The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 26, 2025

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I have a young friend who is about 10 years old.  She is intelligent, and witty, and gifted in so many ways.  She is the kind of person who gets what she wants through optimistic persistent doggedness that will make her super successful at whatever she chooses to do when she is an adult.  This child is a force of nature and I hope the Good Lord lets me live long enough to see what she will accomplish.  When I asked her the first time about what she wants to do when she grows up (first of all I didn’t ask her what she wants to “be”-as we are not our jobs!) (secondly, I ask her this question all of the time because I am curious about how the answer changes), she answered, “I want to be famous.”  Even though I asked her what she wants to do, she answered with what she wants to be.  I love that about her.  But I am deeply suspicious of her answer. Wanting to “be famous” is a childish notion that, as she grows, will probably be replaced with wiser, more mature goals.  So, I’m not worried about her. Certainly there are ways to ‘be famous’ that involve good things, maybe she, like so many Nobel Prize winners, will gain her fame through helping make the world a better place.  But fame in and of itself is a shallow, desperate game that could swallow up even the most talented, brilliant, and beautiful. I do worry about those who are adults who have ‘fame’ as their ultimate goal.  Fame, in the end, simply doesn’t ultimately fulfill our needs.  Neither do it’s attending features of power and wealth.  In and of themselves, there is nothing wrong with fame, or power, or wealth, and used wisely, these things can be tools for a Godly life.  It’s when we forget that these things are tools for the goodness that God wants for the world that problems arise.  

As I worked with our Scriptures for today, dear preacher, it struck me that together they ask a very powerful question, “What do you want to be?” I know that if we choose to preach this questions, we will probably be asking this question of a bunch of people who are already pretty deep into their careers or even in their retirement.  Many in our congregations already know what they want ‘to do.’  But the texts seem to ask, what do you want to be?   While they can be closely related, they are not the same.   Even for those who are happily settled in their careers  and domestic lives, we still have to ask, “What do I want to be?”  And then, do what it takes to make that real.  (Yes, friends, even in retirement, we still have to struggle with these questions, because God is not done with you.) 

So, what do you want to be?  Let’s start at the beginning.  God has given each of us gifts.  Each person’s gifts are entirely unique to them.  God is the source of that novelty and diversity.  That has some practical implications for us, in terms of coming to grips with following God’s call for our lives and also for coming to grips with the fact that what we might not like in another person is how God made them.   I am suggesting that God made people with different skin tones and physical features.  So, it’s not ok to be a member of a racial supremacy group who believes that it’s ok to hate and hurt people who are black, or Asian, or Indian, or Native, or Latin American.  I am suggesting that God made people male and female, so it’s not ok to insist that people who are not your gender are inferior.  God made people who disagree with your politics, so it’s not ok to hate people who disagree with you politically. God made some people preachers, and teachers, and prophets, and apostles, some people can do great deeds of power, some people are good with numbers, some people are good with words, some people are good at fixing mechanical things, some people are good with sewing and mending, some people are great with computers and AI, some people can sing, some people can listen, some people can open their minds, some people can cook, some people, those with what we would call limited capacities, can show up, with a smile and a desire to be part of something bigger and themselves, those people are our greatest asset. How we treat them shows who we are.  What do you want to be?  Because who you are influences what you do. What you do and what you are helps make the world what it is. 

What Paul talks about to the Corinthians is about deciding who we want to be – as individuals and as a society and as the kingdom of God.  Paul reminds us that division of labor need not result in a class-system or hierarchy.  Not everyone can be or do everything. We need variety in order to be strong, we even need those members who are weak, so that we can be strong. “If one part suffers, all parts suffer with it.” (1 Cor 12:26) “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” (Martin Luther King Jr.). You have the gifts you have been given.  Your job is to do your best with them.  In so doing, you’ll form what God envisions you can be. God gave you gifts, figure out what they are and go use them!  But that is only about what you do.  God gave you gifts, use them to determine what you will be.  How do we determine what is best to be? How do we know what God wants us to be? Well, some of that will be based on your gifts, and some of that needs to be based on what God has commanded us to do.

So, this brings me to our gospel reading for today.  Jesus has come to his home synagogue in Nazareth, the village in which he was raised. I wonder if, when he was a child, anyone asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.  Here, where everyone watched him grow up and knows his family well, he has returned as an honored guest who is already gathering a reputation as a great teacher, and is invited to read the Scriptures and to offer an interpretation.

The words Jesus speaks in Nazareth are especially important because they are the first words we hear of his public ministry in Luke’s Gospel. This is an inaugural address of sorts. What Jesus says here represents the heart of his message and mission. Of course, his message and mission do not come out of the blue, but from the Scriptures. He reads from the prophet Isaiah: “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, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (a conflation of Isaiah 61:1-2a and 58:6). Then Jesus gives a one-sentence interpretation: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

The word translated “poor” (ptochoi in Greek) has to do with a person’s economic wherewithal, but it also includes other things that lowered one’s status in Jesus’ day—gender, ethnicity, education, occupation, disability and health conditions, and how religiously pure one was. Jesus announced that his mission is directed to the poor in this wider sense – to those who are on the margins and/or vulnerable. Jesus disregards these socially determined boundaries (as he does many others). Rather, he insists that his mission is to these marginal and vulnerable ‘others.’

