(Luke 4.14-21) Epiphany 3 / Australia Day
27 January 2019 – © Neil Millar
‘Poor bugger whitefella got no dreaming’ is the arresting title of a research thesis written by Mary-Anne Gale. This observation of an Aboriginal person may be casually dismissed by some, but the more I talk with indigenous brothers and sisters, the more I understand (I think) what they’re saying. From an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander perspective, we the second peoples of this land seem to have few overarching and unifying stories in our culture, and little deep awareness or sense of things to guide and animate our living. Looking on from the margins, which is where they’re mostly located, our ways look pretty compulsive, superficial and alienated.
‘Poor bugger whitefella got no dreaming’. Poor bugger whitefella is obsessed with technology and the assumptions of the so-called ‘real world’, the world of competition, consumption, acquisition and control. And, when you look at the ‘nightmare’ state of society – at our levels of stress, anxiety and depression, at what’s happening to the climate and landscape and the native species – the consequences, for all of us, seem dire.
Of course, from a faith perspective, it’s not that we got no dreaming, it’s more that we forget or discount it, at least at the level of everyday life. Which is why, year after year, the Christian calendar keeps recalling and reorienting us. At Christmas we remember the advent of the son of the God of Holy Dreaming. In services since then, we’ve watched this son grow in wisdom, seen how practices of solitude and solidarity formed him for his work, seen him attend and restore everyday situations – a wedding without wine. And today, we’re reminded of how, in the power of the Great Creator Spirit, he returned to Galilee proclaiming the kingdom – the dreaming.
Luke opens his account of this vital new phase with an introductory comment about the interest being generated as Jesus teaches in the synagogues of the region. After this, we focus in on an incident that for Luke, exemplifies the essence of this mission and message, and (true to form) this consummate storyteller presents it beautifully.
Picture the scene. Jesus is back in Nazareth. People here have known him since he was knee high to a grasshopper; they’ve also heard about his growing reputation. It’s the Sabbath, and in the old familiar synagogue he is the designated speaker. Now you can imagine the atmosphere, the anticipation, as he rises from his place and moves to the front… An attendant passes a scroll containing the words of the prophet Isaiah… He reverently unfurls this sacred script, clearly searching for a particular piece (it’s warm, quiet, still). He locates his place, (looks up at their attentive eyes… back at the text… and back to them). And then begins…
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, in that he has anointed me to announce good news to the poor; has sent me to proclaim release to captives, sight-again to the blind, to send away the oppressed in release, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
And then, he stops… rolls up the scroll… hands it back… and sits down, ready to preach… And, ‘the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him’ (you could’ve heard the proverbial pin drop.) And, he began to say to them, ‘Today…[TODAY] this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ ………
Wow! Talk about dreaming. Those words from Isaiah were freighted with prophetic promise. In and of themselves, they were captivating… commanding! And with Jesus’ claim here, electric! ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ What a message! What a moment!!
Now, according to Luke, this wasn’t all he said that day. It was just the beginning. It was also the essence, the heart, the gist of his message, and for Luke, at this point, this was more than enough! ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’. In other words, today the fuse is ignited; you got your dreaming! Which means that today, you can live it, live into it!!!
Which is exactly what Jesus goes on to do – live it! He preaches to the poor, proclaims release to captives, heals the blind, and frees the oppressed, and he does it, day after day after day. To be clear, the terms ‘poor’, ‘captive’ and ‘blind’ all have some metaphorical range, he is talking about spiritual states here. But don’t downplay or dismiss those with literal conditions, commentators warn, for Jesus meant these as well. Indeed, it was the literal experience of poverty, or blindness, or oppression, that so often also brought a person to spiritual poverty and receptivity. When Jesus speaks of announcing ‘good news to the poor’ here, he was referring to those ‘at the bottom of the economic scale’, Robert Tannehill has written, those lacking ‘even the basics for survival’ (1996.91-2).
