Today In Your Hearing – This Scripture Has Come True!

Luke 4:14-21  1 Cor 12:12-31a

“I really think you’ll like this film Dad, just give it a try”.

I wasn’t so sure as my daughter thrust into my hand a DVD describing itself as the most romantic story since “Titanic” and the cover was emblazoned with a boy and a girl about to kiss each other in the pouring rain, but I decided to give the film “The Notebook”, a half an hour to convince me.

Now whilst there are some silly cheesy bits in it and one or two scenes a little too steamy for a Vicar’s  pulpit recommendation – the hidden depth behind the love story held me captive.

The opening scene is set in a residential care home and is of a man who gives his time as a volunteer to go and read to an elderly lady resident with no long term memory. He reads to her a love story of a young couple who met in the 1940’s, but whose romance was cut short as a result of interfering parents. They go their separate ways but neither can forget the other and then they meet up on the eve of the girl’s marriage to someone else and all the old love is rekindled and heartbreaking  choices have to be hurriedly made.

The film flits to and fro between the predictable romantic action and the lady being read to in the care home. She becomes increasingly captivated by the story, desperate to discover what happens in the end and as the story reaches its climax she leaps to her feet with joy “But I am the girl in the story aren’t I and you are the boy” she exclaims,  and for precious moments she regains her memory and embraces the volunteer helper who is her husband, calls him by his name and they share a meal together, reunited in love.  At the end of the meal he reaches for her hands but she recoils from the touch. “Don’t touch me” she cries “I don’t know who you are or why you are here and she calls for the nursing staff that they might take this man away. The veil of her inability to remember , to love and be loved falls heavily into place once more.

What I loved was that in the retelling of the story the woman remembered who she was.  Delivered for a fleeting hour or two from loneliness and confusion, to seeing the glorious truth about how she was loved.

“Today in your hearing this scripture has come true” those were the words of Jesus which spoilt everything. The congregation at Nazareth was proud to welcome the young man home. He had a growing reputation as a teacher and a healer and they were delighted to see that one of their own had risen to such prominence.  But to claim, that in Himself the story of their salvation had come alive like this. That he was the anointed one. This was too much and they rushed at him in fury and confusion.

“Today in your hearing this scripture has come true”. Now, you will find it distinctly uncomfortable when I say that I believe that this needs to be said of us – the church – wherever we are and what ever we are doing. That we see our lives as retelling the story which jogs the memory of those who have forgotten that they are loved by God, or who doubted it, or who never dared believe it.

I don’t mean that we should stand on street corners reading out loud from the bible – but that people should be able to pick up from our lives the essence of the story that was and is the life of Jesus.  That essence  in black and white in our Gospel reading.

Good news to the poor. Release to the captives.  Sight to the blind.  Liberty to the oppressed.

It sounds as if we’re all to be miracle makers then.

But put simply our lives need to tell the story of God’s “yes” to all of us, and when we do that effectively, it will jog the memory of others about the extent to which they are loved and where the source of that love can be found.

For there is a great deal of amnesia about God.  Our world overloads us with idols and images that are so attractive and pushes us into a frantic lifestyle so that we can own as many of them as we can., and in this accumulation God is buried away, buried so deep as to have become not needed any more, not needed and completely forgotten. We are in the business of jogging memories that what has been forgotten is the ground of our very being.      

“Today in your hearing this scripture has come true” – God’s yes to people. The story which should make people jump from their seats in joy “ I am that girl, or that boy, this is the story of our love isn’t it”

This is the week of prayer for Christian Unity and do we really know what we’re praying for? I’m praying that across churches we might build on the things we can say “Yes” to from our common understanding of what the Gospel adds up to in practice, and that’s our reading for us again– but we hone in on the “no’s” – let’s sit down and agree on the negatives first shall we.

If you got the thirty street pastors into our coffee shop one Friday night and said – before you go anywhere let’s reach an agreement about baptism, Eucharist, leadership, authority, women and sexuality, they would never get onto the streets, but do you see if cut to the heart of Jesus’ story, of where the love he showed then, takes us now, we find a common bond, and it’s that common bond that sends us out effectively and something like street pastors has the capacity to jog the memory of those who had forgotten about God.

Our Epistle reading reminds us that we are all called to this task in different ways – one body with many members – but each member is united by that bond of making the scripture come true in them – communicating God’s “yes” to people. Seeing that no newcomer comes through these doors without being welcomed, that no one is left standing on their own at coffee time or ignored at the passing of the peace – that’s how it starts taking shape.

Then comes the tap on my shoulder about this sermon – tell us Vicar – how God’s yes is  to be  heard for the people of Haiti – how are their memories to be jogged concerning the love of God – how does the scripture comes true in their hearing…..and I struggle with that…our prayer must be real and passionate for those people…our giving can be generous…….but when I sit at home watching the scenes on the news I get that sense of powerlessness, that this is not another world, but it’s God’s world and just an aircraft journey away from where I am. and I feel  we are all captive, we are all oppressed  - all still needing the ministry of the anointed one who stood up to speak in the synagogue in Nazareth, and maybe I can do more, maybe the church can be more, if we all just accept that “powerless” is what there is – we don’t have control, but we do have this love and the question is how far dare we stretch it.

The closing scene of The Notebook allows us to glimpse the inscription in the front cover of the book from which the husband had read to his wife. “All you have to do is read this story – it said and I will come back to you!” All we have to do is live out the story of Jesus as his one body of many members, and the people will come back to him.    RH24.12.10