In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

“Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee. . . .”  This is how our Gospel story begins today.  Jesus returns in the power of the Spirit . . . but where is he returning from?  Ah, that’s an important question . . . because in today’s story Jesus is making his first public appearance following his baptism.  You all remember the story of the baptism and what followed, don’t you?  Jesus goes to the Jordan and, as Luke tells it, after everyone in the crowd is baptized, Jesus comes forward and is baptized by John.  The heavens open and the Spirit, in the form of a dove, comes down upon Jesus.  And a voice is heard from heaven saying, “You are my Son, my beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  Then, filled with the Spirit, Jesus is led into the desert where he fasts and prays for a long time.  In the desert he is eventually tempted by the devil . . . tempted to turn away from his work.  Jesus, of course, resists these temptations and rebukes the devil.

And now, as we heard this morning, Jesus is returning to Galilee, filled with the Spirit.  He’s returning to his hometown; he’s going home.  That makes sense, doesn’t it?  These momentous, life-changing events have happened to him . . . it makes sense, doesn’t it, that he’d want to go home? . . . to touch base, to remember his life before, to recollect himself, before he really begins this entirely new chapter in his life.  I don’t know about you, but if I’d gone through anything close to what Jesus has just gone through – dealing directly with both God and Satan – I’d probably wanna go see my mom, too.  But it’s a long way from the desert to Nazareth, and Jesus IS filled with the Spirit, so as he travels, he can’t help himself . . . he HAS to stop and teach in the synagogues he comes to as he travels home.  And his reputation begins to grow, people are deeply impressed by what he tells them.

Finally, Jesus reaches his hometown.  And on the Sabbath, he goes to the synagogue to worship as he always does.  It seems that the rabbi, or president (the person presiding over the worship), invites Jesus to read.  A synagogue service at this time was very like the first part of our mass . . . there was the reading of a psalm, a remembrance of the law (like the summary of the law that we hear every Sunday), some passages of Scripture were read, then a sermon was given, and finally a blessing.  It makes sense, doesn’t it, that the hometown boy who’s making good out in the big world is invited to read in the synagogue?  Jesus is given the scroll of Isaiah.  It’s likely, in Jesus’ time, that the reader got to choose what he wanted to read. . . and Jesus chooses this particular passage from Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

Then Jesus sits down.  Everyone is staring at him.  Now, there may be a couple of reasons for this:  First, since he chose this particular passage, people would want to know WHY?  And second, it’s likely that the person who read was expected to say a few words about the Scripture passage . . . to give a sermon of sorts.  Remember, Jesus was starting to get quite a reputation as a teacher . . . so, the folks would want to know not only why he’d chosen the text he did, but what he had to say about it.  And so Jesus begins by saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  This is where our text for today ends.  But the story continues.  Some of you probably remember what happens . . . at first everyone in the synagogue is very impressed by Jesus’ words, but he has more to say . . . and as he continues, the reaction of the crowd changes from admiration to astonishment to fury.  In fact, they throw Jesus out of the synagogue and take him to a cliff to throw him over it!  (Now, I know I’ve given some mediocre sermons . . . but I’m awfully glad that you’ve never reacted THIS negatively to what I’ve had to say . . . you may not have liked something I’ve said, but at least you’ve never tried to kill me!)  Not a very auspicious beginning to Jesus’ ministry!

It seems that being filled with the Spirit is a pretty dangerous thing!  Of course, Luke has a bit of an agenda in putting this story where he does in his Gospel . . . at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.  One of the things Luke is doing is to summarize the whole Gospel story:  Jesus, going to his own people, is initially rejected by them and reaches out to others.  Because Luke is summarizing the Gospel in today’s story, there are a lot of details that we could dwell on and expand . . . but the one I’d like to focus on for a moment, is this business of being filled with the Spirit.

