Chapter 61: People with a mission

61:1-3 ‘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 broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.’

This passage is used by Jesus at the beginning of his ministry (Luke 4:18-19).

'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing'.  Jesus demonstrated, by his actions, that the kingdom of God has broken through into the lives of those around him.  It is something real, immediate and living.  Jesus stood up in his local synagogue, took the book and read from it.  There was no sermon or interpretation beyond the simple statement that 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing'.  What people would see is what they would get – a human being – an ordinary and extraordinary human being making a deep impression on his listeners – speaking to their hearts and minds and setting them free.  The Jewish people expected salvation from a Messiah.  This salvation came in a most unexpected way – without respectable trappings.  Freedom was on offer but it was too immediate, too obvious and too concrete for many to grasp it.

How does this story speak to us today? Let’s take just two inter-related themes:

-        recovery of sight to the blind

-        letting the oppressed go free

Reflecting on what these might mean in today's world for individuals as well for communities these words may be put in a contemporary context.

At one level we can read this literally as referring to the curing of the blind (e.g. Bartimeus in Matt 20: 29-34) and the setting of Barabbas free (Matt 27:26). At another level we may see blindness and oppression as spiritual conditions. There is a danger that, on the one hand, we can over-spiritualise what Jesus is saying and doing to reduce his message to a metaphor for a personal, introspective spiritual searching. According to this view, Jesus saves us from our personal and individual darkness and spiritual blindness to receive light and inner freedom.  At the other extreme there is the risk of reducing the story to a purely 'this-worldly' account where Jesus the social prophet and saviour of Israel comes to save the poor of Yahweh and free the people from foreign oppressors. The freeing that Jesus that brings is much deeper than either of these perspectives. To use the evangelist's John's account: the Truth will set you free' (John 8:32). Freedom – that elusive idea that defies commodification – is something that Jesus offers those who will listen and follow his call.

One of the difficulties that followers of Jesus encounter in a contemporary context is the distance perceived between human autonomy and the demands inherent in Jesus' message. In the Gospel Jesus offers and promises freedom.  However, many see his call as mediated through a particular tradition or rule of life as undermining freedom – even oppressive and restrictive of true human potential. In what sense is real freedom on offer here? In what way is Jesus's message and gift bringing about new sight where blindness prevented our seeing before?

Perhaps too often the community of Jesus' followers has become the problem more than the answer to questions of freedom. In other words instead of setting people free it imprisons them in a false ideology based on exclusion and self-righteousness.  Instead of giving sight to the blind it blinds to the truth of God's love in others – very different and very much distant from orthodoxy. Luke's Gospel is filled with stories of undesirable persons and groups intruding on 'correct religion' in a context of Jesus reaching out, bringing in, healing and setting free. And the prophet Isaiah more than hints that persons outside the chosen tribe will be brought in to join the others.

To be a disciple of Jesus in the 21st Century is to be free – that is faithful and open to what is best in God’s gift of catholic tradition and reformed order – valuing the dignity, freedom and honesty of individual souls who find their love in communities united around the Word who is made flesh in real people like you and me and the 'other'.

#JourneyIsaiah

O Morning Star,

splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:

Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.