‘The year of the Lord’s favour’, which he also announced, was a reference to the year of Jubilee, first mentioned in the Torah, in Leviticus. Now, Leviticus doesn’t mostly make for riveting reading, but let me say that the section on Jubilee (ch. 25) is revolutionary and inspiring. According to the Law (of Moses), every fiftieth year all family property was to be handed back to its original owners, and all indentured servants were to be released, and all debts were to be cancelled. In other words, it was a fresh start for everyone! This remarkable social legislation was designed precisely to stop what’s happening in our world, which is that the rich get richer and richer, while the poor slip ever further into debt and difficulty. This radical redistribution and restoration is what Jesus was anointed to proclaim; this, the year of the Lord’s favour is being fulfilled in your hearing, he says… Today!
But wait, there’s more!! Or should I say less. We’ll, in this case, less is more. For what we don’t pick up here (though his original hears would’ve) is that there are words from Isaiah’s prophecy that Jesus did not announce that day. If you go back and check the source of Jesus’ ‘reading’ in the synagogue, you’ll see that they don’t all come from the same text (see Neville 2010), that begins with Isaiah 61:1, then backtracks to (Isa) 58.6, and then returns to (Isa) 61.2. Or, perhaps it’s better to say that conflates 61.1 with 58.6 before continuing with 61.2. Did I say ‘before continuing’? I did, but in reality this continuation is soon aborted, for after reading 61 verse 1a: ‘to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,’ Jesus stopped, thereby omitting the next line: ‘and the day of vengeance of our God’.
Now, friends, why would Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1–2 but break off precisely where Isaiah complements the good news of comfort with the bad news of vengeance? And, why would Luke, who makes so many connections between Jesus and prophesy, never present his earthly mission as vengeful or vindictive. Could it be that he knew nothing of Jesus preaching vengeance, because Jesus didn’t preach that way? If, as Luke intends, we are to take todays passage as a definitive statement of Jesus’ message, then this is good news for the ‘dreaming’ he inaugurated is of compassion for all, release for all, newness for all! In other words, there are no favourites anymore, no winners and losers. All talk of retribution and punishment is gone. This ‘dream’, you could say, is beyond our wildest dreams. It’s so wild, in fact, that most dismiss it as fantasy. No, they say, this would never work, never happen; not in the ‘real world’.
Well folks, try telling that to Jesus, and to the people who heard and received his touch, or who witnessed his rising. Try telling it to the first disciples, and the church Luke describes in the early chapters of Acts (e.g. Acts 2.43-47). Try telling it to St Francis and St Claire, to Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu, to Rosa Parks, Florence Nightingale, Mary MacKillop, Mother Teresa; try telling it to William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln, and the millions of unnamed saints who’ve laboured in seemingly impossible circumstances with light in their eyes and love in their hearts. Their worlds were transformed by this man and his dreaming, and in his strength, they gave themselves to its fulfillment. Try telling them it could never work!!
Of course, the ‘real world’ looked as intimidating to them as it does to us – maybe more. But Jesus didn’t say, it could never work in the ‘real world’, he said, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’. That’s what they heard, and that’s what they got on with – living the dream.
You whitefella, you got your dreaming… and you got your promise! ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’. God’s ‘dream’ is for the reconciliation of all things in Christ Jesus (cf. Col 1.19-20). It’s what the Great Creator Spirit anointed Jesus to proclaim and live for; it’s what we’re anointed to participate in, today, and all the days God gives us. We got our dreaming, so friends, let’s get into it…
References
Gale, M-A (2000) Poor bugger whitefella got no dreaming: The representation & appropriation of published Dreaming narratives with special reference to David Unaipon’s writings, Adelaide University.
Neville, D (2010) ‘The Spirit of the Lord Is Upon Me’, St Mark’s Review, No. 213, pp. 57-70.
Tannehill, RC (1996) Luke, Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN.
https://stninians.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NM.Lk4_.14-21.pdf