“Jesus Christ: Manifestation of God’s Word”

The Fourth Sunday Of Epiphany – January 31, 2010

            Jeremiah 1: 4 – 10/Psalm 71: 1-6; 15-17/1 Corinthians 14: 12b – 20/Luke 4: 21 - 32

Bishop Ricardo Alcaraz

We have for our theme, “Jesus Christ: A Manifestation of God’s Word.”  Jesus Christ came and brought forth the Word and the will of God to us. He showed us what it was. According to the Word of the Lord, from the very beginning, Jesus was with God.  He was the Word of God in the beginning. When He came down, He made sure that He saw to it that the heart of the Father was manifested to us.  Jesus Christ spoke in the Holy Scriptures, “From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”   We may not be like God in the sense that we cannot see and read the heart even if the person does not speak at all.  However, we might have a glimpse of what fills the heart by the word that comes forth from the mouth.  Praise be to God because from the abundance of His heart, He has given us His Holy Word; and by His Holy Word, we are given an idea or it is revealed to us of God’s thoughts, heart and will.   When it is revealed to us, we can walk with that confidence especially in the day that we live in today.   It doesn’t matter what the situation is right now.  It doesn’t matter what the economy looks like right now.  It doesn’t matter what the political climate we have right now.  What matters is that the heart of God never changes.  The Word of God tells us His Word is forever settled in heaven. He is not going to change His mind.  He is going to say, “Well I have come up with a better idea.  Even from the very beginning, God already gave us His Word.  People in the past centuries were able to trust in that; and even though times are changing today, the Word of the Lord doesn’t change.  We have confidence in the way our ancestors did and the way our brethren in the past had confidence in the Word of the Lord. 

We have heard the different readings of the many things that God could speak to us about.   I believe that God gave us a message this morning, though it is not the only message; and whatever message we may have today, they are not in any way inferior.  There is something that He is emphasizing to us is today: let us respond to the Lord’s Word with a faith that acts.   From the very beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, He spoke His Word.  According to our readings in Scripture, we find that the creative power of God is carried through in the Word that He has spoken.  He spoke and things took shape.  As God has given us His Word today, the same creative power is at work.  As we begin to act upon the Word of the Lord, it is good that we can hear the Word of God.  As we listen to the Word of God, we listen to what God is saying to us. Not just so that we can feel good; not just so that we can be entertained; not just so that we can be amused; not just so that we can be distracted from our day to day living. When we watch a movie we forget the things around us.  Probably for an hour or two, we are entertained, but when the movie ends, we get out, and we are back to reality again.  The Word of God is not supposed to be a distraction.  When we come in and listen to what God is saying to us, we listen to nice things, we listen to good things, and we are encouraged.  We feel good. We temporarily suspend our worries and our cares; but then when it ends and we go back to the world, it is back to reality.  It is not like that.  I believe that as we receive God’s Word, and act on it, reality will change.  God’s Word, the creative power in that, will help change and transform our realities.

Luke 4:21 says, “And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” We know that Jesus was referring to the passages of Scriptures that He read beforehand.  He went into the synagogue, took a roll, and read from that.  He sat down in order to teach and said, “This Scripture is fulfilled in our hearing.”  One of the things that we need to understand is that God is always watching over His Word to perform it.  Even in the gospel accounts, especially in the gospel of Mark when the apostles went about preaching the gospel, Jesus said that God confirmed the Word with signs following.  God is not someone who would make empty promises in order to get your attention at that moment, and then later on, he would forget about that particular thing.  The nice thing about the Word of the Lord is that you can always depend on it and you will not be put to shame.  Scriptures says, “Blessed are those who believe in Him, for they will not be put to shame.”  If we believe in God, which is our confession in the Creed that we declare before God, we have to believe in the Word of God.   We cannot say, “Lord I believe in you. But sometimes the things that You are saying to us are so fantastic, so far from our reality that Lord, we will just tolerate that while we are inside the Church, and think about what can be while inside the Church. And thank you at least for the brief moments of pleasure or relief that You have given us. But we’ve got to face reality when we go out.”

Understand this Church: realities are subject to the Word of the Lord.  And the Word of the Lord has been entrusted to us, His Church.  The fact of Scripture is that when God speaks something, it cannot be that it will not take place.   In the testimonies of the Old Testament, when people followed that, not one word of His good promises failed to come to pass, not like some people’s promises.  We are in election time right now; and the air is filled with campaign promises. Somehow many people are thinking – if only one-third of those promises or if only one-half of those promises be fulfilled, we would be happy.  God is not in the fulfilling of the one-half or the one-third or the four-fifths.  The Word of the Lord declares to us that His Word will not return to Him void.  His Word will not return to Him empty.  It will do what He has said it to do.  Not only would it fulfill what He said it would do, it would go beyond that.  It will not just deliver; it will over deliver.  He would do what He says He could do and it will prosper in the things for which He sent it. 

When our former Patriarch Adler was introducing to us this denomination that we are in right now, he said, “Lord God, I am praying that in the end of my life, there would be about twenty churches.”   All that he prayed for is twenty additional churches in this denomination, and he said that he would be happy.  God not only fulfilled that desire. God not only fulfilled the promise that he was standing on.  God even went beyond his own particular prayer.  He even came to the point that he started praying the Jabez’s  prayer, “Oh God, hold me steady because I am feeling so overwhelmed. We are going so fast.  It is like driving a car and I don’t know if I can control this. Lord, hold me steady.  Let your hand be upon me.”  He had to pray that because God was over delivering.  God was not only fulfilling His Word; He was going beyond what He had promised.  Ephesians tells us that He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond whatever we ask or think.  What is our highest aspiration?  What is our highest ambition?  What is our highest and wildest imagination?  God can go beyond that.  When it comes to the Word of the Lord, it cannot be that it cannot come to pass.