I have inaugurations on the brain, given that we had
the second inaugural of the president this past week. Inaugurations are marked
by festivities, solemn words, and, of course, inaugural speeches. Some of the
those speeches are flights of brilliance – Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, for
example, which includes the phrase: “With malice toward none, with charity for
all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive
on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.” Most are less
memorable.
Some are short, as Lincoln’s was at less than 500
words. Some are not.
On March 4th, 1841 President William Henry
Harrison delivered the longest inaugural speech on record – a whopping one hour
and 45 minutes. It was a cold and miserable day, and Harrison wore no overcoat.
He laid out grand plans in that stem-winder of a speech, an affirmation of the
political philosophy of the Whig party, calling for changes that would greatly
limit the power of government and the president. Only one piece of the broad
agenda of that speech actually got fulfilled in Harrison’s presidency. His
powers as president were greatly reduced, since he caught a cold that day,
which later turned into pneumonia, claiming his life just a month into his presidency.
But before we say that he deserved it, making people
have to stand in the cold listening to his words for so long, we should
remember that death claims the concise as well as the verbose. We remember that
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated one month into his second term, after delivering
that exquisitely wrought brief address.
Things like inaugural speeches are good reminders to
students of history that, as the poet Robert Burns wrote, “the best laid plans
of mice and men gang aft agley.” It’s a fact…we make grand statements of what
we are going to do, and then, in big ways and small, the plans don’t fully come
to fruition.
When I hear Jesus in today’s gospel, I think of those
inaugural speeches, the promises contained within them, and how history often got
in the way of the promises.
I say this, because
this gospel passage was, in essence, Jesus’ inaugural speech. You know the
story. Jesus came home to his hometown after an initial launch of his ministry in
other places. It was a launch that was well-received, Luke tells us. It was the
custom in those days that when itinerant rabbis came through town, they would
be invited to read God’s Word in the synagogue and teach on the reading. So
here came this hometown boy, Joseph and Mary’s son from down the road, who was
all the buzz because of his teaching, back home again. Of course they would
give him the courtesy of asking him to read the Scripture. Of course they would
expect him to interpret it, to teach its meaning. Didn’t they all want to hear
what Jesus would say, this man whom they had known for thirty years? So they
handed him the scroll, and it was unfurled to a reading from the prophet
Isaiah. It was a prediction of the Anointed One, the hoped-for Messiah who
would redeem God’s oppressed people:
"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."
The crowd in that small synagogue held its collective
breath. What brilliant words of explanation would Jesus offer? What wise
interpretation? How much teaching would he do on this passage, since all the
famous rabbis were famous precisely because they could talk endlessly on the
smallest word in a text?
Jesus
looked up from the scroll as he rolled it back up and handed it to the
attendant. He looked around, feeling every eye on him, waiting. And then he
said “Today this scripture has been fulfilled
in your hearing."
Nine words. Nothing
else. He was done. He sat down. I imagine after ninety seconds of shocked silence
– they could not believe that this was all he had to say – it dawned on them
what he had actually said in those nine words, the shortest inaugural speech
ever. He said the Messiah was here…and the implication was that he was it.
It wouldn’t surprise
me that the room exploded into an uproar in that moment – what was he saying? Was
he saying what I think he was saying? Who does he think he is? Blasphemy! Is it
really true? WoW!
And look at what he
was promising: good news to the poor, who probably didn’t get much good news
ever; release to the captives – potent words where the Romans took plenty of
captives for all sorts of ridiculous reasons; sight to the blind – healing of
all sorts, whether it was literal healing of illness and infirmity or the more
subtle opening of the eyes and hearts of
those who couldn’t see what was going on around them; relief for the oppressed;
and the year of the Lord’s favor – a jubilee, when debts would be forgiven,
when all of society gave each other a fresh start.
Talk about setting
yourself up in an inaugural speech for a later check-in by Politi-Fact to see
how many of those promises would be delivered!
So let’s imagine that
Politic-Fact is on the case. Let’s fast forward to three years later. Jesus is
dead, crucified by the Romans. Are the poor still poor? Yup. Are the oppressed
still oppressed? Yup. Are the blind – both the visually impaired and those whose
souls are blind to the needs of others – still blind. Yup.
PolitiFact would not
be impressed, because if you measure Jesus’ bold speech by the yardstick of the
world, it just doesn’t measure up.
But let’s look at it
another way. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote: “Nothing worth doing is
completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or
beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore,
we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished
alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”
Niebuhr wasn’t necessarily talking about Jesus’s
promises on that morning in Galilee, but I think the thought applies here. Let’s
take it as a given that no one ever accomplishes everything they set out to do.
Not presidents, who document their goals in inaugural speeches. Not corporate
executives, who attest to their companies’ goals in annual reports. Not mothers
and fathers, who share their aspirations for their children. It never turns out
exactly how you plan, because stuff happens that changes the situation.
And maybe that’s something that Jesus experiences. He
reads that passage from Isaiah, knows what his mission on earth is – to do
exactly what Isaiah promised – and says, okay. That’s my plan. What he doesn’t
say is when it will get done.
If you’re sitting in that dusty Galilee synagogue listening
to Jesus’ nine words, you’re going to jump to the conclusion that Jesus is not
only saying he is the Messiah, you’re going to think, “He’s going to do all
that stuff right now. He’s going to get us out from under the yoke of the Roman
Empire. He’s going to bring us heaven on earth.”
But he doesn’t say that. He never says that he’s going
to snap his fingers and make it all happen. He never says it’s happening by
Friday afternoon. He simply says that it is going to happen, and he is going to
be the change agent.
And here is why that quote from Niebuhr is so
appropriate: It doesn’t all get done in Jesus’ human lifetime. It is merely
started by his unbelievably generous gift of himself to redeem us from our
sins. We are going to get to what Isaiah prophesied, but it will happen in God’s
time, which is very different from political time, or parenting time, or fiscal
years.
“Nothing worth doing is
completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or
beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore,
we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished
alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”
Jesus, in his life and in his death, gives us hope. We
cannot define hope only in our time and place – it is across the arc of history
that it will occur, in ways that we cannot imagine. When Lincoln wrote that
second inaugural in the wake of a horrific war , as the nation sought to heal
and as he sought to enforce the end of human slavery in the United States, he
might not have imagined Doctor Martin Luther King Jr’s efforts to make all
people of color truly equal citizens. He might not have imagined a Thurgood
Marshall as a Supreme Court Justice. He might not have pictured Condoleeza Rice
as Secretary of State. Abraham Lincoln, that 16th president, might
not have thought that it would ever happen that his successor, the 44th
President would be an African-American.
God’s time is not our time, and work started in one
place might need time, and all of us, to carry out God’s plans. But for that to
work, we need to share hope that God’s plans are possible, and we need to share
the faith that God is with us, behind us and before us in the task.
We have to recognize that we must bind ourselves
together in shared love for God and for each other. Jesus knew this. He
equipped his disciples to share the continuing work he began. He knew, despite
what might seem like bravado in that nine word inaugural speech, that he would
not deliver on all his promises in a few years. And for that to happen, the
twelve, and all of us who followed them, needed, and continue to need to love.
Time is not the enemy of doing good. It gives us the
space to get the work done together. And
the work is shared because the love is shared because the hope is shared.
Jesus started our journey to the fulfillment of those
promises from Isaiah with nine words. He gave his life to ensure that those
promises were even possible. What will you give to help make them happen?
Amen.
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1 comment:
Thank you - I found your words really helpful and insightful. Blessings,
Alison
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