Luke 4:16-21

“First Things First”

As we’ve been moving together through this season of Epiphany, we’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the “firsts” in Jesus’s life and ministry. Before Epiphany there was Christmas, when the light of Christ first entered the world in the baby Jesus. Then there was Jesus’s baptism in the river, when Jesus first began His ministry, and God called Him the beloved Son. There was the first miracle at Cana, when water turned into wine and disciples turned into believers.

According to Luke’s gospel, Jesus’s ministry was initiated at baptism, took a side quest of spiritual struggle in the desert, and eventually found its way back home to Nazareth, to the familiar place of the synagogue in a community which knew Jesus by name. In synagogues, Jesus listened thoughtfully to the words of the scriptures. From a young age, He engaged them with His elders, being as much at home in the temple as He was with His own family. It’s not unusual that Jesus is preaching here.

But Luke wants to draw our attention to what Jesus is preaching. Jesus was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit of God was upon Him, the same Spirit which spoke through the prophets with the urgency of divine revelation, calling across the ages. The same Spirit which descended like a dove. There is a thread running through this story that we cannot ignore.

And Jesus stood to read the scroll:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor– the forgiveness of debts and restoration of land”

And Luke says that all eyes were fixed on Jesus. Surely these words had been read before. Maybe what makes them so significant is the fact that they had been read before. That something familiar, something close to home, became new. That in the hearing, the Spirit’s transformative work touched the people, even if only for a moment, within something recognizable.

Jesus adds His interpretation to the text, which Luke summarizes in only one opening line: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”. Jesus will be the one to proclaim the good news. Jesus’ ministry is good news, for the poor, the oppressed, the imprisoned, the blind, the debtor. And this proclamation is where Jesus’s ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing begins. With a word about liberation.

The gospel is only good news if it is good news for the poor. The church may speak of being set free from sin, but many are still imprisoned in body, in detention centers, at the border, or in the penitentiaries. We allow differences in bodies and abilities to create difference of access, in our church and government. I know the words of Jesus’ inaugural sermon should make me feel hopeful, but I have to admit there is a feeling of disappointment in my heart when I read it. Because the world Jesus describes is amazing. And it also feels far away from reach every time I see a person sleeping outside and find myself stopped in my tracks, wondering what to do and deciding on inaction. This cannot be the way we are supposed to live!

I attended an event this week where the conversation got real and suddenly we turned from talking about what we value most to the places in our lives that were recovering from woundedness. We entered together into one of those holy moments, where you choose to trust a near stranger. Several people spoke of the ways they had been hurt by the church. Perhaps some of us here have our own stories. Because the church is made up of people, people with the power to hurt and be hurt, to build and destroy.

But Jesus’s proclamation is a message of liberation. And this is the foundation on which the church must be built, over and over again. We must be committed to rediscovering ourselves and who we are called to be in the light of Christ. We must choose to hear the prophetic words of the scriptures with conviction rather than condemnation.

Condemnation tells us we can never fix what has been broken. Conviction asks us how we will play a part in fixing it. Choose conviction. Because God has decided that no one is unworthy of God’s good news.

So where is the Spirit moving in the church today? The voice of the Spirit is at once familiar and new, recognizable and eye-opening. She calls from across the ages, liberating and uniting broken people in the church. May we pay attention to the Spirit’s call to the church. Amen.