Good News How

Text: Luke 4:14-21 January 21, 2006

Jesus came bringing good news. But not everyone agreed the news was good.

This speech of Jesus we just heard are the first words of his ministry, following immediately after his baptism and his temptation in the desert. As a reader in the synagogue, he is given or chooses a passage from the prophet Isaiah. It is a song of hope and trust and change for the better for a beleaguered people. After hard times, good times are ahead. An anointed one—which is what the word messiah means—has come, called to proclaim good news. A time of restoration (Isaiah adds that “they will raise up the former devastations, they will repair the ruined cities.”)

This anointed one brings good news to the poor, frees the captives, restores sight to the blind, and liberates the oppressed.

This is a reading of promise, but to those who heard Jesus on that day, the passage is old hat. They’ve heard it countless times, so many times that perhaps it has lost its impact. To those oppressed people to whom Jesus speaks, those under Roman occupation, it sounds perhaps like wishful thinking, or whistling in the dark.

So it is a shock when Jesus puts away the scroll, and sits down, and tells them “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

At first they are pleased and proud. This is his home-town, he’s come back as a grown-up. Joseph and Mary’s boy. But they are little nonplussed, too. What does he mean? And by the time Jesus compares himself to the great prophet Elijah, they are furious, and they take him to the edge of the cliff and try to throw him off. But he escapes.

But his home town buddies were not the only people to be bewildered and upset by Jesus’ words or his claim to fulfill them. In his life and since that time, the poor have been worried that what he said would happen had not. And the rich have been worried that it might.

Of all the four Gospels, Luke is the most interested in the plight of the poor (and by poor, he means everyone who is disenfranchised and dispossessed). In Luke, Mary sings of the poor raised up and the mighty cast down. In Luke, the poor, the hungry, those who weep are blessed. In Luke, Jesus comes proclaiming good news to the poor. In Luke, Jesus comes to the poor.

Today’s reading has historically been a problem especially for those who not poor. Those who have things and who by and large don’t go to bed hungry. For the privileged. There is a bit of cognitive dissonance as those who are mighty try to reconcile their status with their commitment to this Son of God they follow. There have been lots of strategies to make things fit, of which the top five are these.

Strategy one. Sentimentalizing. The poor have a special life, according to this strategy, a kind of blessed life not available to the rich, a simple life. Their relationships are fundamental and their living is homey. They are good, simple folk favored by God.

Strategy two. Spiritualizing. Jesus doesn’t really mean poor when he quotes Isaiah. He means poor in spirit. Matthew does this in his version of the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. We are all poor in some ways, even those who are materially rich. Releasing the captives doesn’t mean letting people out of prison, according to this strategy, it means releasing our inner demons.

Strategy three. Metaphorizing (that’s not a real word). The poor and blind are not real people, but symbols for something else. The exiled nation of Israel. The infidels and atheists. Evolution. Sin. This earthly life from which we will one day escape.

Strategy four. Displacing. Jesus said it, but it doesn’t mean what it sounds like. This is not about the poor, but about Jesus. The focus is not on the poor, but on the savior, who is using the poor, and this prophecy, as just one example. This passage is about Jesus’ character, not about those he happens to mention.

And strategy five. Denying. According to this strategy, this passage has nothing to do with us, Gospel readers of the past 2000 years. It is pretty, but pretty irrelevant to the faith I claim. I don’t even see why you’re talking about it. Get to the point!

The point is that no matter how hard we might try to avoid these verses or excuse them, they nag at us. In a good way. That is, they seem right. Not irrelevant or immaterial, but appealing. Jesus is not trying to fool us or frighten us. This is good news; we can feel it.

It feels good, I think, because the verbs are good. Release, restore, recover, go free. Though we may think it expedient to put people in prison, no one thinks it is good. Though people are blinded by all sorts of natural causes, no one thinks it is good. Though we might understand how one group oppresses another, no one thinks it is good.

These verbs work no matter what the context. When we hear “release to the captives,” it makes sense whether we are in prison and long to escape or in bondage to some kind of obsession and long to escape or stuck in a cycle of revenge and long to escape.

When we hear “recovery of sight to the blind” it makes sense whether we have cataracts and long to see or in ignorance and long to see or lost in mental confusion and long to see.

When Jesus refers to the year of the Lord’s favor, most scholars think this is code language in Luke for the Kingdom of God, a favorite phrase of Luke, and as much a place of the physical present as of the spiritual future. When we hear of the prisoners being set free, and the blind healed, and poverty eliminated, and oppression ended—when we hear of these things we think that’s how it will be in the Kingdom of God. When the inhumane things we do and the sorrows we suffer will no longer happen. Sickness, and sadness, and craziness, and brutality are not the way things ought to be, and in the Kingdom of God they have no place.

What draws us to this passage, what makes us embrace it instead of deny it through all those different strategies, is that we want this kingdom now, here, in our time, for humanity and all creation. Jesus says that these words of Isaiah will be fulfilled. Are fulfilled.

As Christians, we are officially naïve. Intentionally so. We believe Jesus when he says things like this. We live expecting the Kingdom of God, and we trust that the Spirit will strengthen and guide us to help make that so. There will be an end to captivity, poverty, blindness, and oppression. Jesus proclaimed this good news. And we agree it is good.