Episodes
Thursday Jan 31, 2019
Thursday Jan 31, 2019
Anointed
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC January 27, 2019, the third Sunday after Epiphany. “This Is Us” series.
Text: Luke 4:14-21
Many years ago, I sat in a one-room house in a Dalit village in South India with the woman of the home sitting behind me combing my hair. In a sign of radical hospitality, she poured coconut oil on my head and combed the sweet-smelling, cooling oil into my hair, which she proceeded to braid and pin fresh flowers into. This was a moment of anointing, the kind of anointing that folk in certain regions and cultures have used for centuries to care for their hair and skin—a kind of care that is extended to others as a sign of hospitality, respect, and friendship.
This kind of anointing appears in the Bible—one example being Psalm 23: “You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows…”[i] But this isn’t the only meaning or purpose of anointing in our faith tradition. Anointing appears in scripture as a rite of inauguration or “setting apart” for the Jewish offices of prophet, priest, and king.[ii] Sacred objects are anointed for their appointed use.[iii] In the letter of James, we see that anointing with oil was used in ministries of healing for the sick.[iv] And then there is the anointing with Holy Spirit. This spiritual anointing is not necessarily disconnected from the other kinds of anointing, but seems to imbue a divine power and to convey a divine calling.
Our Gospel for today picks up just after Jesus spends the proverbial 40 days in the desert grappling with the devil (Lk 4:1-13) and he emerges from that contest “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Jesus goes to the Galilee and news of his presence and teaching “goes viral”—it spreads quickly! When he gets to his home “church,” the synagogue in Nazareth, he reads from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God 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 (year of “jubilee,” a time of economic justice and debt forgiveness[v]).” These words found in the writings of “the Third Isaiah” echo the earlier Isaiah traditions that speak of a servant, a chosen one, an anointed messiah, upon whom God’s spirit will rest in a particular way to bring light and justice to the nations.
Sitting there in his home church, Jesus said, “Today the prophecy of this anointing is fulfilled…this call is being fulfilled. Here I am. I am the one. This is me.”
Our lectionary text doesn’t include what happened next that day in Nazareth. But let me tell you, the hometown crowd was none too happy when Jesus made it clear they wouldn’t be getting special treatment. They evidently didn’t like his reference to Israel’s failures in the past or God’s prophets offering care to those on the other side of Israel’s borders. Jesus’s own people—his parents’ friends, his own childhood friends, and probably a bunch of aunties and uncles and cousins—ran him off and tried to kill him.
He came as the promise, as the anointed one, as the one who would bring good news of salvation for those who had suffered so long—and for all people. And, it seems, fueled by some sort of tribal jealousy or irrational fear they wanted to kill him.
I have been thinking again about how we human beings love prophets after they are dead but try to silence, control, undermine or kill them until they are. Every year when we, as a nation, honor Martin Luther King, Jr. there are reminders that spring up about how folks who now quote MLK with such ardor and appreciation would have tried to run him off a proverbial cliff when he was alive. It makes me wonder who is getting targeted and threatened in these days who will someday be recognized as the shining light that they are…
As soon as Jesus arrived in this world, certain parts of the world conspired against him. And yet the light in Jesus shone so brightly that it cut through the darkness and drew many to God’s wisdom and way. The good news Jesus proclaims and embodies of God’s love, mercy, and justice—this good news has continued to spread all over the world—it’s been shared, studied, and celebrated because it’s the hope of every human heart. It holds both a vision of beloved community to work toward and the traveling mercies to get there. And many, like you and me, continue to try to both receive this good news and to share it.
There are also many who continue—out of ignorance, fear, and pain—to conspire against the love, mercy, and justice of God, those who would undermine the vision of God’s Kin-dom, who reject and disrupt the vision of God’s beloved community.
