Epiphany 3 C + 1.27.13 + Yay Torah! / Arriba la Torah!

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Melissa Campbell-Langdell+
All Saints/ Todos los Santos
1.27.13
3rd Epiphany, Year C (Neh. 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Ps. 19; 1 Cor. 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21)

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a Simchat Torah celebration at a synagogue.  Hace un par de años visité a la celebración de “Simchat Torah” en una sinagoga en Riverside.  Imagine a whole synagogue stuffed with people on a night at the end of Sukkot, the festival of booths, a fall evening turning slightly crisp.  La rabina me guiaba junto a otro líder en la comunidad hasta el arca, un gabinete donde tienen sus rollos de Tora.  And the Torah is lifted out of the ark and unrolled all around the room!   We all stand side by side, carefully holding open the precious scriptures.   Lado a lado, estamos de pie, muy cuidadosamente cargando las sagradas escrituras judías.  The young people preparing for their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs are gleeful, walking around with the room, carefully using the wooden or metal hand-shaped pointers to find their places in the script as they chant parts of the Torah to us.  They begin a new year’s cycle of scripture reading, starting with Genesis.[1]   Hanging out in that synagogue, I was struck by the joy.  Lo que me afectó mas era el gozo con que todos acercaron las sagradas escrituras.
All this joy goes right back to Moses, but we largely have Ezra to thank for it.  Ustedes escucharon en la lectura de Nehemías hoy que fue Esdras quien estableció esta tradición de leer la Tora, las sagradas escrituras judías, de esta forma.  Ezra re-established a long-time tradition of reading the scriptures aloud that had fallen by the wayside during the Babylonian exile.  He created a tradition that has lasted to this day, and has been continuous since the Maccabean time period, which was in the second century before Christ.[2]  We also have a tradition of reading scripture, which we continue every week.  Esdras empezó este proceso, porque quería re-establecer un sentido de fe en un pueblo que había olvidado sus tradiciones.  The people of Ezra’s time needed to look before the exile to figure out how to build up Jerusalem, physically and spiritually.  They had been through some hard knocks, some transitions, and in connecting to their roots, they got stronger.  También, ellos tienen que hacer algunas cosas diferentes, porque no están en la misma situación.[3]  ¿Sound familiar?
Así que cuando Jesús va a su sinagoga en Nazaret y empieza  a leer, Él es parte de una larga tradición judía.  Jesus, stepping up to speak in today’s gospel, is therefore living into a long history wherein any Jewish male can read aloud scriptures in the synagogue.[4]  Y justo como Esdras levanta la palabra, Jesús levanta las sagradas escrituras y las cumple.  Just as Ezra read the scriptures and lifted them up to the people, Jesus, God incarnate, lifts up the scriptures and then takes it a step further, fulfilling them.  
But then, what happened?  Jesus was rejected.  Jesus takes a scripture that spoke of the Messiah and in owning it, it shocks his listeners, and they can’t handle it.  Esta escritura de Isaías que Jesús lee fue relacionada con el Mesías en la tradición judía.  Así que el da un choque a su pueblo cuando Él dice que ha cumplido las escrituras.  Ellos no pueden aceptarlo de su propio “hijo local.” Así que Jesús fue rechazado.  Just after this, Jesus’ own hometown wants to toss him over a cliff.  How’s that for the hometown love?

Sometimes the scriptures tell us new truths, and our challenge is not to reject God’s truth before we listen in love.  Esdras toma una gente, quienes habían escuchado “no” en su historia recién, y él les dice “si,” levantando las sagradas escrituras a ellos.  Ezra told the people “yes” and Israel was reborn.  Jesus took the “no” of his rejection, of those who didn’t see him as fulfilling the scriptures, and continued to set us free, turning that “no” right into “yes!”  Jesús convirtió nuestro “no” al “sí” de la nueva creación.  This is good news for the church, what Jesus brings.  Buenas nuevas para una iglesia que ha enfrentado a desafíos.  We too can lift up scripture and see its fulfillment in Jesus.  Podemos levantar a los miembros del Cuerpo de Cristo aquí que hacen tanto para el ministerio de la iglesia.  We can lift up the members of this church who give so much of themselves to the church’s ministry.  As we hear from St. Paul today, we are all part of one Body of Christ and in today’s Annual Meeting we get to celebrate that.
Podemos con valentía enfrentar a cualquier trabajo que nos queda para el re-establecimiento de la iglesia y decir “si” a Dios.  We can say “yes” to rebuilding the church—be it spiritually, or physically. 
And we see this building up happening here.  Hoy celebramos una iglesia que está mejorando físicamente y espiritualmente.  Physically, we are improving our campus, its security and its ability to serve the community, including a re-vamped kitchen.  Espiritualmente, estamos mejorando nuestros programas de educación cristiana.  Sure, we have had a couple of set-backs of late, folks who have tried to crumble our “walls of Jerusalem,” but we know we are strong.  Somos fuertes.  Tenemos tradiciones—de leer las escrituras.  De alabar y convivir juntos y de compartir con la comunidad.  We can keep breaking open the Word together the way that Moses and Ezra and Jesus taught us to do.  We can worship and feed each other and feed the world spiritually and physically in our own simple ways.  
Pero mientras vivimos la vida de fe, es posible que Dios nos va a sorprender.  Sometimes Reading scripture in community is challenging because we might not always understand it the same way.  But that doesn’t mean we stop reading scripture or that we stop being in community.  Porque somos parte del Cuerpo de Cristo, continuamos en comunidad aunque a veces tenemos ideas diferentes.  Así  que  ¡Debemos continuar siendo una nueva creación en Dios, compartiendo todo el gozo de las Buenas Nuevas de Cristo!  Let us embrace that continuing revelation, continuing to be a new creation in God, and in our proud Judeo-Christian tradition, let us share the Good News revealed and fulfilled in Jesus!


[1] Shira Schoenberg, “Reading the Torah,” from Jewish Virtual Library: (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/torah_reading.html).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kathleen M. O’Connor, “Exegetical Perspective: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10,” FOTW Year C, Vol. 1.
[4] Linda McKinnish Bridges, “Exegetical Perspective: Luke 4:14-21,” FOTW Year C, Vol. 1.  

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