Believing Jesus and Justice

Text: Luke 4:1-11
Other texts: Portions of Isaiah

For people and for nations, suffering reveals in them deep and cold theological questions. For faithful people, and especially people who, like Israel, had been chosen and named as God’s people, the question is not whether God exists. God does. The question in the darkest times is whether God cares. Does God care for them? And if God does care, is God good? And if God cares and is good, is this caring, good, God stronger than evil?

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is introduced to the world and prepared for his ministry in it by the Holy Spirit. It is the power of the Spirit that impregnates Mary. The Spirit who reveals the identity of Jesus to Simeon when Jesus was just a baby. It is the Spirit who comes at his baptism. It is the Spirit that fills Jesus before it leads him out into the desert to be tempted by the devil. It is the Spirit who escorts him back to Galilee to preach his first sermon. The one we just heard him preach today. It is the Spirit that will anoint him as a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, making him the Messiah, the anointed one. There is no question in Luke’s mind about the source of the ministry of Jesus. It comes from the Holy Spirit.

Nor is there a question of where his ministry is going. This passage we just heard is Jesus’ first public act in the Gospel of Luke. And that act is a sermon. Jesus opens the Bible—taking the scroll of Isaiah—and finds the words of God he wants to talk about. He reads from the 61st chapter of Isaiah, a reading that echoes the themes of the Magnificat that Mary his mother sang when Jesus was still in the womb. About the poor, the prisoner, the blind, the oppressed. About the year of the Lord’s favor (the Jubilee, when debt is forgiven and slaves freed—imagine that!). Putting the reading aside, Jesus delivers his very short sermon—one sentence—relating the scripture people have just heard to their lives, as all sermons should. This reading, he says, has been fulfilled in their hearing.

This story is like an overture to the whole of story of the ministry of Jesus in Luke. Or an abstract, a précis. It explains how Jesus came to be here—by the power of the Spirit. Who he is—the anointed one. His mission—to proclaim good news to the poor and oppressed. And, in the verses just beyond today’s passage: what will happen to him—rejection and eventually execution. This passage ties Jesus to salvation history—God’s work in the world—and to the prophecy of a new world, one that is good and one that is just.

It ties him to the people’s hope of a messiah. But by choosing Isaiah as the reading for the day, Jesus reveals his particular messianic program and the focus of his attention. A return to the fundamentals, as Isaiah saw them.

Isaiah condemned the ceremony and piety of the Israelites, who had forgotten to care for the poor and dispossessed. The Book of Isaiah starts with God saying: “I’ve had enough of burnt offerings, new moons, sabbaths and convocations … I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.” That’s pretty clear. And later God judges their self-serving piousness, saying “Look, you serve your own interests … [while you] oppress all your workers.” And God reminds them that God’s call to them is “to loose the bonds of injustice, … to let the oppressed go free, … to share your bread with the hungry, … and bring the homeless poor into your house.”

By choosing the passage that he did from Isaiah, Jesus is announcing that it is this tradition on which he now stands, into which he has now been anointed. He is reiterating God’s primary call to attend to the needs of others. He has come to restore Israel and the world. And his program to do that: is to restore justice, equity, compassion, and care for the uncared-for.

You might understand, as some have over the years, you might understand this sermon of Jesus to be a declaration. An argument for the proof of his divine authority. He is speaking of godly pronouncements and, even more, of godly intentions. He claims the favor of the Holy Spirit and to be the anointed one. He fulfills the prophecies.

Or you might understand this sermon to be an exhortation: a call to action, a command. Jesus has come to restore justice and we should, too. He is not just saying this is a good idea, but that it is way of being that God commands and that is essential to the salvation—the healing—of the world. If we do not do as Jesus claims here (and will later command more explicitly), then what is broken will remain so.

Or you might understand this to be an announcement of good news especially to those whom he names: people who are poor, who are blind, prisoners of war (which is what “captive” means), to free those who are oppressed and abused (the word he uses means to be bruised). Or more generally people who suffer because of poverty, because of illness or accident; people who are imprisoned, enslaved or indentured; people who are exploited by others; people who are tyrannized by debt.

Jesus’ sermon is greeted with praise. All spoke well of him and were amazed, it says. It seems that they believe Jesus. And that they approve of his claim. And his plan. Yet, a couple of minutes later, in verses that immediately follow, they try to throw him off a cliff. There is a reason for that. Which is that he tells them that he will do lots of great things, but not for them, his hometown neighbors.

Why is this sermon at first greeted with such praise? And then with such anger? You might think that the crowd Jesus is speaking to is made up mostly of oppressed persons, a crowd of poor blind captives. But that is probably not so. It was a mixed audience.

Everyone is thrilled. Everyone is thrilled because no one likes an evil world, in spite of appearances. People do not like injustice, even if they benefit from it. They do not like imprisoning people, even if they pass laws to make it happen. They do not like oppressing people even when their actions bolster oppression.

They praise Jesus because they believe him. They think maybe he really can restore the world to the way it should have been and should be. Back to the Garden. That is why his neighbors are so unhappy when he quickly denies their hopes for a miracle. They are extremely disappointed, which only makes sense if they were extremely hopeful.

Jesus is making an announcement, which is this: you are right to think that evil is evil, and that this is not the way the world was made or the way the world has to be. God does care, God is good, God is stronger than evil.

Jesus is making a declaration, good news for all. It is this: reality is good and just, or can be. That what seems to be injustice can be reversed. That poverty can be undone. That exploitation can be stopped. That love is stronger than hate. The evil of the world can be fought and defeated. It is the messiah who will bring that about. And God is behind it.

But finally, it is also a charge to us, an exhortation, a should. The exhortation is this: that we—especially Christians—should live our lives as if there was a least a possibility of this becoming true. Not to dismiss it as either irrelevant or mythical or unrealistic or impractical. We should live as if the promise of justice is possible. For us and the world.

And the charge is this: that the day to day decisions of our lives—the things we do, the way we vote, the way we earn and spend, the things we say, the way we look at and evaluate situations, the way we judge and forgive, the way we deal with every other person—should be made in light of that promise.