Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

The Third Sunday of Epiphany: 26 January 2025

The Gospel According To Jesus
(Neh 8:1-12, Ps 113, 1 Cor 12:12-27, Luke 4:14-21)

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.”

I once read that Johann Sebastian Bach claimed he could hear the first four or five measures of another composer’s work and then finish that composition himself, as the actual composer intended. That is not an outrageous or arrogant assertion, not really; Bach insisted that any competent composer could have done the same. It is simply a recognition that Baroque music then — and even whatever it is that passes for music today — was and is formulaic; it develops according to an established pattern, a common structure. Pop songs today — think Taylor Swift — generally have this pattern:

Intro

Verse

Pre-Chorus

Chorus

Rinse and Repeat (more of the same)

Bridge

Outro

The intro announces the musical theme of the song: the rhythm, the key, the chord progression. Any good record producer could hear the intro of a song and know pretty well what is to follow. Like Bach said, it is all there in the first four or five measures.

This is true to a lesser extent, but still true, with many sermons. Listen well to the intro — the part of the sermon that I am delivering right now — and you may well be able to predict how the sermon is going to develop. When I was young, and still often today, the typical sermon format was:

Intro

Three Points

Closing

Beat the Baptists to the Buffet

The intro announces the theme — usually in the Scriptures, sometimes in a prayer, and perhaps even in a brief overview of the three points to follow. Hearing just that much — hearing just the intro — many other preachers could complete the sermon quite satisfactorily, and many attentive parishioners could predict where the sermon is going. Let’s test this out.

In my intro thus far, I have told you that Bach could listen to the first four of five measures of an unknown composition and then complete it. I have explained that this was likely true because music then and now has an established structure. I have even shown you the common format of a pop song for example. And then, in a strategic move, I switched topics from musical composition to homiletics — to preaching; a sermon, like a song, often has a structure and content that may sometimes be predicted from its intro. So, where do you expect me to go now with this sermon? Can you predict my next move, assuming I am not being intentionally deceptive?

You might reasonably expect me to show you how this works using a real sermon as an example. And that is exactly what I intend to do, using not one of my sermons, but one of our Lord’s, Jesus’s first recorded sermon in St. Luke’s Gospel.

Luke 4:16–21 (ESV)
16 And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

That is all that St. Luke provides us of Jesus’s sermon proper right here; I presume that there was more — St. Luke more than implies it — but we do not have it. So, we have to consider this not as the full sermon, but rather as the intro to the sermon that follows. I want to suggest to you that the rest of St. Luke’s Gospel, the entirety of his Gospel, is the sermon that follows from this intro: not just what we hear Jesus say, but also what we see him do. In this intro Jesus announces the in-breaking, the inauguration, of the kingdom of God — in his person, and in the people’s presence —the firstfruits of the great vision of Isaiah. What then should they — what then should we — expect to see as this sermon develops over the next three years?

If Bach was right, if I am right to extend Bach’s claim from musical compositions to sermons, then it is all there in the intro:

Good news to the poor

Liberty for the captives

Recovery of sight for the blind

Liberty for the oppressed

Jubilee (the year of the Lord’s favor) — the restoration and renewal of all things

My friends, taken together this is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; he even names it as ευαγγελιον, as good news, as the good news of God’s kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. You can work through the dense theology of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans — and you should do — to see how all this good news works out, but you will find there no better explication of the Gospel than these words of the Lord: blessing for the poor, liberty for the captives, healing for the blind and, by extension, for all those with all sorts of physical and spiritual illnesses, freedom for the oppressed, and Jubilee, God’s putting to rights of all things — including ourselves — all things that we have desecrated through our complicity with the world, the flesh, and the devil. From the intro, this is what we expect to see in Jesus’s great sermon that comprises the rest of St. Luke’s Gospel. And it is so.

In my Bible you do not even have to turn a page to see this begin unfolding. Jesus leaves Nazareth for Capernaum. There he teaches with authority in the synagogue. And though we do not have his lesson plan, I think we can state confidently that in his teaching he announces the good news of the kingdom of God, not with words only, but with deeds of power. Right there, in the midst of the synagogue, a demon manifests and Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit and casts it out with just a word, setting at liberty the man who had been oppressed, just as the intro of the sermon had said.

From the synagogue, Jesus goes to Simon Peter’s house, and learning that Simon’s mother-in-law is ill with a fever, Jesus rebukes the fever and heals her. And later that same day, when the Sabbath is over, multitudes come — the sick and those bringing their sick with them — and Jesus lays hands on every one of them and heals them of physical and spiritual disease. Almost certainly, some blind recovered their sight, just as the intro had said.

Continuing to peruse the text, we see in short order Jesus cleanse a leper, heal a paralytic, restore a man’s withered hand.

