Liberation in Jesus

Here is the sermon I preached tis past Sunday. I acknowledged the congregation being a Reconciled in Christ Congregation and the end of Pride Month. What a way to conclude the month.

June 29, 2025 – RIC Sunday – LCOS Kalamazoo

Luke 4:14-21

I recently had the opportunity to re-watch one of my favorite movies, Silence. It is based on the novel of the same title by Shusaku Endo and was adapted to a movie in 2016 directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver. The plot of the movie according to Wikipedia is that “a Veteran Portuguese Jesuit priest, Cristóvão Ferreira is forced to watch as Japanese converts to Christianity are tortured to death for refusing to renounce their faith. A few years later, at St. Paul's College in Macau, an Italian Jesuit priest, Alessandro Valignano, receives news that Ferreira renounced his faith in Japan. In disbelief, Ferreira's Portuguese pupils, the young Jesuit priests Sebastião Rodrigues and Francisco Garupe, set off to find him, guided by Kichijirō, a fisherman stranded in Macau. Kichijirō is seeking redemption, as he renounced his faith to save himself while the rest of his family was put to death by burning them alive. Arriving in the 1639 Japanese village of Tomogi, the priests find local Christian populations driven underground in fear of "the Inquisitor.””

Eventually, these priests will face the same question as Father Ferreira, will they become apostates to their faith? To become an apostate is to deny one’s own faith and follow the popular religion. It is denying your true self. When you deny yourself and be what someone wants you to be, can be a death in and of itself. As we live in this Pride Month, I think of the many people who have denied their true selves. To become an apostate is to deny your religion. However, you can just as easily deny your gender or sexuality. Unfortunately, it is easy to be rejected by others. It is when we begin to listen to those who oppress, which strips you of your true identity. In today’s gospel lesson Jesus states, he is there to liberate the oppressed as he reads from Isaiah. It is a liberation which comes to all people.

This gospel lesson follows on the footsteps of Jesus being tempted in the desert. We all face these temptations as we get to know Christ. This is Jesus’ first public appearance in the Gospel of Luke. It is an appearance which shocks and awes the leaders in the synagogue and those on the periphery. They wondered where he came from, because surely he could not have been the son of Joeseph. Luke’s gospel continues to provide us with a detailed account of Jesus following his sermon to the people in the synagogue. His message disturbs them so much that they wish to throw him off the cliff in later verses. Often, if you are not the right type of Christian, you may be thrown off the cliff as well. Unfortunately, some claim to be Christian today and share very little of the love Jesus exudes. Jesus is good company to be associatied with. Remember, Jesus was not even a Christian, he was a Palestinian Jew.

During Pride Month, queerness is celebrated. To be called queer in the past had been seen as derogatory, but it has been taken back by the LGBTQ+ community. Brandan Robertson has noted in his new book Queer & Christian, “the second usage of queer means to disrupt arbitrary norms, making space for diverse and often marginalized expressions and perspectives to flourish. … In this sense, to be queer is holy—it is an affirmation of the truth that God doesn’t make mistakes, that our unique expression in the world reflects God’s creativity, and a refusal to participate in blaspheming our Creator by seeking to limit, change, or suppress our unique reflection of the image of God in the world.”

The scripture Jesus chooses to read from Isaiah is in a way his mission as he proceeds through this earthly realm. In the words of Eugene Peterson in the Message,

God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s time to shine!” Luke 4:16

We have heard the good news. Does that make us poor, possibly at times of the Spirit? Jesus releases those who are held captive, and heals those who are sick. We can be held in physical bondage, like many immigrants today. Or we may be held mentally by ill perceived thoughts either coming from ourselves or others. In the Message translation, he is instructed to set the burdened and battered free. I like the translation read earlier because this section is translated as liberation. To liberate has a much more powerful tone.

Pride Month is about liberation. It is freedom from oppression. An oppression which had been practiced for many years by others. Sometimes we even oppress ourselves and become apostates. Why? For some it is easier than others to deny themselves.

Pride is a time to celebrate a freedom, which did not come easily as it started as a riot in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn. Robertson again writes, “The past one hundred years of history have been proof that the status quo isn’t actually good; in fact, it’s often based on lies that have led and continue to lead to the oppression and marginalization of millions of people.” Pride is a time to rejoice in the inclusiveness of God’s creation. Being a RIC Congregation, means you welcome the inclusiveness of God and are willing to face the cliff with Jesus.

Liberation sounds like a wonderful word. The notion it connotates is a sense of freedom. The freedom we celebrate is brought to us from Jesus. We celebrate in being an RIC Congregation because it is in this inclusiveness that we welcome everyone, not only to worship, but to the table.

It is at the table where we encounter the risen Christ and are nourished and known and loved.