2022-01-24
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text
Scripture: LUKE 4:14-21
When I’m preparing to leave on a trip, I have a list of items that have to be packed and procedures that need to be taken care of. I have this list in a computer file, and I bring it out for every trip, sometimes adding items—such as making sure the EZPass is in the right car—sometimes subtracting something—sadly, I no longer pack my baseball glove.
Some of you, I know, make lists for your daily chores. Some make a plan at the beginning of the year for what should take priority that year. Or maybe, in your work, you set goals for the year, or for the quarter, or for your career. Having the plan keeps you organized. It focuses you on what’s key for you, and the hope is that it keeps you from drifting.
The writer E. B. White found it difficult to focus on only one thing. He famously wrote: “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” And indeed it does. White evidently had two priorities—wonderful priorities!—and he needed to attend to both in order for each day to be complete. He had a strong sense of at least two dimensions of life that mattered to him.
Oddly the story we heard earlier from Luke’s gospel has just that sort of focusing role for Jesus. After he has gone out into the wilderness and been tempted by the devil, he returns and begins his ministry. He goes to Galilee, where he has been raised. He enters the synagogue in which he grew up. And like a child who returns home after making good in the world, he comes into the synagogue on the sabbath, and takes one of the scrolls of scripture that are read in worship, and begins to read from the book of the prophet Isaiah. And while the story doesn’t say so explicitly, it appears Jesus has chosen this passage for himself.
Scholars call this a “programmatic” scene. What they mean is that Jesus is here declaring what he is and isn’t about. Jesus is asserting his “program.” He’s putting forth his priorities. He’s saying, “This is what matters most to me.” And he’s also saying, “This is what matters most to God.” It’s not unlike a to-do list for Jesus, setting out what’s most important, itemizing what’s most crucial, in his life, and in our life. It’s so important a story that, when I was in seminary, every single first-year student had to write a research paper on these exact verses. Because they attempt to say what it is to be a Christian.
It would be easy, in attending to this passage, to jump right into what we’re supposed to do to in order be a dutiful follower of Jesus. I’m guessing I’ve done precisely that in preaching on this passage before—laying out a laundry list of proper responsibilities for us Christians. I’m struck first today, though, by a little detail that precedes the list of what we might think of as requirements. “Then Jesus, filled with the Spirit,” says the story, “returned to Galilee” (Luke 4:14). And what I’m struck by is that apparent throwaway line about Jesus being “filled with the Spirit.”
That detail is vital because sometimes, in the church, we get into this habit, this mindset, in which duty and action take priority. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ we say to ourselves, ‘he’s filled with the Spirit. But what’s he supposed to do?’ We jump to the to-do list without, at times, remembering where the strength to accomplish that list comes from, without being filled by the energy that empowers us to make a difference. The very first step to our own wholeness, and the very first step in making right the world, is for us to be filled by the Spirit that makes us new and makes us whole.
Davidji is a globally recognized mind-body health and wellness expert. He had a twenty-year career in New York City in business, finance, and mergers and acquisitions. One day, “in the wake of 9/11,” he says, “as I was walking [down the sidewalk] past a row of cardboard boxes that people were living in, I walked past this particular box and a hand reached out and grabbed my pant leg and pulled me in. And this guy peered up at me with these blue crystalline eyes and said, ‘What’s going to be on your tombstone?’ That’s a fairly reflective moment . . .. When he released me from his grip, I realized that tears were streaming down my face and that my heart was racing, and I couldn’t catch my breath. My knees were weak, and so I walked twenty feet and sat down on the steps of an apartment building and began reflecting on these deeper questions: Why am I here? What’s my purpose? What is going to be on my tombstone? What will my legacy be? What is the whole meaning of this existence? So I went home that night, shared this with my wife, and she was like, ‘Um, you need to quit that job.’”
He was, needless to say, pretty lost, almost totally rudderless. So he began to meditate. While he doesn’t use the word, I would also call it prayer. And I would call it listening to the Spirit. One of the striking things about the word “Spirit,” in both Hebrew (the language of the Hebrew scriptures) and Greek (the language of the New Testament) is that it means not only “spirit,” but also “wind” or “breath.” If you’re filled with the Spirit, you’re animated by a kind of holy breath. You’re breathing God’s beauty and grace.
Meditation, or prayer, is a way of connecting us to the divine, to God. Meditation “gives us a little break between what’s coming in and what’s going out.” We might say it’s opening ourselves to the Spirit. And this is what Jesus does as he’s “filled with the Spirit . . ..”
Davidji knows that this sort of prayer is a way of strengthening and restoring. He talks about what a difference it can make when we make a practice of purposeful breathing. And he offers us a specific practice. “Realistically,” he says, “we have the opportunity [daily] to check in, [and] start our day with a few minutes of stillness and silence . . .. It’s about consistency, not duration.” He teaches a style of meditation that he calls “tactical breathing.” This is how it goes, and I’d like to invite you to do it with me:
“Think,” he says, “about something that’s been bothering you over the past few days . . .. Get clear on that disturbance, that irritation. Close your eyes, and through your nose take a long, slow, deep breath. And when it gets to your belly, hold it there and watch it . . .. Now release that breath and watch it [as it leaves you. Keep observing it as you exhale.] Watch it as it dissipates into the ether and now breathe normally and open your eyes.
“That was sixteen seconds, a mere sixteen seconds . . .. In those sixteen seconds, you weren’t in the past, you weren’t in the future, you weren’t thinking about the thing you were thinking about.” That sort of intentional breathing returns you to this time, this place. “It shifts your attention from that irritant to the present moment . . .. This allows us to show up with greater grace in each moment.”
