Howdy. Alexander III, aka Alexander the Great, born in Pella Macedonia in 356 BC to King Philip II and Queen Olympius, though legend had it that his father was none other than Zeus, the king of the gods.
When Alexander was 13, his father called on Aristotle, the philosopher, to tutor his son. Alexander was 16 when Philip went off to battle and Alexander was left in charge of Macedonia.
At age 18, he proved his military worth and conquered Thebes. I was just trying to make sure I knew how to find my dorm in college.
In 336 BC, Alexander's father was assassinated by his bodyguard and then at 20 years old, Alexander took the Macedonian throne and killed all of his rivals.
He quashed all rebellions for independence in Greece and then went on to Macedonia's world domination.
After many victories, he proved that he was a shrewd and brilliant military leader who never lost a battle in his life.
With the motto, there is nothing impossible to him who will try. He conquered Egypt, defeated Darius the king of Persia, proclaiming himself king of Persia in 331 BC, and even defeated India against an army of elephants.
He went into paranoia, ordered the death of one of his most esteemed generals, and even a close friend of his to maintain his power.
Alexander in 323 BC was head of an enormous empire, even looking to conquer Arabia, but after surviving a fierce battle, died in June of 323 BC at the age of 32.
It is said that at one point Alexander, with all of these victories, was presented with the idea that there were countless other worlds in the universe.
He was a study of philosophy and science after all. Alexander reportedly became sad, not because he wanted to conquer them all, but because he felt that he hadn't truly conquered the one world that he knew.
According to Plutarch, when he heard the discourse, he saw that he was quite unproductive in consequence he wept.
When his friends asked him what was the matter, is it not worthy of tears, he said, that when the number of worlds is infinite, we have not yet become lords of a single one.
Oftentimes we pursue what we believe we truly want, but even when we get it, are we ever truly satisfied?
This idea of what is it that we truly want and if we were to actually have it in front of us, would we actually truly be satisfied with it?
Is the idea that I see and that comes out so much when we read today's Gospel passage?
Because what we end up seeing is a whole group of people in a synagogue proclaiming the way of the Lord and desiring that his will would be done and that his worship would be restored,
and then when his son, his word, is sitting there in their midst, instead they do their best to get rid of him.
What would it be like to know that someone had come back home and had made good?
The thing is that Jesus was a local boy who had come back after going forth and beginning to become famous, to end up being someone for something good, going forth as a rabbi,
as someone to proclaim God's will among the people.
And there he is in the synagogue and could you imagine what they're waiting for?
Everything has been hyped up and then there he is coming up to them reading from the text of Isaiah.
Remember, this is Jesus who had just finished up with being baptized by John in the river Jordan,
and the Spirit of God had come down and proclaimed, this is my son and whom I am well pleased.
This is my way.
This is the one to follow.
And so he goes up there and begins proclaiming the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
Isn't that something that we would typically take joy in?
To know that the one who is bearing the Spirit of God is there and now notice what he ends up reading.
Good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty to the oppressed, and the Lord's favor is here.
Are these not things that we want to see in the world around us?
But you see, there's a lot to this.
And to realize that the depths of what Jesus is proclaiming here from the prophet Isaiah goes deeper than much of what we would look forward to in our own lives.
Good news to the poor.
What do we oftentimes think of as good news to the poor?
Did you win the lottery?
Good news to the poor.
Did you manage to save money on eggs at the grocery store?
Good news to the poor.
Did you manage to get the claim on your insurance approved after the most recent storm?
But the truth is, is that good news to the poor goes beyond what the monetary circumstance would be.
Good news to the poor is that as much as people may look down upon you, or that you may not feel that you can keep up with the Joneses,
is that you are already a part of the kingdom and you have everything that already matters.
You are loved and you are welcomed.
And that those who have more can care for the things that you are not able to do so.
Or liberty to the captives.
Jesus had not gone into becoming a local judge.
Jesus was not there as a lawyer.
Jesus was not in law enforcement.
This was not something to go and start looking at issues of law enforcement and whether or not people were physically in jail.
But rather is to realize that we are oftentimes captives to ourselves.
