Good News to the Poor, Wherever They May Be

What a pleasure it is for me to be with you this morning. It is not for nothing that this place is called the Church of the Holy Spirit. The way that the Spirit of God has worked, and continues to work in this place is well known around the Church. I know all of you, along with your rectors and other clergy, are continuing a long tradition of announcing and celebrating God's kingdom to the world. And so it is with joy and a grateful heart that I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters at Princeton University where I am, by the incredible favor and grace of God, chaplain to the Episcopal community.

Well, as I prepared my sermon for today, I knew that little introduction would be the easy part. I was having lunch with a priest friend in Trenton last week and, as often happens when priests get together, he asked me if I was preaching this Sunday. I said "Yes, in Lake Forest, Illinois."

He said "You're preaching on a gospel text where Jesus says his ministry is about bringing good news to the poor to one of the most affluent communities on the planet? Are you nuts?"

Well, I am nuts, but for other reasons.

My friend spoke before thinking, which is something I can sympathize with – I do it all the time. He merely focused on the superficial disconnect between the bit about good news to the poor and the stereotype about places like Lake Forest – and Princeton, for that matter.

When I pressed him a little he readily allowed as how there are all sorts and conditions of people in Lake Forest and that there might be quite a bit of good news in this gospel for every single person here today – indeed, it's good news for the whole world.

There's a funny old saying about the chief cause of poverty being lack of money, and that's true in a way. But we all know there are many more ways of being poor than not having money. There are many ways to be impoverished than having trouble paying the rent, just as there are many more ways of being a captive than being in jail, and of being blind than having no eyesight.

There was a time in my own life when I was an executive for Johnson & Johnson making more money than I ever dreamed of and doing interesting, meaningful work with people whom I liked and admired. But my life was impoverished. I had just been through a divorce that I did not want that devastated me, and I felt a gnawing deep inside of me that I could not understand or pinpoint. Things were great and terrible at the very same time. The disconnect between my two realities almost became unbearable.

It was only Jesus Christ who got me through, and through him that I was able to build a new life of great abundance.

And then there is the rest of what Jesus read in the scroll from Isaiah - the bits about release of captives, sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. Here again, we can think of these conditions narrowly, or we can broaden them the way I think Jesus meant us to so that they encompass nearly everyone at various times in our lives.

As I review my life in the 1980s and the 1990s, I know that I was a prisoner with seemingly no way of escape. But I was not only the prisoner, I was also the jailer. I had constructed a view of my life that seemed to make it necessary to strive for the next bigger and better job with more prestige and more pay. I justified this to myself by saying it was not for me, but for my family that I did these things. But in reality, it was pride and avarice, two of my favorites of the seven deadly sins in addition to... never mind that.

For many years, the stresses and pressures of these jobs resulted in a short temper, backaches, stomach problems, sleepless nights, and a desire to be by myself. Some of you may recognize these as symptoms of depression. And I guess that's what it was. In spiritual terms we might call it a dark night of the soul.

And then there was the blindness. I was in a mess, but I could not see what it was. I was desperate for something else in my life, but I could not see what that was either. And I felt alone and cut off and was blind to the reality of Jesus standing right there beside me.

Now, mind you, I was a church-going, hymn-singing, communion-taking, pledge-paying, vestry-serving kind of guy in those days. So you'd think I could find a way to get released from my prison and a cure for my blindness, wouldn't you? Well, I can tell you from my own experience that taking advantage of Jesus' offer to bring good news to the impoverished of spirit, to prisoners of avarice and ambition, to those blind to the presence of God in their lives takes a bit more than going to church. At least it did for me.

You see, Jesus does these things for us, but only if we really let things go and trust him. Even when I began to understand the predicament I was in, I held on to it so tightly that I essentially rejected Jesus' offer to set me free. Jesus was saying that the way for me to get free was to let go of everything that bound me, and to put my trust totally in him. But I just couldn't do it.

I don't know if you've ever heard that story of the guy who was hiking along a steep mountain trail when he suddenly slipped, went over the side, and began tumbling down the side of the mountain. He managed to stop his tumble by grasping the root of a bush that was sticking out and began to yell for help. "Anybody up there?" he yelled, "Help me! Help me!" Finally, he heard a voice from above that said, "Bill, this is the Lord. Just let go of the root and I'll save you."

He thought about this for a second, look down at the abyss below, and cried out, "Is there anybody else up there?"

That was me, and it's probably you from time to time as well. Jesus has promised to be with us and to help us. We know we can ask God for help, but we're not so sure we can trust him. We don't mind getting God's help as long as it's our way and on our terms. So we hedge our bets, hang on to the mess we've got, and hope things will improve. But they don't. Instead, they sometimes get worse. The root pulls away from the side of the mountain and we tumble down anyway.

So each of us at some times in our lives can be poor, oppressed, held captive, and blind. And it is Jesus who will relieve us, give us sight, and set us free. But only if we will let him.

In a way, this is the essence of the good news of Jesus Christ, which is why Luke presents this story as Jesus' inaugural address. And it is the good news that animates all Christian ministry, not least the ministry at college and university campuses like the one where I serve.

In my own ministry at Princeton, what this is all about is trying to get two things across to college students:

• Christianity is not complicated and hard to understand.
• There's something in it for everybody.

In C. John Sommerville's new book called The Decline of the Secular University he says this:

This is a good doorway into gaining an insight that there's something missing in life without a relationship with God. Students at top universities like Princeton are very good at doing things right, but not so clear about how to do the right thing. They can readily land a super job after graduation but not have any sense about how they, with their privileges, fit into the larger world and what connection they have with people who have less than they have. They're good on practicalities, but not so good on meaning. And, generally, they are not prepared for the inevitable tragedies of life and for finding meaning in adversity and comfort in prayer.

There is simply no way to know when you are 20 or 22 that this is a problem. Even those students who do participate in the life of the church can be a bit like I was when I was a 42 year-old church-going blind captive of a career devoid of meaning. They have not yet connected the dots between an impoverished life and Jesus as the gateway to a truly abundant life. Our job is to increase the odds that eventually they will connect those.

So that's the point of campus ministry, and of coming here to this church on Sunday mornings on a regular basis. It's a bit like getting a flu shot or a vaccination. There is a sense in which our hearing the gospel over and over and our praying and receiving communion together regularly builds up antibodies in our souls against the toxins of secularism and of the poverty, captivity, and blindness of a life without God at its center.

This is why we look for every opportunity to make explicit the connection between Jesus Christ and everything we do. For example, at Princeton we have pledged to give every penny of our Sunday plate collection to Episcopal Relief and Development. And we seize every opportunity to connect that pledge with the gospel that we just heard read, and with other gospel stories like Matthew 25 - "Whatever you do to the least of my family, you do for me."

By doing this kind of thing in our ministry with college students, I have the hope that what we do gives them a language and a framework that they will remember when the balloon pops.

No balloon, whether a child's, or a romance, or a nice job, or the stock market, or anything else goes un-popped for very long. Popped balloons are a fact of life. And it is in solidarity with each one of us that Jesus Christ declares that he has come to preach good news to the poor and to set the captive and the oppressed free. As we stand there after the balloon has popped, holding a limp string, Jesus stands right there beside us eternally un-poppable.

Thanks be to God.