In a way, it sounds like being filled with the Spirit means that we lose control over what we do.  When Jesus is baptized and the Spirit descends upon him, Luke says that the Spirit then LEADS Jesus into the desert.  The Gospel of Mark puts it even more strongly; there we hear that the Spirit DRIVES Jesus into the desert.  This sense of the Spirit compelling Jesus makes me think of some of his teachings, like the one about having to lose your life to find it.  But, on the other hand, while the Gospels talk about the Spirit leading or driving Jesus after his baptism, it CAN’T be true that the Spirit compels people to do things against their will.  One of God’s gifts to us is our free will . . . I don’t think God enters our lives to take away this gift.  And I don’t think of Jesus as being driven or led by anyone or anything . . . he seems to me to be the most self-possessed person that ever existed.  The Jesus I imagine is the primary example of self-knowledge and self-acceptance.  And now we get to at least a portion of what I think being filled with the Spirit means.

I believe that with the gift of the Holy Spirit comes self-knowledge and self-acceptance.  THIS may be what the Gospels mean when they tell us that Jesus was led or driven by the Holy Spirit after his baptism . . . if Jesus was compelled to do anything, he was compelled to acknowledge to himself who he really was and the work he was called to do.  THIS is what I imagine the time in the desert, that time of fasting and prayer, that time of struggling with the devil was all about . . . coming to know and accept exactly who he was and what he had to do.  Once he reached the point of real self-knowledge and acceptance, he set out to do his work . . . what could be simpler?  And when he reaches his hometown, when he returns to the community and the people he’s grown up with and known his entire life, what could be more logical than having a desire to say, “This is who I am.”  He wants the people he loves to know him . . . to really KNOW him.  Don’t we all?

Don’t we all want to know, and understand, and accept, and love ourselves?  And don’t we want others, especially those we love, to know and understand, and accept and love us?  We want to know and be known . . . we desire CONNECTION.  And this is one of the gifts that the Spirit can give us.  Unfortunately, as much as we want this gift, many of us also resist accepting it.  Some of us spend a long time in the desert . . . struggling with and often succumbing to the devil’s temptations.  The temptation to seek money and power for our own welfare, the temptation to attempt to control our future, the temptation to test God and to try to get God to do what WE want, all these temptations can keep us in a very arid place . . . a spiritual desert.  The Spirit can lead us out of this desolate place . . . IF we are willing to face ourselves . . . to know ourselves truly . . . to repent of our failings . . . and ultimately to accept ourselves in love . . . and then allow ourselves to be led by our true, Spirit-filled selves, to do the work we are MEANT to do.  What IS this work?  In each of our own, unique ways, our work is to spread the Good News that God’s Kingdom is near, to make this Kingdom a reality, and to glorify God . . . just like Jesus.  And in performing our work we will inevitably make ourselves known and seek to know each other.  This is part of the lesson I see in today’s Gospel story.

Now some of you may be wondering, what has all this got to do with St. Luke . . . the physician . . . the healer?  Well, when I first started thinking about this feast day, I started mulling over healing stories and the subject of healing in general . . . what IS it?  And, the more I considered today’s Gospel text, the more I began to see it as a story about a particular kind of healing . . . the healing of being made whole.  Perhaps it’s incorrect to ever speak of Jesus as needing healing . . . but something DID go on with him in that desert . . . and it does seem likely to me that it was a time of tremendous struggle for him . . . a struggle between the identity he knew he had to claim, and his personal desires . . . for, after all, we know that the devil very rarely appears before us in the form of a man with horns and a long, pointed tail.  More often, the devil appears in our hearts as a VERY attractive, very selfish desire . . . which must be resisted, as Jesus resisted the devil, for us to claim our TRUE identities . . . our identities as Spirit filled children of God.

My prayer for each of us is that we each be made whole . . . that we may each know the healing love of God that moves us through repentance into a life of self-acceptance and love.  May each of us go forth filled with the power of the Spirit, proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom in word and deed.

Amen.

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