But even more than that, captive to a world that continually tries to identify us as good or bad, whether or not the world around us has decided if we are worthy of their time,
or if somehow we've broken their norms in such a way that we are deserving of punishment.
And for Jesus to come and say, whatever the world sees of you, I see you as loved and forgiven by God. Or even sight to the blind.
Yes, there were times when Jesus would come up and would touch someone who could not see and that they could physically see again.
But what would always come after is for them to know him as the Messiah.
Because oftentimes we get caught up in whether or not the physical infirmity is something that is the main thing to fixate on.
And were we able to fix it?
I have known of a pastor being blind and being able to come up and preach because he had learned how to read Hebrew and Greek with Braille,
which kind of puts me to shame anytime I'm sitting and playing video games.
Or to be able to explain that as long as in his mind he can focus on six main things,
he knows that he can stay on track with the message that he could not possibly be reading off of,
which may or may not have reminded me to keep my sermon slides down to six.
But to realize that the blind person does not see themselves as being less,
because they don't have one ability out of many that the rest of us do.
And even for those who are deaf, wondering why it is that we focus so much on whether or not they hear,
even when they know that they can speak without their ears or their voice.
Liberty to the oppressed is to realize that in so many times and so many places,
is that we can look for those that are not deserving of our attention, our focus, or our compassion.
And to realize that life is already difficult enough.
But how often is it that we are making things more difficult just because we don't see them as deserving of that compassion?
And so to see that someone is willing to see them and understand where they are.
Because the Lord's favor, the Lord's favor does not mean that every circumstance has changed.
The Lord's favor does not mean that therefore everything feels as good as we were hoping it would feel.
Because what is the Lord's favor?
Every 50th year is that every debt was forgiven, every land was restored,
and every person had a chance to rest from the labor of the world.
The Lord's favor was for people to find peace in forgiveness.
But was that what the people in that synagogue were expecting to look for that day?
Did they look at what was in front of them or were they looking for something that they were expecting?
Because let's take a moment and ask what was Jesus actually doing in the world at that time?
Bringing restoration to people, healing hearts, restoring minds, focusing people back on God's word,
bringing people to want to change.
Because isn't that harder than almost anything else?
It's not getting a person to change, but getting them to even want it in the first place.
Because even more difficult than anything on the outside is changing what is happening on the inside.
But were the people in that synagogue truly looking at the reality that is in front of them?
And that's the thing that we look at when we see the verse that says,
all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.
Because I have to let you know, did the people truly speak well of Jesus?
That little part there, as much as I love the English standard version,
is that in reality the King James might actually be a bit better in determining that word.
The word, emarturun, it means to bear witness.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you're speaking either well or poorly of someone,
but rather you are just talking about what you know about them.
It would be sort of like if someone were to say, emarturun about Pastor Jason.
It's not saying, oh, he's a really nice guy, or we really like what it is that he does
with all of the corny, cheesy jokes that he makes.
But rather it's things like, he's six foot one, we know he likes chocolate chip cookies,
he has a fascination with transformers and other 80's cartoons.
It's not good or bad, but then all of a sudden to realize that this local boy
is right up there saying something deeper and more profound than what you might be expecting.
Because with all the things that are happening, is that they're not quite ready to buy in.
It says that a prophet is never accepted in his hometown,
but also maybe even deeper than that.
Because it's not just about Jesus, but rather everything he has come to proclaim.
Because as much as they're saying that they want to see the miracles,
they want to have it shown to them what he has been doing,
is that in reality when we see something miraculous,
it is always something where we can pause and say, I can explain that in some other way.
Isn't that what we do so much of today?
It doesn't matter what we've heard or what we've seen.
It doesn't matter if whatever we thought previously has been disproven.
We're going to double down on everything.
Everything.
Because whatever our previous notion was must have been correct.
Because that's the thing is that as much as what Jesus was doing was very well proclaiming the kingdom of God in their mind,
I know what I'm expecting from you, Jesus.
And I have no desire to change that whatsoever.
Because the thing is that they didn't want to see reality.
They just wanted to have themselves affirmed.
And isn't that so much of where we are?
So much of this desire, this focus of not asking what's actually happening around us,
is that with our own desire for being able to hear the loudest voice or the deepest conspiracy or something that causes us to feel justified in where we are,
is that in reality we don't want to see what's in front of us.
