God’s faithfully proclaimed, transformative word

Bishop Anne Edison-Albright

Bishop Anne Edison-Albright preached a sermon based on Luke 4:21-30 and Jeremiah 1:4-10 at the installation of the Rev. Jennifer Czarnota as pastor of Calvary Lutheran Church in Oshkosh on February 1, 2025.

Let us pray, 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts

Be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen. 

We just heard the story of Jesus reading from the scroll of Isaiah 

in his hometown synagogue, in Nazareth. 

And we heard the first sentence of his sermon: 

“Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

In worship tomorrow, we’ll hear what happens next. 

So a bit of a spoiler alert, but it’s helpful to know: 

the crowd starts out really liking the sermon,

But then as it continues, they hear things that make them so angry, 

They form a mob, a mob angry enough that they try to kill Jesus. 

But he’s able to pass through the crowd, unharmed. 

What makes the crowd so violently angry isn’t 

The reading from Isaiah or Jesus’ assertion that

He is a fulfillment of that scripture:

Sent by God to bring good news to the poor, 

Release to the captives, 

And recovery of sight to the blind. 

What makes them angry

Is when he goes on to say, “this good news: it’s not just for you.”

It’s not just for Jesus’ family and friends 

and the people who look like him,

The people who’ve known him all his life.

In the days of the prophets and in Jesus’ day, 

God chose to work miracles among people who were 

Hated, outcasts, foreigners. 

Jesus wasn’t going to give his hometown special treatment,

And in fact, he was doing his ministry with people his hometown

Considered to be their enemies. 

Faithful preaching is transformative. 

I was still pretty young when my mom shared this 

Wisdom with me: 

That “The Gospel comforts the afflicted

And afflicts the comfortable.”

Even at that age, when she shared that with me, 

I was like “THAT is true.”

Because I’d already had all kinds of experiences with the Word of God

Bringing me comfort sometimes, 

And making me really uncomfortable and feeling convicted other times, 

And, often, both:

Afflicted and comforted in different ways at the same time. 

In our first lesson today, from Jeremiah, 

God speaks through the prophet

And speaks out against prophets and preachers who are 

hedging their bets

And not speaking very directly or boldly,

For fear of offending people in power. 

We heard this: “Let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. 

Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

When spoken faithfully, the word of God is transformative. 

All of the fire imagery in scripture–and there’s a lot of it–

Has a painful tug and edge to it, knowing how many people 

Are suffering from the impact of fires in Southern California. 

But we understand what God, through Jeremiah, is saying:

God’s word, spoken faithfully, 

Doesn’t leave things, doesn’t leave the world, 

Doesn’t leave us the way we were before. 

We are changed. 

And it’s important to be specific and say that God’s change

Is transformative by being liberating to us when we’re powerless

And uncomfortable, or even offensive, to us when we’re powerful.  

Fire or taking a hammer to a rock are pretty obviously intense

Metaphors for change. 

But honestly, even the metaphors we use for change that 

Seem less intense are secretly the same–

It’s all death and resurrection, and it all does that thing

Where it comforts us where we’re afflicted and

Afflicts us where we’re comfortable. 

For me, the butterfly was always the go-to 

Lovely, less intense image for change.  

Such a beautiful image, right?

Imagine my horror when I actually got to watch all the stages

Of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly in person, in real life. 

If you’ve gotten comfortable with and 

attached at all to your caterpillar, which, 

Of course you have, right?

Watching the caterpillar to chrysalis change is … scary. 

All of it is such hard work and

It is very beautiful 

But it also really does look like something you love is dying

In order for something new to be born,

And when you’re face to face with that 

it’s a lot more upsetting than it is when we say it in church.  

The first time we went through this with a caterpillar my mom said, 

“This changes everything about how you think of

Christ’s resurrection, doesn’t it?”

Yeah. 

It gave me a lot more empathy for 

The way Jesus’ disciples acted right before, during and after

Jesus’ death,because it

Made me more aware of their grief 

and how much their lives and world changed in those few days.  

The experience of our rock-solid assumptions 

Those things we absolutely know to be true

When those are being broken open

By the Word of God–

That’s transformative.

So far, I’ve mostly focused on how uncomfortable that transformation can be because, 

Let’s face it, I’m generally a pretty comfortable gal, 

And shaking me up and out of that comfort is something

That God knows I need, 

And I’m really grateful 

that I’ve got faithful preachers in my life, 

Some who are ordained, other who are not, 

Who proclaim the word of God faithfully in ways make me feel

Afflicted, convicted and productively uncomfortable. 

I need that and we all need that.  

But the faithfully proclaimed, transformative word of God 

Is also comforting.  

I’ve experienced this, and I know many of you have, too, 

During times of deep grief and loss, 

And also times in life where I’ve felt … lost. 

And someone was able to bring or embody God’s word in a way

That may not have changed the reality of what I was facing, 

But it still changed everything. 

God’s faithfully proclaimed, transformative word is also liberating. 

The same word of God that afflicts the powerful is liberating 

When it reaches the ears of the poor, 

The captives, the oppressed, 

The lonely, the outcast.  

The alien, the orphan, the widow. 

Today, people of Calvary, you are installing your pastor. 

One of the questions I’m going to ask her is this: 

“Will you give faithful witness in the world,

That God’s love may be known in all that you do?”

Such a simple, lovely, not at all intense question. (Right?!)

But Pastor Jen and all of you all know better, 

Because you know that when we say “faithful witness”

We’re talking about the transformative love of God

That, when it’s made known, 

Is comfort for the afflicted, 

And affliction for the comfortable. 

A lot of pastors and deacons are scared right now, 

Because we know what the Lord said through Jeremiah,

And we know that, if we preach faithfully,

There’s a decent chance that we’ll make people mad.

And there can be real consequences involved with that.  

That’s always been true, 

But it feels heightened right now. 

My colleague Bishop Leila Ortiz was one of the presiders at the 

Service at the National Cathedral where Bishop Mariann Budde 

Preached, 

And where she asked President Trump to have mercy on immigrants, 

Refugees, LGBTQIA+ people, particularly trans people, 

And other vulnerable communities.

That took courage, but in her reflections on the service and that day, 

Bishop Ortiz pointed out that Bishop Budde isn’t the only one who is 

Called to use her voice that way; we all are. 

It is lonely and scary if we think of the pastor being up here

All alone, with the whole weight of the Word of God on her head

And in her hands

And the rest of us out there as just …  recipients, 

Who either like what we hear or don’t. 

But that’s not how it is,

Or least, that’s not what we’re called to by our baptisms to be. 

In our baptisms, we’re ALL called to 

Proclaim the Good News of God in Christ through Word and Deed

And, as we’ve established, 

That word, faithfully proclaimed, is transformative. 

The ministry of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable,

That’s our shared ministry. 

It’s not something our pastor is doing to us,

It’s something we all participate in, together. 

And that makes a difference. 

Because I think when we’re proclaiming and listening together 

as the Body of Christ, 

It’s easier to hear Jesus. 

Even when Jesus makes us mad, we can still hear him, 

And even let him change us. 

We’re less likely to turn into the mob that tried to 

kill Jesus when he preached in Nazareth. 

When we hear about God’s grace 

And care for others, even for our enemies, 

Maybe the message afflicts us in exactly the way we needed,

Or maybe it’s the exact word of comfort and liberation our souls

Were most longing to hear. 

As our second lesson might put it, the Gospel becomes less “veiled.”

As you continue in your ministry together, 

I’m excited for all the ways that you all, as people and pastor, 

Are going to continue to courageously and faithfully proclaim the 

Transformative word of God.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.