We continue in our series on the gospel of Luke this morning. And I want to give you a 20 second review from last week, because it ties so closely with this morning’s passage. Last week, we read that Jesus stood in a synagogue and read from Isaiah these words:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
and he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor,
to proclaim release to the captives,
recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed
and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

When he was finished, Jesus told them that this scripture pointed to him. People loved it. And within a day, they wanted to kill him. Jesus had such a way with people!

You all lead very busy lives, and know full well how much can be packed into 24 hours. That’s about the time span of today’s passage.

For Jesus, it starts in Capernaum, a town at the far north end of the Sea of Galilee. A century ago, archaeologists there uncovered the ruins of a synagogue that they figured was from the 4th or 5th century AD. But underneath that, they found another foundation of a synagogue that was even older. Many believe it to be the very one that Jesus must have sat in at the start of this day, as he taught. It was the Sabbath …remember that for a minute. And Jesus was impressive. He was very well-received. But as he talks, he’s interrupted.

An individual who was controlled by an evil spirit loudly identifies Jesus as the Messiah…the One, the King who would come to fulfill the longings of Israel. Jesus casts the spirit out, and in such a way that the man is unhurt. The people are amazed. “He speaks with such authority!,” they say. They weren’t used to that.

What they were used to was when the rabbis and scholars taught, it usually sounded like this:

“There is a saying that…”

(then a proverb recited). Or it sounded like this:

“Rabbi Ezra says…”

(then Rabbi Ezra’s quote would be shared). Even when prophets had walked the land, it sounded like this:

“Thus says the Lord…”

and then they relayed what God wanted to communicate. But with Jesus, it sounds like this:

“But I say to you…”

Or, as here,

“Be quiet! Come out of him!”

It’s first person, direct, with authority. And a person is released from spiritual bondage.

Fast forward a bit... Jesus went perhaps a couple of blocks down the street to Simon Peter’s house. Archaeologists have found a house foundation underlying the ruins of an ancient church, and they wonder…was this Peter’s house?

Peter’s mother-in-law is sick. Not just sick, though. It’s interesting. This gospel writer Luke is the one that the apostle Paul tells us was a doctor. And indeed, one can find a little doctor language here. Mark and Matthew share this same story, and say that Peter’s mother-in-law has a fever. But Luke, the doctor, says she had a high fever. Jesus rebukes that fever, just like he rebuked the evil spirit, and an individual is again freed, this time from the physical oppression of illness.

Fast forward a bit more…now the sun has gone down. That means the Sabbath is over. That is important. According to the ancient law, it was wrong to carry any burden on the Sabbath. You see, that qualified as work, and you don’t work on the Sabbath.

But now the Sabbath is over, and so people begin to stream towards Jesus, carrying burdens. Burdens, perhaps, like a colleague from work whose foot was crushed in an accident. Like a tiny baby whose cough was draining her life away, and her parents’ with it. Like a neighbor who was quite literally not in his right mind, and getting worse. Like a sister whose husband died and she seemed to have lost the will to live. They bring their burdens, they carry their people to Jesus. It’s a large crowd.

Notice that it says very carefully that as Jesus went about healing them he lay his hands on each one. As he does that, he changes a crowd into people. Jesus was very good at that.

Crowds are anonymous, overwhelming, nameless. You don’t lay your hands on a crowd. You lay your hands on people. You don’t heal a group, you heal a colleague…a baby…a neighbor…a sister. That’s what Jesus did. Physical healings, spiritual ones…things that bound, oppressed, blinded were fixed. People were given good news, freedom, recovery, release.

“This scripture is being fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus is very, very well received.

Fast forward a little more. The crowd had finally dispersed, everyone had gotten some sleep. But Jesus is up early, before the sun is even up, in a “solitary place,” or a “desert place.” The model morning quiet time! Now, I don’t know if Jesus tested out on the Myers-Briggs as an extrovert or an introvert, but in any case he found it necessary to be alone. To find God, or be found by God. Jesus knew that in the midst of jam-packed days and praying for people and ministering, time alone with God was not optional. He had to have it.

People I know today who take ministry seriously say they must take quiet time with God seriously. If you skimp on time with God, you will quickly find out you have nothing to offer those you are with. Human resources are often not enough for spiritual issues. There is a world of difference between giving someone your best guess or advice, and being filled up with the Spirit of God that you might hear God speak on someone’s behalf.

Yet even as Jesus is alone in this desert place, people find him. He has not just been well-received, he has brought the miraculous, the impossible, the I-Never-Dreamed-It-Could-Happen into their midst, into their town, to their neighborhood, to their families. And rightly perceiving that he is getting ready to leave, they try to talk him out of it.

Of course they do! Jesus has burst on the scene. But he’s not done, Lord no, he’s not done. There are plenty more people in Capernaum who need healing, who need a touch. There are marriages falling apart, illnesses, problems. Jesus ought to just stay here. Ministry is productive, it’s rich, and Jesus is rising rapidly in the polls.

I have a friend who thinks this is Jesus’ fourth temptation. A couple of weeks ago Steve Lympus talked about Jesus in the desert and Satan tempting him three times. And at the end of that story, it says, “the devil left Jesus until an opportune time.” My friend thinks this is the opportune time, yet another temptation: “Stay here, Jesus, we love you and appreciate you and affirm your ministry and want you. You are a big success!”

