CYCLE C 3RD ORDINARY
1. Sioux Land in the last 40 years has seen a tremendous ‘FACE LIFT’. In the downtown, Southern Hills and Dakota Dunes area, Government leaders have extended a lot of effort to let the people of Sioux Land CHOOSE to become a regional economic power and a wholesome place to live.
2. New Orleans after the Hurricane became a city almost devoid of its’ population. A city in Exile so to speak. It’s State, County and local Government leaders are trying to rebuild the City. And with every Step forward, they call the people back to their roots. Giving them the chance to CHOOSE to Help Recreate their City and City Pride.
NOW OPEN THE SCROLL IN YOUR MIND
1. Ezra (Priest) and Nehemiah (Governor) were two men who helped restore Israel politically, religiously and physically once the people returned from exile in Babylonia.
Ezra stands before the people, opens the scroll and begins to read God’s word. And the people weep. They weep because they realize how good God has been, and how unfaithful they are. Ezra tells them they have a choice: you can stand there and feel sorry for your selves and think of yourselves as worthless. Or you can CHOOSE not only to REBUILD the nation, but to RECREATE the kind of people you are.
NOW FIND THE PASSAGE IN YOUR HEART
2. Jesus, like Ezra, takes the scroll containing God’s word, and he finds the passage from Isaiah. It probably was the passage of the day. But maybe it took him a while to find it. However, when He read the passage which the people had heard hundreds of times, it came across different this time.
May be he read it more dramatically, but it was at the end when he looked up and said, “today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing”, that the difference came in the ‘AWAKENING’ of the people.
The passage said, and they understood it this way, that at God’s coming (The Advent of the Messiah), a new beginning would take place for those who are poor. The new beginning would be where people served each other, eyes and hearts would be opened to the Poor, and mercy and forgiveness would be extended.
This first instance of Jesus preaching was His way of saying to them, and to us today, that:
a. That the New Beginning as COME.
b. That the promised One is HERE.
c. That the chance to CHOOSE to rebuild and recreate God’s Kingdom and our lives, has been given to you.
You can choose to think God is only coming in the big moments. Or that He will listen only when we are nicer, smarter or holier. Or you can choose to believe that God is acting in your life, today. (“TODAY in your hearing this passage is fulfilled.”)
NOW FIND JESUS AND LOOK INTENTLY
3. Next week you will hear the people’s response to Jesus’ reading. I’ll tell you now, they throw him out of the synagogue. But there is that brief moment, when they look at him intently. They know this guy. He lived among them for years. Maybe though, I did see him, but I never really noticed him that much. Perhaps I really never heard him speak. But now, in this moment, as we look at Him, He is speaking words that at one in the same time….COMFORT and CHALLENGE us. This one moment in the synagogue really sums up the whole ministry of Jesus. HE WANTS US TO LOOK INTENTLY. He wants us to feel Loved and to CHOOSE.
CHOOSE JESUS AND THEN CHOOSE TO LOVE OTHERS
4. If you look intently, Jesus is coming to us, yes in the poor and the brokenhearted. And coming to us in those who are ill, imprisoned and uneducated and in Exile. He comes to us in the person at work, especially the ones you do not like, the relatives or neighbors that get on our nerves, and in the man or woman from another culture, you don’t understand or can’t figure out.
The One who came from God as a Baby, the One who is Anointed by the Spirit, the one Baptized to ministry, the One who is the Good Wine, the One who fulfills the word of God… HAS COME. He comes to us in the Ordinary ways of life and in its’ Ordinary People. And He comes to us Not yesterday or tomorrow, but TODAY.
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