The Spirit of the Lord is upon You (so I'm going to push you off a Cliff)
Luke 4:14-21 and 4:21-30
It’s an odd thing to go back to your hometown when you have been away for a while. In this week’s scripture we see Jesus heading back to his hometown of Nazareth for the first time since he was baptized by John the Baptist and he has been tempted in the wilderness for forty days. It’s probably a pretty wild ride, so he heads back to his home before he starts out his big traveling ministry. The scripture even says that Jesus has been teaching in the synagogues of the towns he passed on the way, and some of the folks back home have heard about what he’s been up to.
‘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.’
When he arrives in Nazareth he heads straight to his hometown synagogue, and someone hands him a scroll of the book of Isaiah to read out loud. He skims straight to chapter 61 and reads what stands as the mission statement for Jesus in Luke’s gospel. Jesus is here to bring good news to the poor, give sight to the blind and free the prisoners. This is a pretty big statement, and he notices that everyone is staring at him. Jesus just looks right at them and essentially says, “Yep, this scripture’s about me!” If he would have had a microphone he would have dropped it.
Our lectionary scripture ends there with the mic drop, but the story doesn’t end there, so we’re going to do something a little different and cover this week and next week right now. It’s important to look at how the people in the synagogue respond to his bold statement of purpose. They don’t buy it at all. They say, “Aren’t you Joseph’s kid?” as if to dismiss him because they think they know who he is, and he is not the “bringing good news to the poor” type. Jesus shrugs it off by saying “Whatever! No prophet was liked by the people of their town!” The people get so mad at him that they try to throw him off a cliff, but he just walks off to follow God’s path and change the world.
I love this passage for two reasons. First, it is a wonderfully succinct encapsulation of what lies at the heart of the ministry of Luke’s Jesus. I used the term mission statement before, and I really do think this works like one. Jesus essentially says that God has called him to do four basic things:
Help people in need
Heal people
Free people
Tell people God’s time is now
If you use a mission statement well, most of the work you do goes to help with one of the missions listed in your mission statement. If you read through the gospel, almost everything Jesus does falls into one of these four missions. This is the work Jesus is called to do, and he gets to it. Therefore, if we are trying to follow Jesus’s teachings, then our mission statement should look pretty similar.
The second reason I love this passage is because of how real it is. I can tell you for sure that if you start telling people in your life that you feel like you are called to serve the poor and the sick, and drop what you have to follow God, you are going to get some funny looks. Some people are going to dismiss you. Some people are going to tell you that you are not the, “bringing good news to the poor” type. Some people may even get mad about it. You may have your own moment where you just have to walk away. But know this: The Spirit of the Lord is upon you, too, and God’s time is right now. What is on your mission statement?