Three years later, in 2016, the word today leapt out for me and became the word opening these verses to stir my blood and imagination and transformed the message that Jesus delivered.I no longer saw Jesus preaching that he and his ministry was some sort of culmination and end point of the quoted Isaiah 61:1-2 passage. Rather this was his teaching about how God's kingdom is contained in the world today, as it has always been.
Jesus was not alone in being anointed to bring good news to the poor and to proclaim the release of captives. In this world we are the body of Christ. Now is the time for us to proclaim the recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
This builds us up to see God's kingdom today. Do we have faith that the Lord really favors this year or any year since these words were first uttered? There will always be social inequity, blindness and oppression. There are still captives. This insight came last year. 2018 was a year where the cruelty of a zero-tolerance policy was introduced in our country. Any revealed or secret hopes for global justice didn't happen last year or in the years before that. It is foreseeable there will still be injustice at the end of this coming year. Surely, we think, some wrongs must be righted before honestly being able to say, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Yet to believe these wrongs must be righted first, however, makes Isaiah and Jesus when they proclaim today a lie. What Jesus is driving at in his first sermon is that Isaiah words are fulfilled in our hearing, in our collective.ear And this scripture was read and was fulfilled in 2018, 2016 and in 2013, This Gospel is fulfilled each time it is read. This Gospel was read and fulfilled before 2013 and back and back each year to that Nazarene synagogue and further back to Isaiah. This good news is permanent, deeper and greater than we imagine.
I felt blessed today with a different joy as well. I was amazed not only by what Jesus quoted in this scroll but also what Jesus left out Here is the Isaiah passage:
Isaiah 61:1-2
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn
Isaiah's day of vengeance is not included in the sermon Jesus makes. For me, in this moment, that is God being revealed more fully. Pastor Ray preached that God comes for us. Jesus, the New Testament angels, and the Gospel all assure us to fear not. I cannot believe God is coming for anyone to exact retribution or out of anger. If I had other experiences in my life I might have different beliefs but that I do worship an angry God and I do not see the body of Christ proclaiming a day of vengeance.
This morning Eric led a class on Lauren Winner's book Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God. Today's subject laughter. Interesting topic when you are thinking about emotion. Laughter is not in the emotional thesaurus for good reason. Happiness can come from laughter but not all laughter come from happiness.
Janet posted in the Facebook Bible group we both belong to that 'The concept that "sin wants to be alone with people" is a warning that I need to vigilantly observe the friends and family that make up my community to ensure that they are not distancing themselves from the community, setting themselves up in a dangerous position. Likewise, I need to check myself to make sure that I don't retreat into isolation. I think that God wants us to live in relationship to other Christians, where we can find love, nurturing, and forgiveness, as well as guidance in following a faith-filled life"
Our congregational annual meeting was today, and Janet's words were particularly important to keep in mind. The Second Reading was 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 where Paul writes about the about the body being one and having many members. The Psalm reading was Psalm 19 which includes verse 12 "Who can detect one's own offenses? Cleanse me from my secret faults."These readings all comforted me during the meeting. It was hard, but I laughed inwardly and; in the end; I let go of how I would have preferred the meeting to unfold.
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