January 27 2013
Neh 8:2-4, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Cor 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21
Today’s Gospel passage recounts the very beginning of Jesus’ teaching ministry. It takes place after John has baptized Jesus and the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in the form of a dove. Then the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. And finally Jesus returns to Galilee and his hometown, Nazareth. The Spirit fills him with power, and all eyes are on him. So we expect to hear Jesus’ mission statement, the introduction to his ministry on earth.
I invite you to think about what Jesus does not say as he introduces his ministry. He does not say, “You are all destined to spend eternity in the torments of hell because you are miserable sinners, but I will allow myself to be crucified to appease God’s terrible anger, in order to save you.” That’s been a common version of the Christian message, but it’s not Jesus’ version.
He does not say, “If you are good, then your souls will be released from your earthly bodies, and they will be able to spend eternity in light and bliss.” That’s been a common Christian story, but it was not Jesus’ story. First-century Jews, including Jesus, did not separate the body and soul. They believed in the resurrection, but they would have had a hard time imagining the soul apart from the body.
What Jesus does do is to read from the book of Isaiah. The reading comes from the time of the return of the captives from Babylon to Judah—that’s when today’s first reading, from Nehemiah, was written. Here is how Jesus summarizes his program:
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. (4:18)
The year of the Lord’s favor was the jubilee year of the Old Testament. The jubilee was only about once every 50 years, so many people did not see one in their lifetime. It was a precious time, when debts were forgiven. In ancient times, nobody declared bankruptcy. If you owed, you owed. People were sometimes even enslaved in payment of a debt. But in the jubilee year they were set free. Jesus is announcing an amnesty. God won’t hold everything in our pasts against us. “This day,” Jesus says, “this scripture is fulfilled.”
Jesus’ program here is both psychological and social. Now is the time when God invites us to drop the burdens of our past mistakes. It is also the time when we can forgive one another and let go of past offenses.
But that’s just one part of the program. Jesus announces good news to the poor. God never promised us a rose garden, and Jesus is not going to wave a magic wand and make sickness, old age, and death go away. But he promises us that God is on our side, and he promises the poor that we will be on their side. God’s program is compassion and kindness, even and especially to people who are invisible and people who don’t count.
Jesus proclaims release to the captives. In today’s first reading, Judeans whose grandparents were taken captive and marched off to Babylon sixty years earlier have finally been allowed to return home and rebuild and to live under their own law. Psychologically, release of the captives can mean freedom from old habits and self-images that we feel trapped in. For the first Christians, it had important social consequences. Many of them were slaves. But the Gospel proclaimed that all Christians were brothers and sisters; as Paul says, there is no more slave and free for first-century Christians.
This is Jesus’ mission statement. It’s not about rules or getting to heaven or steering clear of the other place. It’s about good news, freedom, independence, enlightenment, and a release from past debts. It’s a program that Jesus invites us to live right now: “This day this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”