The devil tempted Jesus to do things that served the devil’s purposes. The crowd tempts Jesus to do good things that served their purposes. But one is just as necessary for Jesus to overcome as the other. He did not come to be a success. We find out, in fact, why he did come:

“I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns also…this is why I was sent.”

This is the classic tough decision: “Which good thing shall I choose?”

Many decisions in life are not between good and bad, but between good and good, or maybe good and better. “Lord, these are both good things, which are you calling me to do? Lord, for us at Bethany there are 20 ministries we can be involved in, which shall we invest in?” For Jesus, the answer was: I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God.

In the original language, this must is a little word that means “necessary.” “It is necessary that I preach the good news.” But even more than that, it is almost always used for a divine necessity. “Before God, in order to obey God, I must preach the Kingdom of God.”

The Kingdom of God is a phrase that will appear 30 more times in Luke. The reign of God. The time and place of God’s favor. The fulfillment of the longing of Israel. The presence of Christ, the Messiah, the King who lives the kingdom…the freeing of captives, sight for the blind, healing the sick, setting things right.

Now, you and I both know there is a problem with the Kingdom. The New Testament church pointed to Jesus’ life, ministry, death on the cross and resurrection to show that God’s Kingdom had come to set things right, that the victory over sin and death had been won. And we cling to this as well. But…there are lots of hard things here on earth now, and more ahead of us. Things are not yet all set right. The Kingdom of God is here…but not all here.

The author Frederick Buechner describes the contrast like this:

“Insofar as here and there, and now and then, God’s kingly will is being done in various odd ways among us even as this moment, the kingdom has come already.

“Insofar as all the odd ways we do his will at this moment are at best half-baked and half-hearted, the kingdom is still a long way off—a hell of a long way off, to be more precise and theological.

The opposite of the Kingdom of God seems to be the kingdoms of people. I don’t care which one you want to name:

• The Kingdom of the U.S.,
• the Kingdom of Iraq,
• the Kingdom of Microsoft or Boeing,
• the Kingdom of Controlling My Own Life,
• the Kingdom of Fear,
• the Kingdom of Watching Out for Myself.

These kingdoms all have a way of making us captives, of oppressing and blinding us.

We long for Jesus' kingdom, the kingdom of God, that brings freedom and healing. We long for Jesus to pick us out of a crowd and lay hands on us and heal us.

Do you remember the old Wizard of Oz movie? And what a technological breakthrough it was that the first part of the movie (in Kansas) was black and white…but when Dorothy landed in Oz, the screen exploded into what they called for years living color! Viewers were so used to black and white images that the color totally changed everything. We get these glimpses of the Kingdom that Jesus brought and brings and will bring. We don’t know where they may pop up.

Last week there was a memorial service here in the sanctuary for Martin Maybee, a friend from the Wednesday Night Dinner community, who very suddenly passed away at age 62. Martin had no family at all that anyone knew of. When word of his death spread at the Wednesday Night Dinner, people started to ask:

Will there be a service?

We planned one for Thursday the 30th. We ended up with 40-50 people here. For some, it was clearly the most important thing in their week, for others perhaps the only appointment they had.

“Are you going to Martin’s service?”

Some came two hours early. Some who knew Martin from his volunteering at different shelters or meals, some from living situations, some from Wednesday nights.

One of the first things that happened was one of Martin’s friends, Rodney, came and told me he had written a piano piece in honor of Martin. Now, Rodney is a man who has had a lot of ups and downs in his life. Somewhere, though I don’t think he can read music, he learned how to play the piano quite well. So towards the beginning of the service, I called Rodney up here. He is not a man comfortable in front of people, but he stepped up to the mike and said something like this:

“I knew Martin really well. Martin was a strong Christian. I’m a Christian too. And I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ! I wrote this song for Martin.”

And he went up to that piano and sat down and played a beautiful piece of music. And as the first notes came out, this sanctuary exploded into living color. We were on holy ground.

Later, we had a time of open sharing. People so very different from one another (education, economics, everything) talked about how this gentle Christian man had touched them. All those differences melted away; they just didn’t matter anymore. Living color. The Kingdom of God.

We see these glimpses other places. Every time a husband goes to his wife and says,

“Honey, I need to ask your forgiveness. I was really selfish, I wasn’t thinking about you.”

The Kingdom of God.

Every time an adult daughter goes to a mom who has been estranged and says,

“Mom, I really want to know you. We’ve wasted so many years. Can we begin to talk?”

The Kingdom of God.

Every time someone invites Jesus into their life. Every time a small group invites someone in, every time someone watches out for someone standing on the margins wishing they could be inside…the kingdom of God draws near.

These are glimpses, places where heaven reaches out. Remember when Jesus taught his disciples (and us) to pray:

“Father, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

When earth and heaven begin to look like each other… the Kingdom of God is at hand, brought by Jesus the One who embodied both earth and heaven.

This was the first day in Jesus’ years of ministry we know about. It started out with people being amazed by Jesus. It ends with people unhappy with him. Jesus was good at that! But honestly, by that time, it had been quite a day. And Jesus had to move on if others were going to know…the Kingdom of God. In living color. Let’s pray.