Epiphany 3, Year C | Luke 4:16-21
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
January 26, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
Today marks our third Sunday after the Epiphany. In this season of light and revelation, we’ve worshiped beside the Maji, observed as God appointed Jesus heir to the celestial throne,[1] and witnessed the first sign that directed the disciples to pledge themselves to this miraculous figure.[2] This week we watch as Jesus formally begins his declaration of the Gospel among the people. I find it interesting—and fitting—that he begins in his own local center of worship. Where better to start than among the people who were familiar with him and watched him mature, people he recognized already knew the importance of seeking after God? Unfortunately, it’s easy to overlook the momentous nature of this occasion. After all, how can Jesus be proclaiming the Gospel when the Bible doesn’t even mention “the Gospel” in what we’ve read?
If you were to ask most Modern American Christians what the Gospel is, you’ll probably hear an answer something along the lines of, “Jesus died for our sins to that if someone assents to that truth they can go to heaven when they die.” However, despite the idea’s popularity, that statement is not the Gospel. We can recognize that because, for one thing, the Bible tells us Jesus preached the Gospel. There is no record of Jesus wandering around ancient Judea, Samaria, or Galilee talking about himself that way. It simply isn’t in the text, no matter how hard you try to make it say that. People may have worked those things out theologically, but neither majority opinion nor centuries of rigorous religious philosophy make that statement the Gospel.
A second way we can recognize our error is that Jesus was reading from a text that was already ancient. The Hebrew Bible appears to have mostly settled into its modern form during the course of Babylonian Exile, which took place during the 500’s BCE. The Jewish scholars of that era were compiling existing writings, with Isaiah likely coming sometime from one to two-hundred years earlier. So by the time Jesus came around, there had been at least some recognition of what the Gospel looked like for well over 600 years—and probably far longer than that!
So now we at least know what the Gospel isn’t. Fortunately, the passage Jesus chose can direct us to what it is.
Four of the words Jesus reads from Isaiah, “to bring good news,”[3] are actually a single word in Luke’s writing: the verb form of the noun we generally translate as “gospel” or “good news.” So a more blatant translation of that spot would be, “he has anointed me to gospel the poor.” There’s no problem with the translation we have. “To bring good news” is about as close as anyone can get. It’s just that we don’t always know to connect a lowercase “good news” with the capital-G Gospel.
Now we know that Jesus’ mission is “to gospel the poor,” but that phrase doesn’t necessarily clarify anything for us. Fortunately, in the second half of the passage Jesus is reading Isaiah goes on to state what exactly that activity involves:
“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.”[4]
That’s what it is “to gospel:” “to proclaim release to…captives…recovery of sight to the blind,” to free the oppressed, and “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
It might be a little confusing to realize that the Gospel isn’t actually about you or me as individuals. We certainly benefit from it, but none of us is in any way the focus of the Gospel. That’s because the Gospel is about God. The Gospel is the proclamation of God’s character, an explanation of who God really is, brought down to a level that humans can understand. God is release for captives. God is sight restored. God is freedom from oppression. God is justice, and mercy, and love. God isn’t simply like these things. God is these things. All those other ideas we have about God—God as angry or vengeful or cruel or heartless—that’s us reading our own challenges and character onto the Divine.
The truth is, God is not keeping score. God is not simply waiting for you to mess up. God is not inflicting harm upon you. The world might be. Other people might be. And God certainly takes ultimate responsibility for it. But neither circumstance nor other humans act as God. God’s direct actions—those that most deeply reflect God’s nature—are to heal, to free, to restore, and to create.
God is not malicious. God is not some monster waiting to torture people who’ve already screwed up their own lives. God isn’t a tyrant or a demagogue or any other sort of being that thrives on oppression, pain, and death. Division, domination, prejudice, abuse—those are the characteristics of Empire—of the human heart. And we’re grossly mistaken to assume those of God. God provides. God comforts. God rescues. God unifies.
Jesus, God’s appointed heir and representative, came to Gospel—to announce, clarify, and reflect the nature of God in the midst of humanity, to show us how a person can more accurately embody the reality of what it means to be God’s child. In doing so, he crossed strict boundaries to welcome and console the outcast. He responded with gentleness in the face of oppression. He lifted up those who had been cast down and set an example of what it is for the mighty to walk in humility. He loved, laughed, cried, got angry—he validated and embraced all these undignified and often embarrassing aspects of what it is to be human. And in doing so, he “gospeled”—he declared to us who God is, what God is, how God is.
And we still have the opportunity to follow in his footsteps. We can, like the apostles, “be-lief in” him—pledge ourselves to his study and service.[5] We can learn to talk, live, and move through the world like him—maybe not perfectly, but we can continue to practice. We can continue to get up when we fall. We can continue to follow even when we lag behind. We can be loyal to his example. We can be faithful to his person and teaching. We too can Gospel. We can reveal God’s character; we can become God’s loving and merciful presence. We can shine like light in darkness, even in our own day. We have a choice. Following Jesus, we too can incarnate for the world the realities this season of Epiphany proclaims.
[1] https://www.slouchingdog.com/sermons/year-c-january-12-2025-epiphany01
[2] https://www.slouchingdog.com/sermons/year-c-january-22-2025-epiphany03
[3] Luke 4:18
[4] Luke 4:18-19 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[5] See https://www.slouchingdog.com/sermons/year-c-january-22-2025-epiphany03 for a discussion of what the Bible means when it uses the term “believe.”