The Whole Gospel

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 23 January 2022 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Reading for address: Luke 4: 14-21

I’m terrible at taking verbal instructions. I must have sat in a hundred chemistry lessons where the teacher told us what to do with a Bunsen burner and a test tube; and the rest was totally lost on me. I just couldn’t take the information in. I never finished an experiment in my whole time at school. Likewise directions. You have no idea what a difference Google Maps has made to me. It was useless stopping to ask for directions, because as soon as someone said, ‘You turn left at the post office and then it’s the second on the right,’ they might as well have been talking Urdu. And writing it all down isn’t always the answer. Last week I made an apple dessert, and even followed a recipe; but it was already in the oven before I realised I hadn’t put any fat in the topping. And don’t start me on shopping lists. I never come back with everything I planned to buy.

I’m sure a psychologist could tell me what syndrome I have. But I’m not sure it really needs a psychologist. I think my brain simply retains certain kinds of information better than others. If you asked me what the usual Leeds or Liverpool line-ups were in the early seventies, or which year Richard Nixon resigned as president, I could tell you.

Now all this is harmless. We each have to find workarounds for our deficiencies in life. But the point is, when it comes to Christianity, we all have parts we’re likely to forget. And that would be pretty harmless too, if it weren’t that there’s often a pattern to those things we forget. Those who tell us the things we tend to forget about Christianity aren’t called psychologists; they’re called prophets. A prophet points out the things we tend to forget because it suits us to ignore or suppress them. We ignore or suppress them because they address parts of our lives we’d like not to dwell on, or highlight people in our community or issues in the world we’d rather avoid.

Let me give an example. It’s not my example – it’s from the American writer Wendell Berry. He describes what it was like 200 years ago in the American South, when a slave-owner would sit in church with his slaves seated behind him. The slave-owner believed that his believing slaves would go to heaven; but he nonetheless felt justified in keeping them in slavery on earth. How was this done? It was done by insisting that Christianity is not a prescription of how to live on earth, but of how to go to heaven. Christianity is all about what God will one day do, and not at all about what we must do today. Berry suggests that this is the root of the aversion in the same part of the world today to addressing issues like the climate emergency; it begins in the sociological imperative not to question the institution of slavery, and the consequent requirement to reorganise Christianity to take out all the parts that might put it under scrutiny. Southern landowners forgot parts of their religion just as readily as I forgot the instructions for my Chemistry experiments. Indeed, Berry goes on to say that the whole insistence on the separation of church and state comes from the fear that prophetic preachers would seek to legislate the demands of the gospel to love neighbours and resist oppression.

Which brings us to Luke chapter 4. Each of the gospels has a programmatic moment near the beginning that sets out the whole gospel. Mark has the parable of the sower. John has the wedding at Cana. Matthew has the Beatitudes. Luke has this moment in Nazareth. He portrays Jesus on the sabbath in the synagogue, being given the opportunity to choose his signal text for his whole ministry. You can see him working his way through the great scroll of Isaiah, all the way to chapter 61. And what he gives, as surely as any Chemistry teacher, as any Google Map, as any shopping list, is the four things we mustn’t forget when it comes to remembering whom the gospel is for. He’s giving us the whole gospel, in a way we can’t forget, or wriggle out of, or ignore.

So here are the four categories. Number one, the gospel is good news for the poor. Poor means, in any room where the decisions are made, the people who aren’t in that room. Poor means any who have to go without, so those they love and care for can have a little. Poor means all who, whenever they get paid, find someone creams off a big percentage and they’re left with not enough. Poor means those who, when Jesus calls, have nothing to leave behind, so they can come straightaway. Poor means all who have nothing but each other. Poor means those from whom the most evocative words in our language – home, belonging, dignity, respect, safety, trust, love – have been taken away. Good news means, you’re going to get those words back.

Number two, the gospel means release for the captives. Captivity is prison. Prison means loss of control. Prison means shut in by a door that only opens from the outside. Prison means not knowing how long till that door opens, if it ever will. Prison means shame, it means exclusion, it means punishment, it means being hidden out of sight, it means not being allowed to move very far, it means violence, it means fear, it means isolation, it means powerlessness. Prison means your life is in someone else’s hands, and they get to choose when you eat, if you sleep, if you exercise. Prison means your life is not your own. Release means you get your life back.