We want the desire to be affirmed of what we want to be in front of us.
See, all of this idea of wanting Jesus to give them something that they were looking for is what's actually behind the phrase,
Jesus, physician, heal thyself. Physician, heal thyself.
The thing with this is that we oftentimes take the phrase, the idea of before you can fix other people, you need to fix yourself.
And that does have that meaning.
But in this part, it's more of a general phrase, of a general idea.
It's the focus being, take care of your own issues right now.
Because instead of spending your time worrying about everybody else, you need to show us right now who you are.
And we haven't been convinced.
Is to be able to look there and say, physician, heal thyself.
Because in reality you haven't actually done anything to prove it to us.
See, that's the thing with this, is that those people were not looking for God's kingdom.
They were looking for what made themselves feel better about themselves.
Because what does Jesus end up going to do?
He looks and he starts talking about everybody outside of Israel.
Sidon and Syria.
These were not the people that saw themselves as we are God's people.
These were the ones who knew their need and were willing to come forth and say,
I am need of God and his restoration.
Because that's the thing about this, is that a physician is not here to care for the well.
They're only here to care for those who are sick.
And the reality is that that's where we are all at.
Is to look and to understand that when Elijah is going to that widow and Sidon,
was there nobody in Israel for him to go and to check on?
But remember what was happening at the time is that Elijah was being chased down by the king.
If there was anywhere he could have stayed and been safe,
wouldn't that have been much easier than running off into the wilderness?
But he couldn't even go to the people who were supposed to know God
and to trust that he would have some place safe.
He couldn't even go and proclaim God's word to the very people who should have been most willing to hear it.
Because God's word would have caused them to realize that they needed to change.
And nobody wants to hear that.
Or even more than that, were there no other lepers in Israel other than Naaman,
who came from another land and to be able to dip into the Jordan River?
Was he prideful? Yes.
But did he go? Yes.
How many people in Israel were too arrogant to see anything other than their own self-righteousness?
And that's the thing, because the difficulty is that arrogance ends up leading to anger.
Because the more that we feel that we should not and could not be questioned,
the more that we are confident that what it is that we're doing in our life is the only way,
the more angry we are when anyone would dare to disagree.
Because that's the thing, though, about God.
Is that in God's view, all of us have sinned.
And all of us are in a place of meeting humility.
We need to be honest with ourselves about our need to be humble.
And that whenever we look at those around us,
is that we're not meant to just dismiss them or to condemn them,
but rather to dignify them with the forgiveness and the love of God.
Because that's the thing about this.
What had those people in that synagogue become?
Because what do they end up doing?
Do they finish their time of worship saying,
Well, Jesus, we're going to need to agree to disagree today?
Or, Well, Jesus, we're going to ponder this and think it over.
Well, Jesus, we're really upset with you,
so we're going to go talk with ourselves and confer with the Scriptures about what you said.
No, you deserve to die.
You've crushed him without even pausing.
How many things in our lives are we ready to jump at and condemn
before slowing down to see what is it that God truly wants for us?
Because we as the church proclaim the Kingdom of God,
the reality Jesus has brought the Kingdom to us.
What you want, it's already here.
And it always was.
This idea of trying to look and to say how we're going to get what it is that we want,
because in reality, the things that we grasp for,
they never satisfy, but rather it is coming back to Jesus and who he is and what he has done.
Because what do we truly want?
In Christ Jesus, it's not about trying to be right,
but about being made righteous by Christ Jesus.
It doesn't happen with our anger or our indignation
or our arrogance of thinking we have it all figured out.
But rather, by coming back to Christ and saying,
I am need of your forgiveness, just as everyone else is too.
Because when we allow our views to be changed in the light of Christ Jesus,
we allow ourselves to be changed by who he is.
Then not only do we receive forgiveness,
but also the world around us receives forgiveness.
And it's only when we see that we are free from captivity and no longer poor in spirit.
And we can see God and know that we are no longer oppressed and that God's forgiveness is truly ours.
Can any of us truly hope to change ourselves or the world around us?
May God continue to change us and the world around us only by forgiveness and grace.
Now and always. Amen.