If you were listening carefully to the Scripture readers this morning, you noticed that the second reading from Luke 4 repeated the first reading from Isaiah 61. In Jesus’ first sermon preached in his hometown of Nazareth, he read from the scroll of Isaiah and then made a brief comment on it. We look then at these two passages, so much alike.
Isaiah 61
The book of Isaiah falls naturally into three parts. The first 39 chapters are set in Israel-Judah's history before the Exile, with Assyria as the power threatening Jerusalem’s existence. Chapters 40 to 55 speak during the Exile in Babylon, promising the restoration of Jerusalem, and chapters 56 to 66 speak after the Restoration, recognizing the flaws and failures of a restored Jerusalem and looking forward to the perfect Kingdom of God in the New Jerusalem.
Note: Some people think that chapters 55 to 66 describe “the end times” and are being fulfilled in current events. I don’t believe that is the case. In Acts 1:7, Jesus explicitly forbids that kind of speculation, so I don’t go there.
Chapter 61, then, locates the power for the full restoration of God’s Reign in the coming of God’s Spirit. God’s Spirit rests on God’s representative to bring about the perfect shalom and justice of the New Jerusalem. The prophet speaks as though he himself is the one through whom God’s Spirit moves, but we know that such a full restoration never came. This passage then becomes an anticipation of God’s promised Messiah, a fitting passage for Advent – celebrating the first coming of the Messiah and anticipating his return.
Look, then, at the promise: God’s Spirit rests on God’s Chosen One with a series of actions:
to bring good news to the oppressed;
to bind up the brokenhearted;
to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to give those who mourn a garland, the oil of gladness, the mantle of praise.
The rest of the passage speaks of this restoration in terms that Isaiah’s hearers would have understood. Israel is restored, and her enemies become her servants. But that restoration does not simply exalt Israel and cast down her enemies; her salvation becomes the salvation of the world. All nations will praise God because of her.
We turn, then, to Luke’s gospel. We can keep these thoughts and questions in the back of our minds as we go forward – especially the question of how the implied violence against Israel’s enemies fits with the promise of God’s shalom.
Luke 4
Luke begins chapter four with the temptations of Jesus: “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” After the description of that testing time and Jesus’ triumph over Satan, Luke gives a summary statement: “Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.”
Synagogue worship was not the original form of worship in Judaism; temple worship and family worship were central. During the exile (the exile that lies behind so much of Isaiah’s prophecy), Jews began worshipping in synagogues in Babylon and Egypt. By Jesus day, back in their own land, they came together in synagogues all over their homeland to worship on the sabbath. This is where Jesus first began his ministry, so that his sermon in Nazareth was not really the first sermon he preached; but Luke records it as the inauguration of his work. In it, Jesus tells us who he is and what he is about.
Note how the sermon began. Jesus entered his hometown synagogue, and the minister in charge invited him to read the Scripture for the day. (I am assuming this invitation; it makes the most sense in context.) The text doesn’t tell us who chose the Scripture to be read; I am guessing that either the minister in charge did, or that they followed a lectionary, in which Isaiah 61 was listed to be read on that day.
Remember that this is a Messianic passage. Jesus evidently did not think to himself that morning, “I know what I’ll do. I will read a passage about the Messiah to the congregation and then tell them – that’s me!” Rather, he was invited to read, and he was handed the Scripture. You might say that the Spirit of the Lord was on the whole congregation. So, Jesus read from Isaiah 61.
The reading presents what one commentator calls a sandwich with two outer layers (A/E and B/D) and the meat in the middle (C).
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me:
A. God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
B. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
C. God has sent me to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind
D. God has sent me to set free those who are oppressed
E. God has sent me to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
On this reading, the meat in the middle is the climax of the sermon: recovery of sight for the blind. Luke uses blindness as an image to illustrate the darkness in which the people lived. They could not see any hope under Roman Rule. They were blind to any hope for their situation, and they could not see the light of God’s Messiah when he came to set them free.
I see a related but slightly different point in Jesus’ reading from Isaiah.
Good news to the poor: The poor are those who have no ability to help themselves, and the world has cast them aside.
Release to the captives: Captives not only in physical prisons, but captives to addictions and social structures.
Recovery of sight to the blind: Blind not only in a spiritual sense, but as a symbol of all who suffer from physical ailments that bind us.
Free the oppressed: This sounds more like political oppression, but it can include all parts of life.
The year of the Lord’s favour: Most likely a reference to the Jubilee Year of Leviticus 25. The Law stipulated that every 50 years, there would be a radical restructuring of Israeli society. All debts would be wiped out, and families would receive back their original land that had been given to them (presumably when they first occupied the land of Canaan).
However we read the passage, Jesus lifts up the poor as models of how God acts in our world. God loves the poor, and later in his keynote sermon (recorded in the sermon on the plain in Luke 6 and in the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7), Jesus calls the poor those who are especially blessed by God. This point helps answer a question from our focus statement: Who needs to hear the invitation to belong in God’s kingdom? Who needs to extend the invitation? To put it another way, who is welcome in God’s Reign (that is, the community of God, which the church on earth represents)?
