January 27, 2019 “Silent Partner” – Luke 4:14-21

Luke 4:14-21
“Silent Partner”
January 27, 2019 – Third Sunday after Epiphany

In Charles Dickens’ novel, young David Copperfield is apprenticed to the legal firm of Spenlow and Jorkins. Despite the firm’s two partners, David finds that he always deals only with Mr. Spenlow. Nonetheless, Mr. Jorkins seems ever-present even though he is ever-silent. Whenever Spenlow is asked for some favor or for some consideration of a client, he always expresses deference to the opinion of Jorkins.

If a client asks for leniency regarding the payment of a bill, Mr. Spenlow would say that, if it were only his opinion to be considered there might be room for such compassion, but that Mr. Jorkins would be quite immovable. If a clerk wanted a raise in salary… well Mr. Spenlow might have granted it, but he was sure that “Mr. Jorkins wouldn’t listen to such a proposition.” Over and over, Spenlow names his partner Jorkins as the reason for his most hard and cruel business decisions.

As it turns out in Dickens’ book, the silent presence of Jorkins is only an excuse for Spenlow to exercise his own will. In point of fact, Copperfield discovers, Jorkins is a mild, retiring man, who simply lets Spenlow use his name to deceptively have his own way in all matters of the firm.

Today as we look at Jesus’ inaugural address in the synagogue of Nazareth, at the beginning of His ministry, we might get the impression that He has just such a silent partner as Mr. Spenlow did. Using the beginning of Isaiah 61, as the Scripture reader for that Sabbath service, He read out the words, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me…”

That declaration that the Spirit of the Lord was on Him was literally true. Two weeks ago we remembered Jesus’ baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended on Him in the form of a dove. If anyone could claim to have God’s Spirit on him, it was Jesus.

Yet other than that dove, and some tongues of fire in the second chapter of Acts, we never actually see the Holy Spirit. In John 3:8, Jesus said the Spirit is like the wind. You may hear its sound, “but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” The Spirit is invisible and mysterious. Like the wind, we may not even hear His coming. By claiming the Holy Spirit with the words of Isaiah, Jesus sets up an invisible, almost silent partner for His own practice.

Jesus is setting up shop here, you know. Just like a newly minted attorney with a J.D. degree, a freshly licensed medical doctor with an M.D., or a college instructor with a finished dissertation and a Ph.D., Jesus came back to His hometown ready for business.

It was not quite the beginning of His work. It was not the first place He practiced. Verses 14 and 15 make it clear that Christ had already been at work in towns throughout the whole region. Last week we read how He did first miracle in Cana. He had done His residency, taught as an adjunct, whatever you want to call His warm-up ministry. Verse 15 says everyone had good words to say about Him. Yet now He had come to open an office in the town, as it says in verse 16, “where He had been brought up.”

In the Nazareth synagogue, Jesus staked His claim on His own title. It wasn’t the jumble of letters that represent modern degrees, like B.A., M.S., D.D., or my own M.Div., but it was a title that followed His name. Ann Landers once got a letter asking if she knew whether “Christ” was Jesus’ last name. Since she lived in Chicago, she went to the best Christian authority she knew and asked the now late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin about it. His response was correct. “Christ” is not really a name at all. It is a title.

“Christ” means just what Jesus read in verse 18, that Spirit of the Lord is upon Him, “because he has anointed me.” “Christ” means “anointed.” It’s the equivalent of the Hebrew word, “Messiah,” which means the same. That old kitchen staple, Crisco Oil, gets its name from the same root, the Greek verb, chriō, which is “to anoint.” Iesus Christos, Jesus Christ means “Jesus, the Anointed One.” A sign over Jesus’ office would need to read, “Jesus comma Christ” or “Jesus the Christ.” Christ is His title, not His last name.

Jesus was not anointed with oil, like ancient kings of Israel were. Even then, oil was not the point, but symbolized something else. When Jesus read those ancient words from the scroll of Isaiah, He meant His old friends and neighbors to realize that He was the Christ because He was anointed with the Holy Spirit. That’s what anointing with oil symbolized in Israel. Sweet, pure olive oil dripping down upon one’s head signified the desire that God’s Holy Spirit come down upon that person.