He suggests we do this in the morning and again in the late afternoon. In the morning, as he puts it, we have the opportunity to “set an intention” for the day, or just for the moment—not unlike Jesus’ programmatic setting of direction at the beginning of his ministry. Davidji gives some examples of setting intentions. We could intend to be kinder to ourselves, or have more boundaries, or be more accepting. Not unlike what Jesus does at the synagogue in Nazareth, lifting up and picturing our hopes sets the tone for the day. Then, says Davidji, just watch your breath for three to five minutes. That’s a centering morning practice of being filled by the Spirit.
The late afternoon time is equally valuable because it recalls us to what’s most important. It allows us to re-center, and to remember what we’re grateful for, or what we truly love. Then, as he says, when we get to dinner, “instead of whining, venting, and complaining,” we get to celebrate the presence of the one with whom we’re eating. “It allows us not to hold onto the thoughts that are consuming us.” Practicing this sort of breathing at the beginning and the end of the day is what Davidji calls “bookending” the day. Practice the sixteen seconds, establish your bookends. Attending to the breath is an everyday way of being filled with the Spirit. And it’s really a crucial dimension of a well-lived life.
Of course, being filled by holy breath isn’t all, is it. Because once Jesus is filled with that holy breath, that holy spirit, he then takes up the scroll and speaks. He reads the words Isaiah has given to him and to us. Strikingly, those words from the prophet begin with the same reminder of that holy breath. “The Spirit [the wind, the breath] of God is upon me,” says Jesus, “who has anointed me to . . ..” To what? Listen to what Jesus and we are anointed to, in Eugene Peterson’s version called The Message: God has “chosen me [say Isaiah and Jesus] to preach the Message of good news to [those who are] poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to [those who are] blind, to set [those who are] burdened and battered free, to announce, ‘This is God’s time to shine!’” (4:18-19).
When Jesus reads, it’s as if to say, ‘Breathing in is fine and essential. Being oxygenated in the Spirit is crucial. And then comes the embodying of this gracious Spirit.’ And what is the work that’s given to us? It’s just what Jesus says it is in that inaugural speech of his in that Nazareth synagogue: to witness, to pardon, to heal, to free.
After he urges us all to breathe in Spirit, Davidji talks about how important it is for us to let that peace and serenity spread beyond us. When you’re with your children or your partner or anyone else, for that matter, you want to be present with them, not distracted by worries or concerns. There’s a tool he uses to keep him focused on spreading that blessing. “I do it when I send a text,” he says, “I do it when I send an email, I do it when I hang up the phone, I do it when I leave a room. And I ask myself, ‘What did I leave behind? What did I just leave behind? . . .. Was it ‘[sweet nectar]? Or was it ‘toxic residue’?” (from the online summit, “Best Year of Your Life, 2022”).
Do we leave sweet nectar in our interactions, or do leave only a toxic residue? When we’ve been together with others, did we listen to them? Did we show them we were interested in them? If there was a need, did we offer to help? Did we reach beyond ourselves? Did we offer something of ourselves? Did we contribute something—in the family, in a church group, or in some other setting? We breathe in Spirit to be filled, certainly, but life is fullest when we share the fruits of that Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). We breathe in so that we might share the love of God that has come to us. We breathe in so that we might bring good news and forgive and enlighten and set free.
Joe Burrow is generally not a fan favorite of Northeast Ohioans. He left Ohio State to play football for LSU. Later he would be drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals, the Cleveland Browns’ AFC North rivals, a team he led, last evening, into next week’s AFC championship game. But in December of 2019, he had just won college football’s biggest prize, the Heisman Trophy. When he got up to accept the trophy, there are all sorts of things he could have talked about. He could have quietly gloated over one of the greatest college football seasons ever. He could have been looking to the draft and which NFL team he’d be playing for.
What Burrow said that day in New York City, though, was something entirely different. Early in his speech, speaking off the cuff, he spoke, says the sportswriter Peter King, “about things you don’t hear, ever, in a nationally televised Heisman speech: poverty and hunger. ‘Coming from southeast Ohio, it’s a very impoverished area. The poverty rate is almost two times the national average. There’s so many people there that don’t have a lot. I’m up here for all those kids in Athens and Athens County that go home—not a lot of food on the table, hungry after school. You guys,’ he said, ‘can be up here, too.’”
Many were stunned by the speech. An Athens native set up a Facebook page for the all-volunteer Athens County Food Pantry, with a goal of raising $1000. A day later, the page had collected $80,000. A week later, it had reached nearly $500,000.
About ten miles east of Athens, a seventh-grade school teacher showed the speech to her students and asked her students to write letters to Burrow. This is what one student wrote: “‘Dear Joe Burrow, Thank you . . . for giving back to your community. You have inspired me to not be embarrassed by my life story and work hard to achieve my goals. Again, thank you very much.’ The kid signed his name, and under it wrote, ‘Just a kid from southeast Ohio.’”
That’s the sort of difference Joe Burrow made with his few simple words: money raised, a kid’s life valued, lives saved (https://sports.nbcsports.com/2019/12/23/thank-god-for-joe-burrow-a-heisman-speech-that-raised-nearly-half-a-million-for-charity/).
When Jesus stands up in that Nazareth synagogue, he reminds us who we are and what we’re to be about. We’re here to breath in the Spirit, and to do the work the Spirit gives us to do: “to bring good news to those who are poor, . . . to proclaim release to those who are captive and recovery of sight to those who are blind, to let those who are oppressed go free.” That’s the work of the church. That’s what it is to live as children of God. We breathe in the Spirit, and we live our lives in love. What else is there to do. That’s how we enjoy the world. And that’s how we improve the world. What a gift! And what a privilege! Thanks be to God!