The summer before my freshman year of college I saw one particular movie seven times in the theater. I dragged anyone who would go with me. I even bought a numbered and signed copy of the poster that hung above my bed for four years in college. I loved this movie and as a matter of fact, my freshman roommate, that was pretty much the only thing we had in common our first semester.
It was the kind of movie that inspired and stirred something inside of us. It was the story of a high school English teacher in a New England boarding school for boys who was the kind of teacher that changed lives, shook up the status quo and called out the best in his students. The movie was Dead Poet’s Society and the professor was played by none other than Robin Williams, a good Episcopalian. The film begins with William’s character, John Keating, arriving on the first day of class and taking the boys out into the hallway and looking at this big wall of beautiful pictures of all the students that have gone before and trophies. And he walks while they are looking at these pictures, back and forth behind them and he says, “Go, lean in, listen. You hear it? Carpe. You hear it? Carpe Diem. Seize the Day boys, make your lives extraordinary.” As the movie unfolds Keating’s teaching challenges the young men, to push themselves creatively and to trust their gut. He takes time with each one of them, to affirm their potential and to nurture their spirit. He nudges them, to ask hard questions and to challenge those easy answers. Seize the day, he says, take risk. The world is before you, what will you do to make it extraordinary? Many argue the quality of this film and its originality, but that content was timely to a student heading off to a new school and a new place, ready for a new start.
This morning’s Gospel lesson from Luke brings us to the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. And as the most important of inspiring teachers, He invites the listener to seize the day and join Him in the mission that He lays before the people of Nazareth. A mission that challenges and pushes, a mission that is absolutely embodied in the very being of Jesus. A mission that came from the spirit welling up in His life. A mission that was filled with the power of the Spirit. From the baptism of Jesus to His temptation in the wilderness, to the beginning of His public ministry, Jesus is bathed in Holy Spirit, full spirit upon Him, surrounding Him, wrapping Him in the Holiness. His strength is in the Spirit within Him in that Holy. So as Jesus enters the synagogue at Nazareth the readers hear Jesus’ first words in His public preaching, and those words begin with, “the Spirit was among me.” They set the stage and tone for the rest of His ministry and the rest of the words we find in Luke. Jesus states clearly who He is and what He has come to do.
I’m guessing that most of us here today have had the task of writing a mission statement. You know, when you are working on a committee and all of a sudden the group realizes they don’t have a clue what the committee is even trying to accomplish? There’s a move, quickly, we need to write a mission statement, for clarity, a statement that names our mission. What are our goals as a group? A statement that redirects and puts that train back on the tracks. When you have a mission statement, a beginning point, it can serve as the light in a fog, as a guidepost for staying the course so that your mission might be accomplished. So if you ever wonder what our mission is as Christians, may I point you to the words Jesus puts before us in these first moments of public teaching. To bring good news to the poor, He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Jesus’ words were about God’s good news for all. For those who are poor, those who are pushed aside from the inner circle, to those who need to be set free and released from that which imprisons them. Jesus’ mission was to give sight to all those who are blind, both literally and figuratively. In a time when religion was focused on the chosen, Jesus said all are chosen. Even those not included here today. The one filled and anointed with the Spirit came for all and Jesus in the reading of Isaiah points to a mission of serving and affirming, not the chose, but the outcasts. And in the final line of the reading from Isaiah, Jesus says, “I come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Many scholars believe this is a reference by Jesus to a year of jubilee found in the book of Leviticus. It’s a year of restoration that happens once every fifty years, when debts are forgiven and the land lays fallow for a full year to be replenished. It’s about a fresh start, a new beginning, a time of God’s favor of good news. This is why Jesus is here.
As one scholar states about this lesson, “this was Jesus’ inaugural sermon, setting the agenda for His entire ministry. He understood that He had received God’s Spirit and this mission was to be fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of restoration, the world’s jubilee, the world’s jubilation. This jubilee is offered to each of us in Jesus’ very life. We, whether we’re pushed to the margins society or we’re thick in the middle of it, we’re offered mercy and grace and good news of the year of the Lord’s favor, the restoration of life in Jesus.
The final words from Jesus in this passage are, “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” As faithful followers it’s often easy to lose sight of the mission. It’s easy to go through the motions of worship without thinking of the work before us. We can become bogged down in church polity, in rules and regulations, in money matters, in debate about what is most important, which ministry do we value the most. Who’s better, who’s more righteous, who’s the good Christian? Who has the market on truth and who is right? Most of us, all of us, have good intentions as people of faith. But we so quickly can lose sight of those goals. You can become blind to the needs of those around us and we say, we’ll do better tomorrow, we’ll pray tomorrow, we’ll read the scriptures tomorrow, we’ll worry about the hungry tomorrow, or clothing the naked, caring for the sick, we’ll do it all tomorrow, today we’re busy. And so the mission fades, it fades in our minds and we need to be redirected and put back on course, we need that nudge towards more todays and fewer tomorrows.
Today, that very word is important in Luke. He uses it twelve times in his gospel where the other three gospels use it nine times altogether. It’s almost always points to a new and radical way of being. To some change that’s coming, to something that is pressing. When Jesus spoke the words, “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” he was sharing with those gathered that it was time, in the now, for the Anointed One to come among them and for Isaiah’s prophecy to be fulfilled. This passage says here is the mission and it is revealed and fulfilled in Jesus today, not tomorrow, but now and we rejoice in a prophecy fulfilled, yet we see that in the fulfilling there is work to be done. God needs our hands and this passage is an invitation. There is work to be done and it’s an invitation into God’s mission, into a public ministry in the name of Jesus. An invitation to be part of change in the world, now. It’s an invitation to seize the gift of the Spirit bestowed upon each of us in our baptism. Each of us in our baptismal covenant has taken on those vows and we are filled with the Spirit and sealed as Christ’s own forever. Our work is about bringing good news to all those in need, not just the chosen, to all those who have been excluded and to all those who need to be set free.
Carpe. Carpe Diem. Do you hear it? Seize the day, be extraordinary, be filled with the Spirit. Carpe Diem.
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