The Poor
Who is welcome? The poor are welcome! The captives are welcome! The blind are welcome! The oppressed are welcome! Those whose debts have overwhelmed them are welcome! You see how the gospel deals with every area of life – from personal addictions to structures that bind us to bad choices to physical illness to anything that overwhelms us and oppresses us.
I listened to a sermon by Tim Keller this past week. He was pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York and died just a year and a half ago. He preached often about the poor and their place in the church.
He began this sermon by quoting Jonathan Edwards (the early American preacher best known for his sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God”). Keller, however, noted a quite different sermon, which he summarized like this: “One of the marks of the church is care for and involvement with the poor.” Not just the mark of a North End church in Winnipeg, or an urban church in New York, but the mark of the church wherever and whenever it is: That the church cares for and is involved with the poor.
In his sermon, Keller commented on the passage we read, as well as various texts from the Old Testament (he notes that there are more than 200 texts that deal with the poor), and with Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the poor.” He defined “poor” as not having anything that society values, and therefore as being unable to do anything for yourself. Middle class people (like most of us here) have education, training, experience, and resources that society values. If we decide to do something, especially if we decide to do it together, there’s a good chance we will do it.
The poor have no such power, so they rely completely on God. Jesus wants us to have the mindset of the poor! Consider the verses from Isaiah that Jesus read. We might see it as a program with which we need to get on board. Keller calls that effort “a middleclass mindset”. The poor know they can never achieve liberation and freedom, especially for such a comprehensive program as Jesus lays out. We need a poor mindset. We need to discover our essential poverty and helplessness, which then forces us back into the arms of Jesus, the Messiah, who inaugurates God’s Reign here on earth.
We come back to the problem verses – words of judgment.
The Judging Verses
What about the verses that sound so judgy” “the day of vengeance of our God”. We don’t have time to take up this question in any depth, so just a brief comment here.
You see how the people of Jesus’ hometown respond to his sermon. His sermon is really short: “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The people love it! See the verses that follow our text: “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” The trouble is, Jesus saw that in their hearts they had no idea of what he wanted to do. They thought he was promising them freedom; they didn’t see how far he meant for the day of the Lord’s favour to go.
Jesus reminded them of two incidents from the Old Testament: Elijah took shelter in the Gentile village of Zarepath during the great drought of Ahab’s reign, and Elisha healed the Syrian leper Naaman instead of a Jewish leper. The implication is that this Jubilee Year is not just for Jews, not just for Jesus’ own home country, but also for Gentiles, indeed for the whole world. His friends in Nazareth saw this as a betrayal and tried to kill him. They thought that God should intervene to save Israel, and only Israel. But Jesus came to bring the world into God’s kingdom.
The reminder of “the day of God’s vengeance” lets us know that the invitation Jesus gives is serious. Turning it down puts us outside of God’s grace. God holds the door open for us to enter, but we have to do the entering. It’s up to us to respond to the invitation.
Who is the invitation for? Everyone! Rich and poor, Mennonite and Baptist, Christian and Jew, Muslim and Hindu, Canadians and Americans, Russians and Ukrainians, Israelis and Palestinians, everyone! Who makes the invitation? Everyone who has received it. Like the woman at the well: Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. When God brings us into the community of the King, we invite everyone else around: Come meet the one who set me free from my addictions. Come meet the one who transformed the structures in which I live. Come meet the one who healed my fears and disease.
Conclusion
We have moved far too quickly through these passages. I invite you to sit with them through the week and to reflect on the seriousness of this invitation. I invite you to consider how our church responds to the poor. As Keller considers the question, he notes that our response must include at least these three steps: one, that we know the poor; two, that we become poor [that is, we learn the poor’s mindset that we can’t help ourselves – poor in spirit, as Matthew says it]; and three, that we therefore love the poor.
This conclusion starts a whole new train of thought that we can’t follow now, but I invite you to sit with it through the week. Let it become part of your anticipation for the coming of the Messiah this Christmas. May the Spirit of the Lord be upon us to proclaim good news to the poor, release for captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. Amen.
Scriptures
The Good News of Deliverance
61 The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, 3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory. 4 They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.
5 Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks; foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines, 6 but you shall be called priests of the Lord; you shall be named ministers of our God; you shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory.
7 Because their shame was double and dishonor was proclaimed as their lot, therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs. 8 For I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
9 Their descendants shall be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed. 10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my whole being shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its shoots and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18 “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, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Living Our Faith Questions:
1) How does the vision of God’s shalom fit with the significant words of judgment – “the day of vengeance of our God”? (Compare James 2: 13 – “Let mercy triumph over judgment.”) 2) Our focus statement asks who needs to give and hear the invitation to enter God’s Reign. Who does need to hear this invitation to community? Who does need to give the invitation? 3) How can the darkness of human existence bring light into our darkness as we journey towards Christmas?
Steinbach Mennonite Church
Focus Statement: God’s Vision of shalom and justice depicts a kingdom in which we radically realign ourselves with the marginalized and oppressed. Who needs to hear the invitation to belong in God’s kingdom? Who needs to extend the invitation?
