Our passage this morning tells us of events that actually follow immediately after Jesus is returned by the Holy Spirit, from having been tempted by Satan in the desert. He’s now ready to begin his mission of proclaiming God’s reconciliation to all who will listen. He starts in Galilee intending to speak to Gentiles, but he’s a faithful Jew and so goes to synagogue each Sunday to read and teach. He takes the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and draws together various passages in his reading, Isaiah 58:6 and 61:1-2: "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 set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." The irony of course - if we remember just two weeks ago - is that Jesus is the one anointed at his baptism at which the Spirit descended upon him. Of course at this point, it’s unlikely that anyone in the synagogue would have known this; so Jesus’s later words in this passage will likely bring questioning, confusion, doubt, maybe even anger.
The good news being brought to the poor in Israel refers to Israelites themselves and not simply to those without money or possessions. This is about their restoration after having been exiled; a condition in which they found themselves not just financially poor but oppressed, imprisoned, marginalized, and treated like slaves. All of these things God allows to take place to test them - their own desert - so that they might stop turning to themselves and their own broken ways, and instead turn back to him. But only in God will the sightless will see again; will the deaf hear; will the poor be made rich. The sight, hearing and wealth he is talking about is not literal; but spiritual. What the prophet Isaiah, whom Jesus is quoting, is saying is that God will heal us and allow us to see, know and experience new life, but we must open up and receive it or we’ll remain poor, deaf, blind, and self righteously arrogant even as we stumble around in the darkness. Jesus is the one spoken of by Isaiah. This is what his unrolling the scroll and speaking the Word and fulfilling the law we hear about in Nehemiah is all about: Jesus has set his face, begun his mission to release people from demon possession and death, spiritual and physical blindness.
All these activities are tied together in the “year of the Lord’s favor.” The Jubilee Year was to have occurred every fifty years in Israel when the land was to lay fallow, all debts forgiven, and all slaves freed. However, Jeremiah 34:14 suggests that the Jubilee Year had not been followed as those in power shut it down. Throughout history many have claimed to be liberators, making their people great again. For Jesus to read this message from Isaiah and proclaim its fulfillment is therefore an indictment of all politicians who claim to bring release and freedom and wealth. True freedom does not consist of money and possessions or in the ability to do as one pleases. In fact, the pursuit of money, possession and selfish interests leads right back to blindness, deafness, arrogance, violence, retaliation, slavery to one’s own pursuits, and generally, destructive war.
The freedom and healing Jesus is intimating here is fundamentally different. It is a release from captivity to death, the power others have to define our value and worth, and the self focus that goes into defending ourselves from real and perceived threats. Jesus’s mission shows us that freedom - being set free by God who has come for us if we are willing to receive - is only found in loving others (Luke 22:24-27). His death on a cross, offered up, betrayed, abandoned and killed, by those whose sins he will bear and so set free from death is the ultimate reversal of these evils and of the power of death itself.
God never leaves us where we are. If we have truly experienced God, we will be changed. This is the testimony Jesus brings to us this morning: you are being swept up in a mission that moves you out of the condition of being poor, blind and enslaved by your own ways of thinking and acting which grow out of ignorance, arrogance, fear, and refusal to seek, learn and come to know God’s revelation of who he is in Scripture.
This is not the change that happens with the turnover in governmental administrations. This is real change in the spirit and life of the person who hears this good news and whose life is never the same afterward. The Jubilee Year is fulfilled not in or by any politician or administration, but by Christ who is the power that changes everything and makes clear to us that only in him, by following his way and not the world’s ways, can we join in with his proclamation. Anything else we say is just a loud, noisy gong that will be silenced on judgment day.
Why do you boast of evil, you mighty hero? Why do you boast all day long, you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God? You who practice deceit, your tongue plots destruction; it is like a sharpened razor. You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth. You love every harmful word, you deceitful tongue! Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin: He will snatch you up and pluck you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living. The righteous will see and fear; they will laugh at you, saying, “Here now is the man who did not make God his stronghold but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others!” But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever. For what you have done I will always praise you in the presence of your faithful people. And I will hope in your name, for your name is good. AMEN
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