“Becoming the Gospel” on Luke 4:14-30 by Joe Ellis – Jan. 26, 2025
This morning we read Jesus’ first sermon in the Gospel of Luke. Before Jesus preached that morning a lot had already happened in his life. As he was baptized by his cousin, John, the heavens opened and the Spirit flew down on him like a dove. That’s what Jesus refers to when he says he was anointed by the Holy Spirit in today’s passage. Then he heard the voice of God proclaim, “This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” Right after that, the Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil for forty days. After passing that test, Jesus made his way back to his hometown, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. News about Jesus was spreading throughout the country. Apparently he’d already been preaching and performing miracles. Everybody was praising him and anticipating his every word. And then he goes home. That Saturday he attends synagogue. Someone hands him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus finds the 61st chapter — that chapter that describes God’s future Messiah — that morning Jesus read to His home-church what his mission statement would be.
“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 favour.” Then he says, “Today, the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Let’s pause for a moment and wonder what Jesus was saying he’d do? Do you think we should hear his words literally or metaphorically? For example, is he metaphorically talking about the poor, as the poor in spirit, as in those who really need to hear a Word from God? Or, is Jesus going to literally preach to the economically disadvantage, those who are impoverished and outcasts? When Jesus proclaims freedom for prisoners, is he literally proclaiming freedom for those who are unjustly imprisoned by corrupt leaders, or is Jesus metaphorically promising spiritual freedom for those who are held captive by sin. Or in the next line when Jesus says that he has been sent to give sight to the blind, is he saying that he’s going to miraculously heal those who physically can’t see, or is he going to heal the spiritually blind and empower them to see the salvation of God? When Jesus proclaims release for the oppressed, is he literally talking about releasing those who are crushed by debt, or is Jesus metaphorically talking about giving freedom to those who are oppressed by Satan? I think the answer to all these questions is, “yes, all of the above.” The Kingdom of God isn’t just concerned about people’s spiritual condition and not just their physical condition. The Kingdom of God isn’t just about fighting for social justice without caring for a person’s soul.
Why is this important? Because, as Christians, it is so easy to get this out of balance and emphasize one or the other.
A number of years ago, John Geertsma was telling me that about 50 years ago this church had an evangelism committee. Their plan was to have the kids knock on the doors of all the non-Christian houses in Telkwa and hand them a devotional booklet. John told me that it choked him that his parents were making him do their “dirty work” and willing to put his life at risk in the wild west days of Telkwa. That tract style of evangelism conveys that the only important thing is giving someone spiritual information (well, tracts have their own real problems. They’re spiritual information but devoid of human contact).
But there is another side that is equally out of whack. In the church I grew up in the emphasis was on doing stuff for people. My impression was that mission meant building someone a house — and it didn’t seem to matter much how it was done as long as someone got a house. Of course, it's a noble thing to give people life-changing information about the love of God, and it's also a noble thing to improve someone’s living conditions. But neither offers the full picture.
As I’m saying this, I’m realizing that regardless of what we do to reach out to our neighbours in the name of Christ — it is to be done with embodied, incarnate love — whether it feels more spiritual, more intellectual or more practical. As the Kingdom of God arrives, it arrives on every possible level of experience.
We do well to hear all possible meanings of what Jesus is talking about in this passage. So that when Jesus says that the Spirit of the Lord is on him to preach good news to the poor, we can understand this, on one level, as an invitation to befriend the economically marginalized: Join them in their suffering, stand together in solidarity, fight together for justice and dignity. But on another level we reach out to the poor in Spirit, the sad, discouraged, downhearted and depressed: showing them something of God’s love, God’s hope, God’s forgiveness, God’s kindness.
When Jesus talks about proclaiming release for the prisoners, one one level we can take that literally. We can pray for those in prison. One of our friends in this congregation has a regular practice of writing to a number of inmates in prison all in the name of showing and sharing of God’s love. We can pray for individuals within the prison system, or in other systems that impact marginalized people. That is one level, and on another level we can recognize that something beyond an individual approach is necessary — last week a congregant sat down with me to share his response to the sermon I preached a few weeks ago that was reflecting on the relationship between the sins of our ancestors, First Nations generational trauma, and our responsibility. He helpfully pushed back on a number of points in that sermon, and one of the points he wanted to make clear was his concern that the current system actually perpetuates many problems facing the First Nations communities. That is, our system attempts to address historical trauma experienced by indigenous people in Canada, but it’s not having its intended affect — but (in his view) quite the opposite. So, as Christians we can hear this as a call to fight to set the oppressed free on a systemic level — as Christians we can consider how we might challenge dysfunctional and even evil systems that work to the detriment of all people made in the image of God. For those who are Christians in politics, that is the level they’re working on.