Number three, the gospel means recovery of sight to the blind. Today we don’t read this as suggesting disability is a deficit. We don’t define ourselves by the one thing we’re perceived to lack. But what we still experience today is social exclusion by discriminatory judgement. Exclusion means overlooked for resources or opportunities for which you’re perfectly well qualified. Exclusion means humiliated because you’re perceived to be different. Exclusion means not seen when you’re in the room, not counted because you don’t matter, not wanted because you don’t belong, not trusted because you’re not understood. Recovery means being heard, seen, cherished, wanted.

Number four, the gospel means letting the oppressed go free. Oppressed means living every day under threat of someone’s anger, tiptoeing around someone’s violence, vulnerable to someone’s exploitation, constantly at risk of being attacked, robbed, hurt, used, tormented. The first category meant at risk because of what you lack, the second meant impoverished because of constraint, the third meant vilified because of what you are: this category means subject to the whim of somebody else, manipulated by someone more powerful, at risk from those who could destroy you any moment. Oppressed means facing cruelty, danger and injustice at every turn. Going free means having the devil taken off your back.

Notice how in the gospel Jesus goes on to become each of the groups he’s talking about. Homeless in Bethlehem, Egypt and around Galilee, he’s poor. Arrested in Gethsemane, he’s in prison. Cast out of Jerusalem, he’s excluded. Nailed to a cross, he’s oppressed. Jesus isn’t just talking about Isaiah 61; he’s living it.

What Jesus is describing and embodying is salvation. Salvation means two things. It means shedding impoverishment, imprisonment, discrimination, and oppression. It means embracing belonging, liberty, love and hope. The danger with salvation is that we do what I used to do with my Chemistry experiments: we focus on the Bunsen burner and the test tube – and forget the rest. When Jesus spoke about impoverishment, incarceration, exclusion and oppression, it’s almost certain those listening to him assumed he was talking about one thing: the occupation of their land by the Romans. These were people whose identity, solidarity and prosperity was being destroyed by Roman occupation as surely as the Channel Islanders’ life was destroyed by Nazi occupation or black people’s lives were destroyed by apartheid. When Jesus spoke of the year of the Lord’s favour, people thought of the jubilee year, when land was restored to its original owners. They thought, he’s saying the land’s coming back to us. Of course they thought, just get rid of the Romans, and all will be fine. Like people thought, just get rid of Saddam Hussein from Iraq, or just remove Communism from Russia.

But shedding our chains is only half of salvation. The other half is embracing restored relationships. Fighting injustice is half the story; modelling justice is the other half. All of us are like me with my apple pudding: we’re all inclined to leave an ingredient or two out. Or maybe half the recipe. Don’t forget the slave-owners in the American South found a way to leave out the earthly part of the gospel altogether. Which is why the most radical and powerful word Jesus says in Nazareth is one I haven’t yet mentioned: ‘Today.’ ‘Today’ shakes us out of our desire to park this for another time, our tendency to intellectualise and theorise and prevaricate and never get to the moment of truth. No one’s much bothered about what Jesus is saying until he says, ‘Today.’ If you think about it, every sermon is opening the Bible and looking up at the congregation and saying, ‘Today.’

You may be familiar with the Ignatian practice of the Examen. The Examen is where you sit down quietly at the end of the day and review all its events, recalling your feelings about each one, noting what hurt, if you got it wrong, when God has been present to you, and where the Holy Spirit was drawing you towards life. I’d like you think of Jesus’ words in Nazareth as a morning version of the Examen. Imagine praying, each morning, like this:

· Show me where your children are poor. Awaken me to where I impoverish others. Visit me in the place of my own poverty.

· Show me where your children are imprisoned. Awaken me to how I incarcerate others. Visit me in the ways I am in prison.

· Show me where your children suffer discrimination. Awaken me to when I exclude others. Visit me in my own experience of rejection.

· Show me where your children are oppressed. Awaken me to how I dominate others. Visit me in my own place of fear.

And then at the end, instead of saying Amen, you say, ‘Today.’ That’s your agenda for today. For every day. Because we’re all prone to leave one part of salvation out. Which is why we need not just to make a list – but to live that list: a list that celebrates the good news that Jesus hasn’t left us out – so we must leave no one out either.