THE MINISTERING WORDS OF JESUS
Isaiah 61:1-4
Luke 4:14‑30
Here is how the Gospel writers tell it. Jesus was baptized, confronted temptation in the wilderness and began his ministry. However, the writers have different orders of events in Jesus ministry. Let’s follow Luke’s version today.
Luke announces that Jesus' fame spread, and then he went to the synagogue in Nazareth where he read the Scriptures and taught. He received mixed reviews for his public utterances in Nazareth. After reading the Scriptures, Jesus sat down and said, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21). The Scripture which he read was Isaiah 61:1-2, our first lesson for today. The fulfillment of Scripture then as now was not a once for all event. The same Scripture may be fulfilled many times in many places. Luke records this event at the outset of Jesus' ministry. There were many times during his ministry when this Scripture was fulfilled. This was neither the first nor last time that Jesus went to the synagogue because it was his custom to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath. Surely he spoke on other occasions when he was at the synagogue. Jesus quoted Isaiah to illustrate both the mission to which God had called him and his acceptance of the invitation with its attendant responsibilities.
On first hearing Jesus the people were really positive. They liked him and they marveled at his keen insight. What was as surprising as anything was that one of their own could demonstrate such promise. After all they knew his parents and his brothers and sisters. They had watched him grow up and it was difficult experiencing one that some of them had taught now saying some things that could teach them. There is an expression that states, "You can't go home." It has a dual reference. First, it suggests that once a child is grown and has been on his own, he cannot return to his parents’ home and be the child again, regardless of how many parents and children try that. Neither the child nor the parents can reverse the emotional process. Second, the statement refers to a person returning to his home community and being accepted as a mature, thinking adult. There may be exceptions to these generalizations, but they are rare.
The acclaim and adulation which Jesus received during this Nazareth synagogue visit was short lived. Jesus began interpreting and applying the Scripture he had read by giving illustrations from Israel's history. He chose two of Israel's well known prophets, Elijah and Elisha, but he chose an event from each of their lives which his listeners had chosen to ignore. Both illustrations demonstrated the prophets relating to Gentiles in very positive ways. One of the quickest ways to be rejected is for a person to identify with the oppressed in the presence of the oppressors. This occurred during the civil rights struggle and at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in this country. It often occurs when people oppose the military policy or action of their country.
Jesus identified with the oppressed in the presence of the oppressors. This is what Jesus did with his illustrations in our second reading for today from Luke’s Gospel. As a result the synagogue congregation became so angry with Jesus that they ran him out of town and were going to push him over the bluff outside the city, but somehow he slipped away from them. Here was proof Jesus was doing his job. Here was a forecast and pattern of his work. Wherever Jesus went, he was praised by some and despised by others. Wherever Jesus went, trouble often followed.
There are at least four attendant responsibilities involved in the call to ministry which Jesus accepted: (1) to preach good news to the poor, (2) to proclaim release to the captives and to set at liberty those who are oppressed, (3) to offer sight to the blind, and (4) to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. There is no priority ranking of these responsibilities. They are of equal importance. What Jesus accepted as the tasks of his ministry he also taught as the responsibility of any who desire to be his disciples. Those who commit themselves to be his disciples commit themselves to the same tasks that he accepted. He said, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12) and he said to his disciples "You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14). Thus, to examine the outline of Jesus' ministry is to examine the ministry of anyone who would be his disciple and would take the name Christian as an identity.
In Hebrew thinking word and deed are inseparable. To speak is to act. To talk is to do. To preach or proclaim is to announce, but it is announcing in the sense that the announcer is actively engaged in carrying out what he announces.
For Jesus to preach was for him to act. There was never a need in Judaism to admonish someone to practice what he preached because putting into action was part of the preaching. In this sense, one had not preached if he had not put into practice what he was proclaiming. One of Jesus' tasks was to preach good news to the poor. Good news is that which evokes joy in those who receive it. News that is good is under girded by help and hope. Regardless of the situation, when good news is announced it means help and hope are available to those involved, no matter what the conditions. To be helpless and hopeless is to be devastated. On the human level when one is helpless and hopeless, the person may be breathing but is not living. The word translated good news is used outside the New Testament as a technical term for victory. In its biblical usage good news means the circumstances have not overcome and destroyed the person but the person has been able to journey through the situation and deal with the circumstances.
Jesus' task was to announce good news to the poor. The poor were those who were destitute of wealth and material, lacking even the necessities of life. The earliest biblical stories tell of the sensitivity that people are to have toward the poor. In the Hebrew Scripture the poor are the special charge of God and there are many warnings against the oppression of the poor. Paternalism is part of the oppression. Those who are poor don't want to be. Neither do they want us to buy them off with a food basket.
Mary Cosby told a relevant story.1 She had been helping a woman, whom she had known for a long time, clean up her apartment in a low rent housing development. Mary had noticed there was very little food in the apartment and it was the week of Thanksgiving. Mary went home, baked a turkey and took it to the woman on Wednesday before Thanksgiving. When the woman answered the door she did not reach out her hands to take the turkey. Mary said, "I've brought you a turkey for your Thanksgiving dinner!" The woman replied, "Mary, why don't you help me get a job so I can buy my own turkey for my family?”
Jesus had a knack for saying the wrong thing at the right time. He said, “The poor are always with you,” which is a quote from Deuteronomy (15:11).
