347 Not Always What They Seem

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Not Always What They Seem”, originally shared on January 22, 2025. It was the 347^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   There’s a lot going on in the world right now, but what does it mean, really? How can we know what’s appearance and what’s reality? Today, we’re going to find out.

   I saw a news story online the other day about the private grand opening of an upscale shoe store called “Palessi”. The store had a vaguely European look, and the invited guests were fashion influencers and their guests.

   People interviewed by the press commented on the high quality and the value of the shoes at $300 - $400, and up to $600 per pair.

   After the opening had been going on for a while, the organizers revealed that the shoes weren’t, in fact, “Palessi” shoes but were “Payless” shoes from Payless stores.  😊

   Those who had bought them had their money refunded, and they got to keep the shoes.

   This coming Sunday, in the gospel text that will be read in the vast majority of churches throughout the world, people get a surprise, too, regarding appearance and reality, at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in Luke 4:14-21,

¹⁴ Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. ¹⁵ He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

¹⁶ When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

¹⁸       “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

¹⁹       to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

   Now suppose some kid who had grown up in your neighborhood came home to visit and told everybody at the local worship service that he was the fulfillment of scripture. I’m guessing that it wouldn’t go so well for him.

   We’ll see how that went with Jesus next week (spoiler alert: it didn’t go so well).

   His appearance was not the same as his reality.

   And His reality is often not so clear to us today either. At least not in many churches in the United States today.

   For example, Jesus draws from the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 61:1-2, a part of the Old Testament that prophecies the coming of the Messiah, the deliverer, to say that the Spirit of the Lord, the third person of the one God, the Trinity, has anointed him to 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.   

   He hasn’t done any of those things. But he says that the prophecy has been fulfilled right there.

   What does he mean?

   Jesus proclaims that he is the Messiah. He’s the one who the people of God had been waiting for for 1,000 years. They had been oppressed by the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, and now the Romans for 1,000 years. And he was there to heal the blind and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

   The Messiah had come, but the people were still blind, because they couldn’t see what was going on; they were oppressed by evil, and they couldn’t recognize the coming of the Lord’s favor when it was right there in front of their faces.

   It was Jesus.

   It is hard to know what’s going on in the world, at least what it means for us.

   I heard a story once about a Chinese rancher who was visited by his neighbor, who hadn’t been by for a while.

   “How are things going?” the neighbor said. “I don’t know,” replied the rancher.

   “What do you mean you don’t know?”

   “Well, he said, “do you remember the big thunderstorm we had a couple of months ago?”

   “Yes.”

   “All my horses got spooked and smashed out or the coral.” “That’s bad, right?” said the neighbor. “I don’t know,” replied the rancher.

   “What do you mean you don’t know?”

   “My men went out to get them and they found my horses and 5 mustangs.” “That’s good, right?”, said the neighbor. “I don’t know,” replied the rancher.

   “What do you mean you don’t know?”

   “My son tried to break one of them and he got thrown and broke his arm.” “That’s bad, right?” said the neighbor. “I don’t know,” replied the rancher.

   “What do you mean you don’t know?”

   “A warlord came by the next day and conscripted all my men, but he didn’t take my son because he had a broken arm.” “That’s good, right?” said the neighbor. “I don’t know,” replied the rancher.

   “What do you mean you don’t know?”

   And the story keeps going on and on like that.

   We may not know whether what happens to us is really good or really bad in life, yet we can know the power of God because it is revealed to us in Jesus Christ. The same Spirit that anointed Jesus reveals Jesus to us. It comes from outside of ourselves. It is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, primarily through the Bible.

   In this week’s Gospel reading, the Holy Spirit anoints Jesus, and then Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah. The people didn’t recognize Him because they had not yet received the Holy Spirit, or had their eyes opened by the Holy Spirit.

   Jesus was the one who would set them free from all their brokenness, from all the effects of sin. But, it was a lot to absorb.

   Once they got over the initial shock, he was popular with the people. Some thought he was there to start a military rebellion. Some of them got free food and medical care. But, when it stopped, and Jesus told them that he had come to die, to restore the living relationship with the one true living God for which they were created, they crucified him.

   But no one took his life, he gave it and then took it back again.

   He had come to die and to rise, but people wanted a social service agency, a revolutionary organization, and a power center based on their identity. They only wanted religious language, not its power, much like many churches today.

   This attitude has left us with churches who have nothing to offer the world except another group of like-minded people doing what the world is already doing, and much more effectively.

   And we see it today in the Church’s response to the current disastrous fires in Southern California.

   We’ve seen this before.

   For example, after the academic popularity of Liberation Theology had waned, it was observed that the Roman Catholic Church opted for the poor. The poor opted for Pentecostalism.

   So, if the world does not find much from us that challenges them, or gives them a vision of a better world, or a better self, or truly improves their lives, are we surprised that they do not seek us out in a time of need, or listen to us when we offer an alternative.

   How do we do these things? How do we tell people about the year of the Lord’s favor?

   I helped to lead worship and preach at a bi-lingual Mandarin and English worship service in Monterey Park last Sunday.