During this sermon series in which we reflect on those things that shape our personal priorities and our communal witness, it’s important to name that we at Foundry understand that to follow Jesus means to engage in sacred resistance. And sacred resistance, first and foremost, is to ground ourselves in the love of God, to rejoice in spite of the facts, to let others laugh at our hope, to not allow the fear mongers to knock us off course, to keep our eyes fixed on Christ and on the ways of God’s Kin-dom and to claim our primary loyalty in that country. We know that our Baptismal covenant calls us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves; it calls us to stand up to those who would undermine God’s vision of peace with justice. We know that our faith as Jesus-followers is not disconnected from the debates occurring in the public square at every level from the white house to the condo association, from Congress to local school boards, from FaceBook pages to face to face engagements across a kitchen table, from Bible study groups to General Conferences. We know that when we stand in principled defiance to unjust laws and practices in the world and in the church, there will be backlash. We know that if we happen to stumble into the kind of faithfulness and sacrificial love that in any way embodies the way of Jesus we can expect someone to come for us. We know that Jesus’ Way is not an easy way, but that it’s the way that leads to a life that is truly human, that is truly life. (1 Tim 6:19)
As I was praying and preparing for today and this word was forming in my heart and head, I thought of how tired so many of us are. I thought to myself, “The last thing any of us needs is to be told again of our responsibility and how heavy it is and how difficult it can be…” But then I thought of that experience all those years ago in India; I thought of the cooling coconut oil, the nourishing and strengthening oil so lovingly applied, dripping down my neck and face… And it made me remember that we are anointed! Anointed by Spirit!
Just as God’s voice affirms both Jesus AND all of us at Baptism with the words “You are my beloved”; just as God’s voice speaks through both the prophets AND all of us as we “find our voice” as Bishop Palmer preached last week; so too, God’s anointing falls upon both Jesus AND us as we receive the Holy Spirit who grants us freedom and power to resist, to do our part in the work of mending this beautiful, broken world. As members of the Body of Christ, the church, you and I are anointed—given a divine calling and imbued with divine power.
In the heat of struggle, Spirit anoints us with calming grace like cooling oil. In moments of faltering, Spirit anoints us with grace that fortifies and bears us up. When we fear having no word to speak or don’t know what action to take, Spirit anoints us with what we need. In times of weariness and frustration, Spirit anoints us with delight and surprise in-breakings of joy. When it feels like it’s all a big waste of time, Spirit anoints us with encouragement and visions and dreams. Again and again.
We pray at the Baptismal font for Spirit to be poured out upon the water and the one baptized. We pray at the Table for Spirit to be poured out upon the elements and upon us. We remember that, at Pentecost, Spirit was poured out upon all who were gathered, breaking down barriers of all kinds. We remember that we are part of the anointed community formed at Pentecost, empowered by Spirit. And all of this anointing with Spirit, all of the Spirit being poured “upon us” is for a purpose: to be and to become fully ourselves, to be and become more truly human, to be and become more like Jesus. Our anointing as Foundry Church—along with so many beloved communities around the world—is to be and become those who prompt the questions from the world, “Who is this who keeps showing up with patience and love and light and hope? Who is this who’s determined to preach good news to the poor? Who is this who shows up like Moses demanding release of the captives? Who is this whose witness startles others into fresh seeing? Who is this risking life and livelihood to set the oppressed free? Who is this who will make personal sacrifices for the sake of economic justice?” Who is this? By the grace of God, may we be and become those who say, “THIS IS US… the beloved, the called, the liberated, the empowered, the anointed. This is us. Here we are. We’re the ones. Today God’s way is being fulfilled…”
[i] Ruth 3:3 ; Micah 6:15, Luke 7:46
[ii]1 Kings 19:16 ; 1 Chronicles 16:22 ; Psalms 105:15, Exodus 40:15 ; Numbers 3:3; Exodus 29:29 ; Leviticus 16:32 ; 1 Samuel 9:16 ; 10:1 ; 1 Kings 1:34 1 Kings 1:39
[iii] Genesis 31:13 ; Exodus 30:26-28
[v] Leviticus 25.8-12
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