Can you imagine what the reporters of the Jerusalem Journal did with that juicy statement?
Dateline: Jerusalem. The disciples of Jesus are working overtime trying to clear the debris caused by the verbal bombshell that their teacher dropped on the city today. A source close to Jesus who asked not to be named, tells of disarray and disillusionment among Jesus' disciples following his attempts to defend the waste of expensive perfume by an emotionally upset woman. Another unnamed source said it is nothing short of political suicide. Judas, the treasurer of the group, was reported to be on the verge of tears as he said, "It is as if he had said, 'If you've seen one starving peasant, you've seen them all.'"
This quotation, "The poor are always with you" that Jesus used was a disturbing word. Many have grabbed that statement as evidence that efforts to help the poor are futile because as Jesus said, “The poor are always with you.” To claim that statement as evidence is a failure and refusal to hear Jesus’ statement as an indictment. Jesus was saying that the poor are always with us because we make so little effort to address and eradicate poverty. We do not join Jesus in announcing good news to the poor. Jesus’ statement upsets our inactivity and shoulder shrugging and indicts us. First, it indicts us by saying that the very fact the poor are with us is evidence that we neither adopt nor practice God's economic policy of generosity and open handedness. The problems of poverty and hunger are so huge we are overwhelmed, become immobilized, and seek a problem that is more our size. Second, this word of Jesus indicts us because we have viewed ministry to the world in terms of competing priorities. People in the church tend to become Johnny and Susie one‑notes for missions or evangelism or music or preaching or social action. But this word of Jesus suggests that we are not to conclude that one thing is so important that all other things are to be left undone until it is finished? We have the opportunity to minister to the poor, to educate, to bring reconciliation, to serve God and one another. We need to keep the opportunities for ministry in perspective rather than in competition.
The good news that Jesus proclaimed was that God always is on the side of the poor working with them to free them from the constraints of poverty. We are on God's side to the extent that we are found on the side of the poor working for their victory and liberation from bondage.
When Jesus preached good news to the poor he was releasing the captives and liberating the oppressed. Of course poverty is not the only captor or oppressor. Fear, prejudice, possessions, disease, and religion oppress people and hold them captive.
Jesus was the great liberator. His words and deeds always were offered to free people from anything that enslaved them and kept them from being the persons God created them to be. The passage Jesus read from Isaiah was his ministry manifesto. The beatitude attitude expressed in the Sermon on the Mount became Jesus’ comprehensive but succinct expression of his liberation policy to proclaim good news to the poor and set free those who are oppressed.
This sermon of sermons has been heard in a variety of ways. Some sentimentalists boast that the only religion they want is the Sermon on the Mount. I wonder if they have read it. Some who are troubled by its heavy demands give up in despair, concluding that it is unrealistic and impossible. A few have attempted to follow it literally, even to include self‑mutilation. Others understand it as an interim ethic, intended for a brief period just before an expected end of the world. There are those who suggest that the Sermon applies to the clergy only while others suggest it refers to relationships within the church but not in the world. Jesus did not endorse such double standards. Rather, he suggested that people develop the beatitude attitude in their living in order to be free at last themselves and in order to engage in the ministry of liberating others.
When Jesus began his proclamation, people knew what he was going to say, "Repent, judgment is coming. God is angry." Even when these negatives are true, they are seldom helpful. Jesus surprised the crowd with his statement, "Blessed are you," when "Woe to you" was expected. His hand was not a clinched, smashing, repulsing fist, but an open hand, a gesture of giving, accepting, and receiving. No one is healed by judgment and punishment; the negative only makes people sick. Jesus’ ministry portrays the open hands of God reaching out to care for people in the midst of oppression and captivity.
Clearly, Jesus’ ministry manifesto was liberation. His objective was redemption, setting people free from what oppressed and captivated them. Jesus was tempted in a variety of ways to be diverted from his ministry of redemption. But Jesus refused to allow the pleas or signs or the speculations about the end of the age to obstruct him from his objectives to proclaim good news to the poor and release to the captives.
The beatitudes from Jesus’ well-known Sermon on the Mount describe the liberating process for one being redeemed. The beatitudes are the ministering, redeeming words of Jesus. Our release from bondage begins with our admission of being spiritually bankrupt. That leads us to mourn for ourselves and for others through which we find comfort. Then we are open to be teachable. When we are teachable we hunger for righteousness, we seek to be merciful, develop pure hearts, make peace, and are willing to experience persecution because we are learning what liberation genuinely means and what it means to be ministers of liberation. The redeeming words of Christ take root in us and bear fruit through our liberating encounters with others. We give good news to the poor and release people from bondage because to speak is to act. Jesus’ ministry manifesto is ours manifesto as well. Because the poor are with us is evidence that we still have work to do to proclaim good news to the poor by eradicating poverty and thus liberating people from the oppression of poverty.
Notes
1. Mary Cosby, Speech given to the Ministers' Conference of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention, December 8, 1983.
2. Recorded in Baptist Peacemaker, Vol. 1, No. 1, December 1980, p. 1. Published by Deer Park Baptist Church, Louisville, Ky.
3. E. Glenn Hinson, The Reaffirmation of Prayer (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1979), pp. 107‑108.
4. George A. Buttrick, ed., The Interpreter's Bible Commentary (Nashville, Abingdon Press), Vol. 7, p. 856.