Today’s gospel presents us with Jesus’ first act of public ministry, as described in Luke’s gospel. It is something like a mission statement. His words that day set out the course for his ministry, his life, his purpose. Following his baptism and temptation, Jesus returned to his home country, Galilee. Reports about him had been spreading through the population, probably the result of his healing miracles and his synagogue teaching.
It would have been a big day in the small town of Nazareth, a place of about 500 people. Everybody would have been there, eager to hear the local boy who was making such a name for himself as an eloquent speaker.
Jesus entered the synagogue on that Sabbath morning. He had been prepared well for life, raised as a faithful Jew, brought to the synagogue every week. He was asked to read the lesson from the prophets. There was no lectionary to consult to determine this reading; the choice was up to him. Nor was there a book to flip through. Instead, a bulky scroll was brought to him and placed upon the lectern. Jesus, searching for a familiar text, unrolled it to a place near the end of the scroll. He read aloud these words:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Finished with this brief passage, Jesus rolled up the scroll, returned it to the attendant, and took his seat. It was the custom for teachers to sit, rather than to stand, so when Jesus sat, everyone looked at him, expecting some commentary, some explanation of this text, a text well known to many of them.
In those days there were no professional clergy. The synagogue president could invite any appropriate person to comment on the text. Often these remarks were less than inspiring. While the people were familiar with the key passages of the law and the prophets, commentary on scripture by such speakers was often no more than rote recitation of lessons all of them learned at an early age. So, the congregation usually knew what would be said before it was said. The only question was whether it would be recited correctly or not. Not so that day when Jesus sat down. The people were all looking at him. He would have seen familiar faces from his early years, older in appearance than before: his childhood friends, now present with their children; the parents of his friends, now senior citizens.
He started with a zinger, and something much more than a zinger – a sentence that remains fresh and provocative down to our own time. Jesus set free the scripture passage he had just read; he overthrew the ho-hum expectations of the people around him. Here is what he said: Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
“All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” Luke describes the reaction of the hometown crowd. We all know that Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew even as we proclaim that he was like us, we claim him as in our court. I suppose that’s how we get images of him as a light-skinned, blue-eyed Christian, or how people of all places imagine Jesus to be on their side, would vote they way they do, or help their sports team to win.
That goes way back to the people of Nazareth I suppose. The people in the synagogue that day knew Jesus, the son of Joseph, the guy they grew up with. They assume salvation is coming their way. They were not exclusive, they didn’t wish ill on others. They just did what we all tend to do—believe that these promised, this good news, the miracles are primarily for us, for our side.
But, Jesus wasn’t always doing nice things that made people feel good. He was a leader who wasn’t afraid to push the truth forward. He wasn’t going to be limited, defined by some small vision. He says, “no prophet is accepted in their hometown,” and then he elaborates. “Remember Elijah?” Of course they do, the greatest of the prophets. But who did he feed in time of famine, not anyone from Nazareth, or Capernaum, or even Jerusalem, but a widow in Zarephath, a small town in Lebanon.
Jesus isn’t done yet—“Remember Elisha?” Of course they do, Elijah’s successor and worker of great wonders. But did he heal anyone in Israel? No. Only the leper Naaman the Syrian, an enemy army commander. They don’t like the truth that exposes their privatization of Jesus. They’re ready to through him off a cliff. They wanted their own miracles like Capernaum had! They are furious, one translations says the crowd was filled with rage.
Jesus passes through the middle. He’s not trapped. He’s not pro-Jew and anti-Samaritan, He’s not pro-Capernaum and anti-Nazareth. He’s not Baptist or Anglican. He cannot be contained. He came to be with us, whoever we are. There are so many dividing lines, then and now. Gender, age, race, class, nationality, how we live, who we love, how we vote… it goes on and on. Wherever we draw a line, Jesus steps across to the other side. The Nazarenes wanted to domesticate Jesus. It’s a perennial problem, the tendency to sanitize and sentimentalize Jesus.
Luke is the only Gentile writer in the Bible. He doesn’t call Jesus the son of David or son of Abraham, he calls him the son of Adam—a man not just for the Jews but all of humanity. Throughout the gospel of Luke, Jesus embraces the unclean Gentiles, the Roman centurian, the Canaanite woman and her demon-possessed daughter, the Samaritans. He is dismissive about ritual purity, declaring all foods clean.
Jesus’ words and actions remind us that following him does not mean hunkering down and staying the same, expecting God to hang out with you in our small vision. God is on the move, doing a new thing, speaking in places not normally recognized as sacred, listening to the outcast and saying things that make our ears burn. God doesn’t belong to us, we belong to God.
Jesus saves his strongest criticism for the self-appointed gatekeepers who wanted to exercise spiritual authority over others and claim insider status. He broke rituals, mocked external piety, violated social taboos to demonstrate that God is lavish with showing love, indiscriminate and never exclusive.
Jesus claimed those ancient prophetic words as his own personal mission statement. God’s Spirit had come crashing down on him at his baptism to empower him to do precisely this: to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; let all the oppressed go free; announce the sweet Jubilee Year when God’s justice will reshape society.
This was not just a string of high-sounding words. Everything that followed in his life, as presented to us in Luke’s gospel, amounted to the living out of the prophecy he claimed for himself that Sabbath morning in Nazareth.
He kept doing those things every chance he got, every time he turned around, until finally it got him killed. Some people welcomed what Jesus did, but others did not because it upset their unfair advantage, questioned their complacency, and pushed them to recognize their habitual infidelity to God. They found their discomfort increasingly intolerable and expected that his execution would bring an end to the matter. They were wrong, of course. Jesus’ death didn’t stop anything. He continues today to do what he talked about that Sabbath morning long ago.
Now the way he works is through his mystical body, the church. Through each of us and all who are baptized into his body, Jesus strives still to live out his mission statement, bringing good news to those who don’t have any, setting free those chained in captivity, opening blind eyes, helping the oppressed and exploited find a life, and unrolling the floor plan that sets out God’s reign where justice and peace prevail.
Jesus still does these things, because his church does them. The poor gain hope, whether it’s their souls or their bodies that are starved. The captives experience freedom, whether they are prisoners in a jail or prisoners in a mansion. The blind receive sight, whether it’s cataract surgery or the scales of prejudice falling off the eyes of a bigot. The oppressed are set free, whether oppression is a political regime or a chemical dependence. When Jesus read that passage in the Nazareth synagogue, he announced a mission statement for himself and for his body, the church.
Jesus read the old words from Isaiah and claimed them for his own. We can do the same.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon us.
The Spirit of the Lord has anointed us to bring good news to the poor.
The Spirit of the Lord has sent us to proclaim release to the captives.
The Spirit of the Lord has sent us to help the blind recover their sight.
The Spirit of the Lord has sent us to free the oppressed.
The Spirit of the Lord has sent us to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Today, may this scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing and in our living. Amen.