There in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus did what we heard Ezra do in Nehemiah 8. He read God’s Word out loud in a worship service. It’s a practice as old as Moses reading the Law to the children of Israel, but it became a regular thing, a standard part of Jewish worship around Nehemiah’s time, during the exile in Babylon. With the Temple temporarily destroyed and unavailable, the focus of God’s people turned more and more toward hearing His Word.

So by the time Jesus stood up to read in Nazareth, He was simply doing what any devout and righteous Jewish man might do, taking a turn reading the Scriptures, like our own Scripture readers here at Valley Covenant. But Jesus took the opportunity to find a particular place in the Isaiah scroll and in the prophet’s words announce His title and His mission to everyone present.

Just the way Jesus read sparked their attention. Everyone woke up. Verse 20 says that when He sat down—in those days you read Scripture standing, then sat down to preach—when He sat down “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” Then Jesus added the clincher: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He wasn’t just reading. Isaiah’s words were His words. For hundred of years, those words had waited for Him to come and open that scroll and read them as His very own. The boy everyone knew came home and announced that He was the Christ. Isaiah was speaking about Him.

Jesus came to town and set up shop. What kind of business is done by someone with the title Christ? The rest of verse 18, still quoting Isaiah, explains. The practice of the Christ, His business, is to “bring good news to the poor,” “to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.” His work is “let the oppressed go free,” and “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” To sum it all up in a single word, Jesus comma Christ is in the salvation business. He came to heal, to set free, to save people.

The Holy Spirit is Jesus’ silent partner in the business of salvation. Unlike Mr. Spenlow naming Mr. Jorkins in David Copperfield, when Jesus names the Holy Spirit as His partner, it’s not just a front for His own wishes and plans. As Jesus’ ministry unfolds, it’s obvious that He does what He does and says what He says at the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit of God.

Earlier in Luke, at the end of chapter 2, you can read how even at age 12, Jesus knew that His work was not just His own pleasure. As the KJV puts it, He said to His parents, “Didn’t you know I had to be about my Father’s business?” Jesus has partners: the Father who sent Him, and the silent Partner, the Holy Spirit who came down on Him.

At the very beginning of chapter 4, we see again that the Spirit is an active guide for Jesus. Verses 1 and 2 say that He “was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days…” Spending forty days starving and wrestling with temptation was not Jesus’ own human choice. No one would choose that on their own. It was the Holy Spirit’s direction, the Spirit’s plan to prove that the Son of God could live a perfect human life and so change the course of our lives.

All through His ministry, Jesus understood what He said and did in terms of His partnership with the Holy Spirit. When in Matthew 12 He did miracles and some people accused Him of using the power of the devil, Jesus was not offended for Himself. He said they were blaspheming against His silent partner, against the Holy Spirit.

Ultimately, Jesus had a monumental business plan. His plan was to bring you and I into the partnership. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is a fine old firm, and they want us to join them. The Holy Spirit is the active partner and agent in making that happen.

In Luke 11:13, when Jesus concluded His teaching on prayer, He said that if even human parents know how to give good gifts to their children, “how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

In John’s Gospel, Jesus prepared the disciples for His death and resurrection, and ultimately His departure into heaven, by promising the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus in the flesh would be gone, would be in heaven, but the Spirit would come and would live with everyone who believes in Jesus.

As evangelical Christians we often talk about Jesus living in us, about praying and asking Jesus into our hearts. But the way that happens is through the Holy Spirit. It’s the Spirit who comes to us and brings the life of Jesus Christ into. The Holy Spirit brings us into the life of Christ, into His partnership.

We make a huge mistake, therefore, if we are not truly Trinitarian in our theology, if we forget, in particular, the role of the Holy Spirit in our salvation. That’s partly why I’m focusing today on the mention of the Holy Spirit in this text. So you and I will not forget that we receive Jesus Christ and His salvation only in and through the operation of the Holy Spirit.

