Sunday Service 14th January
What should our expectations be
14/1/23
Call to worship
Hymn 181: For the beauty of the earth
Time for all
Hymn 351: Jesus hands were kind hands
Reading: Luke 4: 16-30 Amanda
Prayer
Hymn 182: Now thank we all our God
Sermon
Prayer of Dedication
Hymn 161: O God our help in ages past
Benediction
Welcome to our meditation for 14th January 2024.
It is hard to know what to expect from this year.
It is hard to know what we expect from the year, do we really want to reach out to others with God’s love, or do we secretly want to just hide in a corner and hope the world goes away?
Today we start looking at Christ at the start of his ministry and reflect on how that might affect our ministry.
Sermon
Expectations can be dangerous thing if they dictate how we feel about something.
On Christmas day Roseanna went to turn the turkey after it has been in the oven for five hours, and to her horror discovered that the oven fan was working perfectly, the oven light was working perfectly, the only thing not working in the oven was the heating element, and the turkey was cold.
The gift that my granddaughter Leah gave me for Christmas was a stinking head cold for the New Year.
Did I have a terrible Christmas and New Year...no, actually it was ok, not what I expected, but my feelings were not dictated by what I was expecting, but the fellowship that I was going to be sharing...which was wonderful.
Sometimes we have expectations, and we let our feelings be dictated by whether our expectations are fulfilled. And that can be dangerous. Because when they are challenged, then we feel challenged.
Our passage today is at the very start of Christ’s public ministry.
In many ways this is Jesus creating his manifesto, his promises to the people as to what his ministry is all about.
‘The Spirit of God is upon me,
because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind;
to free the oppressed and announce the time has come when the Lord will save his people.’
That is not just any passage, these are not just random nice words Jesus has put together; these words come from Isaiah 6, a part of the Bible that speaks of the restoration of Israel after its time in exile in Babylon. The captives are the people who have been deprived of a nation for decades. They are going to be allowed to go home, to be a people with their own land again.
And with it comes all the romance of finding that you will be a nation again.
But the reality ended up far from the expectation.
In the original prophecy it says things like;
‘My people, foreigners will serve you. They will look after your flocks and tend your vineyards.’
‘You will enjoy the wealth of the nations and be proud that it is yours.’
‘You will live in your own land and your wealth will be doubled; your joy will last forever.’
And the people took the poetry literally and were so disappointed, and had been disappointed for centuries.
In the time of Jesus the land was not their own, it was Roman land, and Rome had outsourced the rule of the land to despots like Herod and maintained his rule with garrisons of roman soldiers.
Their religion was in theory theirs to practice but the leaders of the faith were put in place by political decree and many were self-serving if not corrupt.
In ordinary people’s eyes this was not a prophecy that had been fulfilled.
Therefore, it was a prophecy that was still to be fulfilled.
And here comes Jesus and he announces that it is his purpose in life to fulfil the prophecy.
What could be better?
God’s will, will be done.
And the only problem they had was that they were a bit confused about what God’s will was, and what their will was.
You see they were immediately all for Jesus at that point, because in their eyes Jesus was offering them a place where their riches would be doubled.
Where they wo