medes and Persians. Suddenly, the terrible might of Babylon was shattered forever.

And just as unexpectedly, under the Persians, God’s people in Exile were offered the chance to return home… to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. Not quite the same as before… not with the same level of independence, as they were now part of the Persian Empire. Moving forward, their story had changed. They had been greatly humbled, but lived now with a renewed sense of hope that God had not given up on them.

What happened when the Exiles returned is a pretty long story. But our reading today from Nehemiah tells of one of the incredibly important steps they took: retelling and remembering their story… God’s story.

After centuries of unfaithfulness that led up to the Exile, and then decades of living under the shadow of Babylon, and their proud and idolatrous propaganda… the remnants of Judah needed to be reminded of the truth… they needed to recall the real story of the world, and their place in it. A counter-story to the ones that all those around them were telling: the story of the Living God, and their special role within His hope-filled work in the world.

Nehemiah 8:2-3, “Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.” 

Now the English word “law” here is the word “Torah”, which means not just ‘law’ as in a list of rules… but “teaching” or “instruction”… and it is also the name for the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy… which is not so much a collection of laws as it is a story… a narrative account of how God’s people came to be… a story of how God chose them to be a community shaped by His holiness, goodness, and love… a story of their own repeated failures to stay true to the Lord, and also of His great mercy and forgiveness, and unending faithfulness. 

And it’s a story that pointed forward to the prophets, and to God’s promised Messiah, and His coming Kingdom… a story that held out the hope of all nations Jew and Gentile alike, bound together, not by fear, or pride, or greed, but by the Living God’s saving love.

This was the story that God’s people were called to remember, and to live out, even when everyone else around them thought they were foolish, or mad. This story called them to live faithfully, choosing to stay true to God’s holy ways, even when it meant fighting hard against the cultural currents that kept pushing them the other way.

To be God’s people, they needed to know their story, and to stick to it. To place their hopes and faith in what God was up to, and let this story continue to reshape their vision, and their actions day by day.

And so, the practice of retelling the story of God was passed down over the centuries… developing into the practices of reading Scripture together in synagogue week after week… retelling God’s story so that His people could continue to live it out. To keep their hopes alive, and their fears refocused, and kept in perspective, preserving their faith despite all the stories to by the many Empires that rose and fell all around them.

And several centuries after our reading from Nehemiah, as St. Luke tells it, Jesus of Nazareth comes onto the scene, entering His hometown synagogue, reading the Holy Scriptures, and claiming that the time has finally come for the key part of God’s great story to be fulfilled.

Turning to the Book of Isaiah Chapter 61, Jesus reminds those present of the true hope at the heart of their story: the Good News that God’s deliverance has drawn near, and that His Kingdom has finally come.

Isaiah 61:1-2a,
“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, 
because the Lord has anointed me; 
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, 
to bind up the brokenhearted, 
to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
and release to the prisoners; 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…”
 
These are the first words in St. Luke’s Gospel that Jesus preaches, and they mark the beginning of His public ministry. But shockingly, He claims this word of hope has now been fulfilled. This Good News is not simply talking about some far off future… it is for today! In Him! Jesus places Himself at the centre of God’s story… that He is the fulfillment of God’s promises to rescue God’s people, to bring to them the Good News of God’s salvation… the source of new life to those who seemed powerless, abandoned, and forgotten.

Next week we’ll look a bit closer at this claim, and at the people’s response. For today, it’s enough for us to remember that this is the Good News of our story too! Jesus Christ really is the centre of God’s Story, and in Him, we see the living heart of what the LORD has done, and is doing. 

And it’s a story of saving love, through and through. Setting aside all earthly honour and glory, Jesus Christ, God’s beloved Son humbled Himself. He faced head on the fears and the struggles of His people. He bore their sorrows and pain, and brought help and healing and hope to those sitting in darkness… and freedom to those bound by sin and evil… and He gave up His life at the cross… allowing Himself to be ridiculed, shamed, and brutally tortured to death for all to see… crushed by the power of Rome.

And yet, God did not abandon His Son to death. Three days later, Christ Jesus rose again from the grave, overthrowing the powers of hell, once and for all. And He still lives! And even now, He reigns alongside the Father. And He will return to set our world right again, once and for all. And when He does, every knee shall bow, and every tongue will confess that He as Lord.

This is where our story’s headed. This is the Good News that we have come to believe: that Jesus Christ alone is Lord. That our Saviour King shall reign forever. And no matter what the vain kingdoms of the earth may say or do, this truth will never fail.

And today, in our own lives, we Christians are called to continue remembering this story, and to stick to it. And in our second reading today from the first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul gives us an important example of what it looks like to live out this story.

St. Paul spent many years travelling about the Eastern Roman Empire, spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ among people who were largely convinced that the tyrant Caesar was Lord, and establishing Church communities where new Christians could begin to live God’s ways together. 

St. Paul worked hard to help these confused Christian communities come to understand the massive implications of the Good News that they had received… and to live out the story of the Risen Christ. 

From his letters, we know that the Church in Corinth was deeply divided. There were filled with factions and infighting… and busy arguing over which party was more spiritual, more important, more powerful, and so on. 

Sadly, these disputes have more that a few modern parallels within the worldwide Church, as many of us Christians today still struggle with the impulse to turn away from each other… to cut ourselves off from each other, and spurn those who are different from us.

And so, one of St. Paul’s tasks was to help them (and us) to see that it is precisely in learning how to love and embrace one another that we are living out the story of Jesus. This is how we share in, and show the world, what the saving love of God looks like, by putting His saving, reconciling love into practice with one another. 

1 Corinthians 12:12-13, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” 

St. Paul goes on to speak about how different members of a body are all still mutually dependent. They may be very different in function, appearance, and even honour, but are all working together in harmony for the benefit of all. 

In our world, so many keep turning against one another… fighting for supremacy, and despising those who are different. But Jesus our Risen Lord has commanded us to follow Him on another way. Which is why we must always remember our story! 

Remember the Good News of what God has done in and through Jesus Christ to reconcile the world to Himself, and to draw all nations together into His eternal Kingdom. 

We are called to remember that God does not show favoritism, but intends to unite all peoples to Himself through His Son Jesus. We are called to remember that the Lord opposes the proud, and lifts up the lowly, and that kingdoms founded on fear, and hatred, and greed can never endure. And that the one Spirit of God can bind us together even despite all our differences.

We remember this story, our story, every week when we gather for worship. When we confess our faith by reciting the Creeds together. When we read the story of Scripture together, as part of our worship gatherings, or as we study the Bible, together or in private. We remember this story when we pray the prayers that Jesus our Lord has given to us… when practice the new way of life that He has opened for us… when we receive the gift of His body and blood in the bread and the wine we share together at His table. 

Our story is Jesus’ story. And so, when we find ourselves shaken by what’s going on in our world, let us remember His story… the Good News of God’s saving love. And whatever challenges we face, today, or in the days to come, thanks be to God we know where His story is headed: and that His Good Kingdom will never end. Amen.