The “year of the Lord’s favor” that Jesus proclaims is probably a reference to the year of Jubilee commanded in Leviticus 25. This is the year when indentured servants should be released, debts ought to be forgiven, and land and property returned to the families who had sold them. The year of the Lord’s favor was a year of radical restoration.  We do not have much evidence that this was really ever put into practice in Israel; instead the year of the Lord’s favor was projected into the future as an eschatological hope.

Our gospel reading ends at verse 21, where Jesus proclaims, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In the second part of this story (4:21-30) which is next week’s Gospel reading, the reaction of the hometown crowd will turn from amazement and approval (4:22) to rage and even murderous intent (4:28-29), check out next week’s commentary post for more information on that.

Maybe though,  what Jesus has already said will also provoke a strong response among many who hear these words today. Good news to the poor and the “year of the Lord’s favor” sound great until we get into the nitty-gritty of what that means. The idea of a radical redistribution of property and wealth, for example, will not sound like good news to many of us who live comfortable lives and do not want to give up what we have. The idea of welcoming certain groups of people into our communities will be unsettling for some. Still Jesus proclaims that today this scripture is fulfilled in him. 

Jesus will demonstrate this fulfillment concretely in his acts of healing, liberation, and welcome for all kinds of outsiders—the demon-possessed, the sick and paralyzed, lepers, hemorrhaging women, tax collectors and sinners. Mary has already announced that God is up to some serious table-turning (Luke 1:46-55), and Jesus will have much more to say in Luke’s Gospel about wealth and status and the reversals God’s reign brings about (see also Luke 6:20-26; 7:18-23; 12:13-21; 14:12-14; 16:1-12, 19-31; 18:18-26; 19:1-10).

Like the Israelites in Jesus’ day, it might be tempting to spiritualize Jesus’ words and to project them into a vision of a distant future in the sweet by-and-by. The unavoidable truth is that the spiritual aspect of the salvation that Jesus proclaims cannot be separated from economic, social, and political realities. Jesus’ mission is to free people from captivity to sin and from captivity to the sinful structures and systems that diminish and destroy lives.

Jesus says, that because of who he is, he has come to do something radical – something that makes many comfortable people uncomfortable: he has come for the liberation of all people.  To preach good news to the poor. To proclaim release to the prisoners.  That’s a pretty scary notion to me.  And also remember that, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  I have to think that Jesus is not talking about dangerous people, he’s talking about political prisoners, the poor, the addicted, the oppressed, the in-debt.  How do we know this, because he says he has come to proclaim the “Year of the Lord’s favor.”  That is the Jubilee year, the year that all debts are forgiven.  What would the world look like if all debts were forgiven?  If poor countries in Africa and Latin America didn’t have to give a massive portion of their yearly earnings  to the World Bank and could spend that money on schools, infrastructure, clean water, and security for their people.  What if I didn’t have crushing student loans?  What if every person with a mortgage now owned their home?  Their car?  What would happen to the money lenders?  What Jesus says is that in the Kingdom of God, the wealthy who earn their power at the expense of other people’s suffering and misery, will lose some of that wealth and power.  In the Kingdom, the First will be last and the last will be first.  And for those of us in the middle, it can feel like we don’t have much to gain by working for Jesus’ good vision for the world. Jesus asks us to think about how we think about money and possessions.  Our relationship with them tells a huge story about our relationship with God.  Our relationship with them tells a huge story about who we want to be. 

Where is the good news for those of us in the middle?  There is good news for us.  There is a line of thought in Christianity that it is exclusively Jesus’ torturous, bloody death that saves humanity.  This passage is a strong antidote to those that claim, “Jesus was born to die on the cross.” According to Jesus’ own words, he was not born to die. He was born to save, free, and liberate. Atonement for Christians cannot be limited to his bloody execution, because Jesus himself didn’t see his death as his mission.  Atonement -the idea of righting a wrong, or making up for a bad thing, means actually righting the wrong.  The view of God that we get from Jesus’ description of his mission is not a view of a god who is murderously angry at humanity for the debt we have incurred because of our disobedience and sin. Jesus never shows us a god who needs an innocent blood sacrifice in order to be appeased. God isn’t enraged because we have disobeyed.  God is in love and wants to be right with us. God loves us and wants us to be in good relationship.  God wants a world of justice and peace for all people, where each of our strengths are used to the best of our abilities and together we make up for each other’s weaknesses.  And so, God sends the Son to become one of us, to help make up for our collective weakness.  

The Son’s mission is to bring the freedom, and love, and care that God has for all people to all people.  Jesus’ call to repent is much stronger and more frequently repeated to the powerful and wealthy than it is to the prostitute or thief. The sin of the prostitute or thief is so much easier to fix than the sin of the wealthy and powerful. Jesus says, it is the job of the wealthy and powerful to make it so that the prostitute and thief don’t need to engage in these damaging things.  

The Son’s mission is to show us who we can be and how great the world can be.  God has given each of us gifts and set us up to succeed. Jesus came and showed us the way to go and what to do with those gifts, so that we will know what to be. I hope then, you’ll ask yourself and prompt your folx to ask this week, “What do I want to be?” I hope that your answer and theirs builds up the body of Christ. 

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Nichole Torbitzky is a professor of philosophy and religion and university Chaplain at Lindenwood University, in St. Louis, Missouri. She received her doctorate from Claremont Graduate University, in Claremont, CA and her Master of Divinity from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, PA. She teaches courses including World Religions, Islam and the West, Religions of India, Women, Religion, and Violence, and African American Religions.  She co-edited and contributed to the book, “Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God.” She recently contributed a chapter to “Amipotence, Volume 2,” co-edited by Brandon Brown, et. al.