What about more of a spiritual interpretation? Can someone be imprisoned by sin? Of course. We must proclaim the good news of God’s forgiveness. Christians throughout the ages have helped the oppressed go free through the simple words: “In the name of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven.”
The Isaiah passage Jesus read also talks about giving sight to the blind. Is this physical or spiritual? Throughout the Gospels — Jesus physically heals the blind — yet these miracles are a powerful sign of growing in spiritual sight. Mark 9 and 10 contains a huge section of the teachings of Jesus, and it is book-ended by two stories of healing. Mark’s point is clear: as we listen to Jesus, we go from blindness to sight. And so giving sight to the blind had a physical component in Jesus’ ministry, but it, of course, also had a catechetical component (fancy words for teaching people about God.)
Sometimes, Christians have been divided over whether Kingdom work is either spiritual or physical or intellectual. Sometimes Christians are divided about whether our faith is about forgiveness of sins or social justice. But the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus is that it's always all of the above! That’s a picture of the Kingdom of God. If it's not clear, the Kingdom of God is about the power of God in putting this whole world right — and he works through us. God cares about all of a person and their circumstances, mind, body, soul, spirit. God cares about the health of individuals, communities, ecosystems and nations — and we can join in on this calling at many different levels. Of course, none of us is called to do all things. We simply can’t — but each of us is called in some way. The writer Frederick Buechner said, “The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
“Today, Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus is in his home church. Everyone knows him. Some are wondering if this boy, Joseph’s son, has gotten a little too big for his britches. Some might have been thinking, “Seriously? The Spirit of the Lord is upon you?” Jesus knew that some were suspicious of him, an apparently uneducated carpenter’s son. Jesus knew that some wanted him to prove what he was saying with a miracle or two. Jesus says to the congregation, “You’re probably thinking right now of that proverb, “Physician, heal yourself.” In other words, They’re thinking, “Jesus, take care of your own people first. Do the miracles here that you’ve been doing in those other towns.” They are suspicious of the grace-filled words of Jesus. The problem is that their vision of the Kingdom of God, is actually a lot smaller than the vision of Jesus. They want to keep the Kingdom in Israel only.
So Jesus tells two stories. One story is about how God used the prophet Elijah to provide food to a foreign widow during a famine. Another story is about how God used the prophet Elisha to heal commander of a foreign a foreign army. In both stories, God was blessing foreigners instead of Israel. Jesus is saying that the Kingdom of God isn’t subject to the limitations we put on it. The Kingdom of God is going to spread to the world into every aspect of life. That’s what happened in the days of Elijah and Elisha, and that’s what is happening through Jesus.
The stories Jesus told upset that congregation because they had a more limited view of where and what the Kingdom of God would look like. Is it possible that we could make the same mistake? Is it possible that we might have a particular idea of what the Kingdom of God entails, and want to keep it in-house? When someone is passionate about God’s call to reach out to the poor, the marginalized, or the disabled, could you imagine ever thinking: “That’s certainly not what God is calling us to do, that’s just what they want to do because they’re into that sort of thing.” No prophet is accepted in their hometown. The closer we are to each other, the easier it can be to simply dismiss each other, to say, “I don’t think you’ve heard right. You should be doing this instead of that.” That was Jesus’ reception in his hometown. Do you think that we might receive him the same way if Jesus came disguised as the person sitting next to you and invited you to bring the Kingdom to Telkwa or to our neighbouring communities in a way that pushed you outside of your comfort zone?
God never intended to confine his Kingdom to our established programs. In the stories Jesus told, the obvious response should be, “Of course, God will heal those outside of Israel, because the Kingdom of God is always expanding its borders.” It's almost as if through those stories, Jesus was saying, “The Kingdom of God is growing beyond your borders and boundaries, will you grow with it?” The stories that Jesus tells are stories of God on mission, in new and unconventional ways. Naaman the Syrian, the commander of the enemy army, was told to wash 7 times in the Jordan River. These are stories of God moving outside of our home-church, and moving into uncharted waters. Will you come too?
The Kingdom of God is here and it is on the move. What would it mean for followers of Christ to move beyond these walls, preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, release for the oppressed. What would it mean for us to go beyond these walls and proclaim the Lord’s favour in the ways that we’ve been talking about.
The Kingdom of God is here, and it covers every aspect of life: spiritual, social, material, environmental, physical, psychological. The Kingdom of God is spilling out of our boundaries, and will push us beyond what we find comfortable. The Kingdom of God is on the move. That’s the Word of Jesus for our home-church this morning. Will we dismiss this as some ancient word of the past that can’t reach us today? Or, will we move with the Kingdom. Will this Word of Jesus move us beyond our comfort zone? Will we move with this Word of Jesus out into our community, and show this valley that the Kingdom of God is in fact here?
Come Holy Spirit, Spirit of Truth.
Fill our hearts with the power to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.