Luke 4:16-21
16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and 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 proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
I recently received a DM that said, “if you don’t think hell is real and you claim to follow Christ, what do you even think Christ does for you?”
Being a cheeky little jackass, I decided to turn the question around on him, saying, “I’d actually encourage you to think for a moment, and ask yourself what Christ does for you if there is no hell. Because if that’s all it is, does that not strike you as a deficient sort of faith? Or is saving you from hell the only good reason you can think of for Jesus to be worth following?”
As we rethink the story of Jesus, thankfully, we don’t have to invent good reasons for the purpose of Jesus’s life. In this passage, Jesus tells us exactly what he lived for. And by the way, what Jesus lived for was also what Jesus died for. Spoiler alert; his mission was not to save people for the afterlife. It is a revolution of love and liberation in this life.
This passage has never been given much prominence by conservative Christians. It doesn’t add much to their narrative that Jesus came to save us from hell. But as much as this passage is ignored by evangelicals, it is clearly very important to Luke. If you are familiar with the gospels, you know that they are often short on description– the gospel authors jump from story to story with few narrative details. But here, Luke slows down time and methodically narrates every move Jesus makes.
Jesus stands.
A scroll is handed to him.
It is unrolled.
Jesus stands to read. Luke wants us to hang on these words:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
- Luke 4:18-19Then Jesus announces, “this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” It’s a mic-drop moment. Jesus has just given us his agenda.
Jesus says that he came to bring liberation. This liberation is spiritual, but is also far more than spiritual. It is physical, spiritual, and material.
When Jesus says he proclaims “the year of the Lord’s favor,” this is a clear reference to the “Jubilee” in the Hebrew law.1 Every 50 years, the people of Israel were supposed to “proclaim liberty throughout the land.”2 The liberty that was proclaimed in the Jubilee was not freedom from sin, but from material injustice and inequality.
The Jubilee was an economic reset. Wealth and land were to be redistributed. Every debt was to be canceled. Slaves were to be set free. Jesus brings good news for this life, not just for an afterlife; good news for all of human society, not just individual souls.
Jesus also tells us who he came for: The poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed are those who Jesus considers the objects of his ministry. Jesus came for the people on the bottom, the people who are left out.
To sum it up in one sentence; Jesus says that his mission was to go to the marginalized, and bring liberation.
I am reminded of Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, who has also given his life’s work to bring liberation to marginalized people. Stevenson advocates for death row inmates, almost all of whom are socially and economically disadvantaged, and are often unfairly sentenced. Stevenson points out that “the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.” Good news for the poor cannot just be pie-in the sky spirituality. It’s justice, or it’s not good news at all. Good news for oppressed people must challenge the systems that oppress them, or it’s actually a part of the problem.
The Jesus of evangelicalism often sanctifies the oppressive systems of this world rather than challenging them. Over-spiritualized, vapid theology turns people away from real-life issues of systemic racism, and income inequality, and focuses their attention on issues of the afterlife. But Jesus does not ignore injustice to whisk people off to heaven. Jesus came to bring justice to the poor of this world, and if we miss that, we miss the heart of Jesus.
One final thing is very interesting in this passage– it’s what Jesus leaves out of his statement. He quotes from Isaiah 61, but he cuts out a phrase! The original passage says, “to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God.”3
Jesus brings liberation, but not vengeance. Jesus interprets his scriptures through the lens of love. He reveals a God who “judges no one.”4 He preaches a God who loves, not a God who punishes. In fact, Jesus’s experience of Gods’ universal love is what leads to his message of liberation. If all are equally beloved, then those who are lowly must be lifted up, to experience true communion as our brothers and sisters. Everyone deserves liberation, because everyone is a beloved child of God.
This is the good news!
Inhale: God’s passion is our liberation. (4 seconds)
-HOLD- (4 seconds)
Exhale: Love dismantles opression. (4 seconds)
Inhale: God’s passion is for the poor. (4 seconds)
-HOLD- (4 seconds)
Exhale: We are all equally beloved by God. (4 seconds)
See Deuteronomy 15.
Leviticus 25:10.
Isaiah 61:2.
John 5:22.
Lovely. I liked the message. Especially what Jesus did not include from the scripture he quoted.
Beautiful words. The far-right Christians would call Jesus Woke and a Socialist. So many people misunderstand his words and what they stood for. He was for equality and kindness. He was against judgment and punishment. He was the ideal person we are supposed to try and emulate.