(from biblegateway.com/ NIV) Luke 4: 14-21: Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Reflection: Our readings during the Season of Epiphany have asked to look at what this story reveals about Jesus. Last week we touched on the preaching of John, by which Jesus was persuaded, and how Jesus (who’s at prayer after being baptized) hears a voice saying “You are my child, my beloved, and in you I delight.” He doesn’t quite know what to make of that so he goes into the wilderness to contemplate what it means to be God’s beloved child. Today we hear about what happens after he is in the wilderness.
The phrase “in the wilderness” is one of those pieces of code in the Bible; it is “in the wilderness where Israelites always met God face-to-face. When Jesus comes out of the wilderness, back to civilization, we assume he has encountered God “face-to-face”. And the passage underlines that because he returns “in the power of [God’s] Spirit”. He is so filled it overflows; he teaches what he learned in the wilderness wherever he goes. Everyone thinks he’s amazing. I wonder what it was that they found amazing?
Was it that he shared the bible teachings and the traditions of his people in a way that made sense to people in their everyday life? Did he take the words “off the page” and infuse them with life? Did he dust them off and show not only how they apply to “now” but Why they apply?
So what did he teach? Today, he is teaching from the prophet Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; I have been anointed (set apart) to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
A quick word about Isaiah: he is writing to a people that has seen their young men taken as slave labour, their young women taken as war booty, their intellectuals and priests carried off to a foreign land to serve a foreign empire; their temple razed to the ground; fields have been scoured by the approaching armies for food and burned in their wake as they leave to return to their homeland. The people who are left (the old, the less healthy, the very poor) are desolate and collectively heart-broken; they are sure God has abandoned them. Then Isaiah speaks a word of hope: You have not been forgotten and it will not be like this always. I have been anointed to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim that the year of God’s favour has arrived (Is 61). How overjoyed with hope I image they would feel hearing there is an end to this misery in sight!
But by Jesus’ time Israel is once again under the rule of a foreign empire, the land overrun with soldiers and they take whatever they want, whenever they want it, from whomever they want it. The people are, once again, in chains. So when Jesus reads these words of hope they are imagined as some time far away in the future. And Jesus says: not tomorrow, but today these words are fulfilled. Today is the start of the year of the Lord’s favour. Today is the start of God being in charge…and I know because I have been set aside to proclaim this.
I wonder what the people who hear him are feeling? And 20 centuries later what are we feeling?
I feel that same power and hope. This passage is saying that with Jesus – on that very day he read this in his synagogue — this new world of God’s reign is started. His good news is that this new holy community is starting to gather, today. And we mustn’t pin this to a poster-boy Jesus, and entomb it in a particular place and time in history, on one specific Sabbath in one specific synagogue. Sacred story reveals how God is with us. Today.
God is still speaking through this sacred story. When Jesus said this is the day that God’s reign to begin, he was inaugurating this holy community, inviting us into a new way of living together….in a way that shows others God is with us, we are not abandoned. Not unlike in Jesus’ day, as we look around and listen to traditional newscasts it’s easy to become dejected, thinking we have been abandoned by God. There are a lot of signs that say God’s reign so hasn’t begun – just look at the wars, epidemics, hatred of those who are different from “us”, and so on.
But that is not so. For me the key word, the word of hope, in this passage is the word “today”. Jesus didn’t see his world that way, as a God-forsaken place. Instead he saw with God’s eyes, and saw signs that today God’s reign has begun. And if it started then, it must still be building. Someone once told me that we see what we are looking for. So if I am looking for signs of God’s reign, I generally find it. (1)
Where do you see this kin-dom sprouting? Where do you find Life triumphing over Death, and Love over Hate, and Hope over Despair? Look around with God’s eyes, because: “The Spirit of the lord is upon me”, and even upon you. “God had anointed me to be the herald of these good tidings …” and has anointed and appointed you too.
Today, there are people oppressed around us, captive to systems that see some people and Creation as of “less value” than others. There are some who are in chains – of privilege or of (intergenerational) trauma. There are some who is imprisoned and unable to live fully because they are fearful of loss. Look around your town, your district, your province, your country. Opportunities to help sprout God’s kin-dom are there. This is the good news for Luke: the kingdom of God’s reign – this time we have been waiting for — has begun with the person of Jesus. Back then, and carrying on now, “today in your presence”.
Do you trust that phrase “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me”? Are you willing to proclaim that the year of the Lord’s favour has begun? Are we, as a Community-of-Faith, willing to believe that the Spirit of the Lord is upon us? To trust that enough to help make it true? And if not today, when?
~ ~ ~ Notes:(1) Myself, I see these sprouting in people who care for the sick and the lonely, people who walk into war zones and say ‘that’s enough – like the Christian Peacemaker Teams (http://www.cpt.org ), and Doctors without Borders (http://www.msf.ca), and among the various branches of the United Nations services like http://www.UNHCR.ca with refugees and http://www.Unicef.ca. (highlight and rt-clik then Go To…). In all these, and many more, I see God’s reign – this new way of being a holy community. – being proclaimed and lived in everyday people. Those who bring water and food and shelter and clothing for those stuck in a no-man’s-land around the world by governments’ immigration policies, among people who help newcomers to settle in and adjust to their new country with language and shopping and driving. I also see it in people who work for just taxation in our own country, who work with those in prison, with the blind and the lame and the mentally challenged and the mentally ill. I see it, experience it, in honest dialogue that looks for common ground in the disputes, particularly over land use especially by the oil and gas industries, but also in honest dialogue that looks for common ground in disputes between neighbours, and churches, and religions. I see it in the new humility and research of modern science – who find amazement in the smallest and largest of things in the universe and find ways to make life on Earth better for All Our Relations in Creation. The signs are all around us. Where do you see them?
Here’s some inspiring further reading: Diana Butler Bass http://day1.org/7044-the_power_of_today ; and though it’s dated (Jan 2013) it still brings home some really good points; thank you David Lose http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1771
Never On A Sunday 