Oh, and then Jesus speaks great good news to the poor, the captives, the oppressed, those longing for Jubilee:

Luke 6:20–23 (ESV)
20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

It was all there in the intro, in that so very brief word in the synagogue of Nazareth, and now we hear it and see it playing out in the sermon of Jesus’s life: blessing for the poor, liberty for the captives, healing for the blind and, by extension, for all those with all sorts of illnesses, freedom for the oppressed, and Jubilee, God’s putting to rights of all things — including ourselves — all things that we have desecrated through our complicity with the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is the Gospel. This is kingdom come. This is the intro of the sermon fleshed out in the life of Jesus and in the lives of flesh and blood people.

This presentation of the Gospel, which is Jesus’s own presentation of the Gospel, does not look much like the Campus Crusade Four Spiritual Laws or the oft-trod Romans Road. There is no talk of man’s sin and separation from God. There is no mention of Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension. There is no insistence upon accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior: no promise of heaven if you do and warning of hell if you don’t. There is no Sinner’s Prayer. So, some would say that this is not the Gospel at all. The problem with saying that is simple; Jesus says, in word and deed, that it is the Gospel. Jesus says the good news, the Gospel, is blessing for the poor, liberty for the captives, healing for the blind and for all those with all sorts of illnesses, freedom for the oppressed, and Jubilee. Jesus says that the Gospel is all about what God is doing in and through his Son to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. So what about these other, more familiar aspects?

What about sin and separation from God? It is absolutely true; that is the condition of all fallen men and women born into this fallen world: subject to death, in bondage to sin, and under the dominion of the fallen powers, separated from God. But, that is not good news; that is not Gospel. The Gospel is the proclamation of liberty for those captive to sin, death, and the powers.

What about Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension? It is all absolutely true and it is all absolutely essential for the Gospel. But, it is not, in itself the Gospel. Rather, it is the power of the Gospel, the means by which the Gospel is realized. It is the victory of Jesus by which he “conquered sin, put death to flight, and gave us the hope of everlasting life” (BCP 2019, p. 22): no death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus — no Gospel. As our Eucharistic liturgy proclaims:

In obedience to your will, he stretched out his arms upon the Cross and offered himself once for all, that by his suffering and death we might be saved. By his resurrection he broke the bonds of death, trampling Hell and Satan under his feet. As our great high priest, he ascended to your right hand in glory, that we might come with confidence before the throne of grace (BCP 2019, p. 133).

What of accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior? That is non-negotiable. It is the first of the affirmations of the Rite of Holy Baptism:

Question: Do you turn to Jesus Christ and confess him as your Lord and Savior?

Answer: I do (BCP 2019, p. 164).

No other answer is permitted. And for those who are baptized as infants and so do not take this vow for themselves at baptism, there is this word in the Preface for Confirmation:

The Anglican Church requires a public and personal profession of the Faith from every adult believer in Jesus Christ. Confirmation or Reception by a Bishop is its liturgical expression (BCP 2019, p. 174).

Accepting Jesus as one’s personal Lord and Savior in baptism is not the Gospel; but it is the way each of us receives the Gospel, the way in which we are enfolded into the Gospel so that it becomes good news for us.

Heaven and hell? Surely that is part of the Gospel? Well, yes and no. Hell is not part of the Gospel because it is in no way good news. Rather, hell is that eternal separation from God that one willingly chooses when one rejects the Gospel. Hell is the anti-gospel: eternal poverty, eternal captivity, eternal blindness, eternal oppression, eternal loss and eternal death. Lord, have mercy: may it never be for those we love, for those God loves. As for Heaven, it is part of the Gospel, but not as so often portrayed. Heaven is not a place to which our disembodied souls eternally escape the confines of this world and of our bodies when we die. That notion entirely ignores resurrection. No, heaven is God’s realm which will one day be joined to the new earth, where we, in our resurrected bodies, will dwell with God and he with us:

Revelation 21:1–4
21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Now, that is good news, isn’t it? That is Gospel. The description of that union of heaven and earth sounds so very much like the intro to Jesus’s sermon, to his proclamation of Gospel: no tears, no death, no mourning or crying or pain anymore. All of those will be old tales, long forgotten when the Scripture has been fulfilled.

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

That is the Gospel according to Jesus, according to the intro to his sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth all those years ago, and the full text of it in his every word and deed that followed. And all of us — having received the ευαγγελιον, the good news — have been commissioned by the Lord Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit to proclaim it, to be evangelists in our world, in our time, not only with our lips, but in our lives. And that commission is not optional; it is not for some, but for all. That is the thrust of Jesus’s very sobering words in the Gospel of St. Matthew:

Matthew 25:31–46 (ESV)
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

The proof of Jesus’s faithfulness to his Father was his proclamation of the Gospel in word and deed. The proof of our faithfulness to Jesus is our proclamation of the Gospel in word and deed; we have that from Jesus himself.

So, brothers and sisters, it is now our God-given vocation — an inherent part of our Christian identity as prophets, priests, and kings — to go forth into the world proclaiming the Gospel even as Jesus himself did:

Good news to the poor

Liberty for the captives

Recovery of sight for the blind

Liberty for the oppressed

Jubilee (the year of the Lord’s favor) — the restoration and renewal of all things,

in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.