   Afterward we shared a meal of Chinese food, as Chinese/Taiwanese people eat, with the congregation, prepared by a family in the congregation.

   After that, I met with a group of church members and leaders to review the pastor’s progress toward ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as his mentor and to make plans for going forward.

   After that, Sally and I and our son James and his girlfriend attended the annual Lunar New Year street festival in Monterey Park, and it was intense!

   There were street vendors, carnival rides, a performance stage and thousands of people. I am attempting to learn Mandarin Chinese, and the words I saw and heard swirling around me was exciting.

   Sally and I and James and his girlfriend were there with people jostling to see what was happening between the established shops on the outside of the street and the double-sided row of pop-up vendors in the center. There were locations for major multi-national businesses and mom and pop stores, and Buddhist evangelists giving out tote bags, and the smoke and smell of real Chinese and Taiwanese food being cooked. We saw a dragon dance parade and a group of anti-communist demonstrators down the narrow passageway. It all celebrated the Year of the Snake.

   And in the midst of all this, there were Christians who had positioned themselves on a sidewalk, evangelizing, personally greeting people with, “Jesus loves you”, handing out evangelistic tracts in Mandarin, Spanish, and English, with invitations to come to hear the Gospel, to a Children’s Character Garden encouraging their development, and to a “New Year Gospel Dinner” at various locations, and more. There was what looked like a family group that had set up a small audio system and was singing songs, with a group of children singing one I knew, “Jesus loves me, this I know…” 

   What do we do that is actually Evangelism, that actually names the Name above all names, that proclaims the Messiah as our deliverer, our Savior who has reconciled us to God, who invites people to know the transformed, new life in Jesus Christ? How do we proclaim the peace that the world cannot give in the name of Jesus, who has already begun and will someday bring a perfected new heaven and a new earth?

   I sometimes think of the story about Billy Sunday, an Evangelist who was active and highly influential during the first two decades of the 20^th century in the U.S. He was a flamboyant, former professional baseball player who would sometimes slide head-first across the stage as if he were sliding into home plate in order to make a point.

   He once responded to a cleric who questioned his circus-like methods by asking how that cleric did evangelism. The critic replied, “I don’t do it.” Billy Sunday replied, in a response also attributed to evangelist Dwight L. Moody, “It is clear you don't like my way of doing evangelism. You raise some good points. Frankly, I sometimes do not like my way of doing evangelism. But I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.”

   There is a lot going on in the world right now. Many people are apprehensive, and some are even discouraged.

   That’s where we find the people of God, just as this week’s Gospel reading is taking place. And then, in what the Bible calls “the fullness of time”, Jesus came and was not recognized for the full reality of who he was.

   We, however, live on the other side of the cross and the resurrection, of the Day of Pentecost, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We have good news to share.

   We are like the men in an ice-fishing shack downstream.

   I grew up in Wisconsin and the sports caster on the TV channel from Green Bay, I think it was KFRV (for Fox River Valley) used to close his Friday night broadcasts with a funny story sent in by one of his viewers.

   One Friday, he told about a group of guys who had gone out ice-fishing.

   For the uninitiated, that means going out onto a frozen lake, chopping a hole in the ice, and dropping a fishing line in there. Or, if you are a little more affluent, and you have confidence in the thickness of the ice, and you have a truck and some time on your hands, you haul a shack out there and bore a hole with your auger, drop an automatic fish-bite notification system in the water, and then drink and play cards with your buddies all day.

   The guy who sent in the story had all the equipment, but he was actually there to fish, and he brought his black labrador retriever along for company.

   At some point, he got a bite. And it was a big one! He fought that fish, and he finally pulled it through the hole in the ice and into the shack. As he was removing the hook, though, the fish flopped around and fell down through the hole and back into the water.

   The dog, though, being a retriever, saw the prey escape and dove into the water after it.

   The owner was shocked and waited for the dog to come back, and waited and waited, but the dog didn’t come back.

   Meanwhile, there were a bunch of guys who had been drinking and playing cards all day in their ice-fishing shack. They had gotten themselves pretty hammered when, all of a sudden, “Woosh!”, the black lab saw a little open water above him, and came flying up through the hole and into the shack, shaking the water off of his back!

   The sportscaster said that those guys sobered up pretty quick!

   It was like that when the people of God first saw Jesus for who he was at the beginning of his public ministry. What a shock!

   It’s often like that when people who have been separated from God by their sin first experience the presence and the love and grace of God.

   How can we know the difference between appearance and reality? When it comes to the most important thing in life, we can’t. But God can reveal Him to us in Jesus Christ by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

   We can know what’s real and what’s not through the Word and the Sacraments, in the transformative presence of God.

   We can hear the good news and receive it with joy.

   We can proclaim the good news of Jesus’ victory at the cross over sin, death, and all things that defy God.

   We can share the good news of reality with friends and relatives and total strangers and plant a seed. Jesus has been anointed, and he goes before us, bringing the good news to everybody, and we who are already being saved, can name the Name.