If the Spirit was Jesus’ partner, then He is our partner too. Jesus promised in John 16:7 that the Holy Spirit would come alongside us as a Counselor, and further on, as a guide into all the truth that Jesus wants us to know. As believers and followers of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is our constant partner, directing our lives and making known to us the Father and the Son.

The worry, though, is that the Holy Spirit way too often is for us the kind of silent partner that Mr. Jorkins was for Mr. Spenlow. Because the Spirit lives in us, because He Is often very quiet, it is easy to confuse the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus, with our own spirits. We create our own plans, live out our own wishes, find our own course through life, and yet imagine that we are following the direction of the Holy Spirit. We may even say out loud, as some Christians do, “The Holy Spirit told me this,” but in reality we told it to ourselves. We are Spenlows making the Spirit into our Mr. Jorkins and doing whatever we want to do, not what He wants. We are using the Spirit’s name to have our own way.

One antidote to that confusion between our own spirits and the Spirit of God is to realize that one of the primary ways the Spirit speaks and directs is just like we saw in the readings today. Christians believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the Scriptures. So when someone stands up and reads them to us, that is definitely and without a doubt the voice of the Spirit, the voice of God. We can be sorely mistaken about whether what we hear in our hearts and minds is the Holy Spirit. We cannot be mistaken when we hear the words of the Bible. Those words are always the Spirit talking to us, guiding us.

Jesus’ very own understanding of the Holy Spirit’s partnership in His ministry, in His business, was framed in words from Scripture. Look again at what the Spirit anointed Jesus to do: “bring good news to the poor… 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.” That’s what the Holy Spirit, acting as Jesus’ partner, directed Him to do. Through the words of Scripture, He is directing us to do the same.

We really are partners in the business of God, and not just to collect a share of the profits. The profit is abundant, as I preached last week. Like that huge quantity of wine Jesus created at the wedding in Cana, the love of God is lavish. We get to join in abundance and joy experienced by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But as part of their life, as partners in their business, we also share in their work, in their mission.

In short, if we really believe in the Holy Spirit, then we will be listening for Him to direct us into the same concerns that Jesus expressed here in the words of Isaiah. We will be expecting the Spirit to show us poor people waiting to hear good news, captives crying out to be set free, blind people seeking vision, oppressed people looking for release. And perhaps most of all, we will let the Holy Spirit spur us on to constantly proclaim that now is the time of God’s favor, that God loves and cherishes everyone and wants all people to know His love.

This afternoon we are going to meet together as a congregation. It’s a business meeting. You may hear that and picture what we ordinarily call “business.” So you expect to hear reports, talk about money and budgets, and elect officers. And so we will. But if the Holy Spirit is our partner in this business, than those things are not what matters most. The real business we have is the Spirit’s business, the business of bringing good news and hope to people who have none. That’s what we want to sit around our tables and talk about, less formally, but more passionately. It’s the Spirit’s work of going out, of getting outside our own selves, outside our own wants and wishes, to care about the people God cares about.

Unless we let the Trinity of God, including His Spirit, be a practical reality for us, we don’t really believe in the Trinity. Unless you and I are willing to let the Spirit of God be more than a silent partner in our business, we are not really following Christ. Unless the business the Spirit gave Jesus is also our business, we are not a church.

The people of Nazareth missed their partnership with the Spirit. If you read on, you find in verse 23 that their whole concern was for themselves. They wanted Jesus to do the kind of miracles for them that He had done elsewhere. They missed the whole point of His anointing, of His purpose there. They did not understand a Spirit that would push them beyond their own needs to consider the needs of others. They would not let that Spirit come down on them.

Whatever “business” we here at Valley Covenant must attend to in the way of finances and record-keeping, our primary business is to follow God’s Holy Spirit in the business of Jesus. If the Spirit leads us out into the desert to be hungry for awhile, it may be that He’s only getting us ready for real partnership with Him.

There was silence for a bit after Jesus read the Scriptures. They took in and processed those words they heard. Let’s be quiet together ourselves for a few moments now. The Spirit is often quiet, but He is not silent. He has spoken to us in God’s Word. Jesus went out to the silent desert to listen to the Spirit for forty days. Let’s you and I spend forty seconds this morning, thinking about what He said, and about what our business really is.

Amen.