So. This is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. He’s in Nazareth, his hometown, introducing to the world what his ministry is all about—what he is all about.
He does this by taking a statement from the prophet Isaiah, and making it his mission statement.
This, he says, is the messiah’s mission:
“To bring good news to the poor; to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
What is “the year of the Lord’s favor?” Isaiah explains a little more…
Isaiah says that the year of the Lord’s favor is “a day of vindication for our God, to comfort all who mourn; to provide for Zion’s mourners; to give them a crown in place of ashes, oil of joy in place of mourning, a mantle of praise in place of discouragement.”
Isaiah says “they will be called Oaks of Righteousness, planted by the Lord to glorify himself. They will rebuild the ancient ruins; they will restore formerly deserted places; they will renew ruined cities, places deserted in generations past.”
Isaiah is talking about life after captivity and exile, when God’s people would return to Israel and would be able to rebuild, restore, and renew their nation. It would be (Isaiah says) the year of the Lord’s favor.
But that phrase, “the year of the Lord’s favor,” draws on an even earlier idea present in the Torah. In Leviticus, the year of the Lord’s favor is called the year of Jubilee.
So Jesus’ statement draws on the wisdom of the prophet and the wisdom of the Torah. Jesus quotes Isaiah, and Isaiah has in mind the idea of Jubilee from Leviticus, so all these scriptures are connected. By studying Leviticus and Isaiah, we better understand Jesus.
According to Leviticus, the “year of the Lord’s favor,” the year of Jubilee, is supposed to happen once every 50 years.
In Leviticus 25:10, it says: “You will make the fiftieth year holy, proclaiming freedom throughout the land to all its inhabitants… each of you must return to your family property and to your extended family.” This command is repeated in verse 13: “each of you must return to your family property in this year of Jubilee.”
So the year of the Lord’s favor is a year of freedom. It is a year of returning people to their land, and returning land to the people. It is a year when all debts are forgiven, and all captives are set free.
And, according to the scholars and historians, it is something that was never actually practiced. It is a vision for the world that is, perhaps, too idealistic.
Yet when Jesus reads this passage from the scroll of Isaiah, in the synagogue in Nazareth, the crowd listens, intently. They long for their debts to be forgiven, they long for the return of their property, they long for this vision to become a reality.
So, when Jesus says “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” it’s what they’ve been waiting to hear. It’s what they have been longing to hear. It’s what generation after generation has been longing to hear!
The people are amazed. They all speak well of Jesus. They cheer, and—with tears in their eyes—say to one another, “That’s Joseph’s boy! From right here in Nazareth! We’re so proud!”
And that would be a great ending to the story, a wonderfully happy ending…
…except that, a few verses later, after a few more words by Jesus, the crowd turns against Jesus.
I think the people who put the lectionary together thought that the crowd’s sudden shift from praise and adoration to anger and rage involved too much emotional whiplash for one Sunday, so they separated that part and assigned it to next Sunday. But I’m going to talk about it today.
The people become filled with rage; so much so, that they grab Jesus, and drag him out to the edge of town where there was a cliff, and they try to throw him off the cliff, except that, somehow, Jesus gets away from them, and manages to escape.
What happened? Why do they get so angry?
According to the scripture, Jesus explains to the people that these promises of God and the year of Jubilee aren’t just for the people of Israel. They are for all God’s children.
This includes those who were from other nations and cultures. Those living in other lands, and those living among the Jews who were not Jews themselves, but foreigners and immigrants.
In Leviticus 25, when it talks about the year of Jubilee, it mentions that immigrants were to be cared for as if they were citizens. Leviticus is very clear about that. And Jesus is very clear that his message is also for all people, including those who are not a part of Israel.
But that is not something the people want to hear. Many of them see immigrants, foreigners, and anyone who is different from them as a threat. They don’t want to show any compassion to the foreigners among them.
That’s one reason they turn against Jesus.
And perhaps there are a few among them, in that crowd, who also realize what it really means to forgive debts and return land. Especially those who are of the privileged few who actually own their own land; what is this going to mean for them?
Perhaps they start to realize that this year of Jubilee talk—this “year of the Lord’s favor” nonsense—doesn’t really sound like “good news” to them.
So they quickly rile up the crowd against Jesus.
Because they realize that the year of Jubilee, or, the Year of the Lord’s Favor, is God’s plan to limit injustice, which is another way of saying, take away the privileges they enjoy.
So why is this a part of God’s vision for the world? It’s a part of God’s vision for the world, because God knows that a society where the rich take advantage of the poor to continually add to their own wealth, while the poor have what little they own taken from them, leads to a more unjust and unstable society. It leads the world away from God’s vision of shalom.
The year of Jubilee is meant to keep things a little more balanced. A little more just.
The year of Jubilee is designed to restore justice to the land; to ensure that no one lives in poverty; to ensure that everyone has enough to eat, and is able to make a decent living.
Because God truly does care about the welfare of every single person. And when some are so economically oppressed that they are stuck in poverty, God is filled with compassion for them.
There are over 2,000 verses in the Bible about caring for the poor. There’s one just a few verses before today’s reading, in Luke, chapter 3, when Jesus tells his followers: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none.”
When unjust practices and policies lead to things becoming so unbalanced that some are starving while others are feasting, it’s time for a reset. It’s time to rebuild, restore, and renew. That’s what all this is all about.
Even the Lord’s Prayer, which we pray every week, is a Jubilee prayer. Jesus teaches us to pray “Give us this day our daily bread,” because in God’s kingdom, no one should go hungry. No one should be so poor as to not be able to afford food to eat. We pray that we all may have enough.
I suppose that if, every day, you receive a week’s worth of bread, then praying for your daily bread means praying for less bread than you have now.
And in the Lord’s prayer, we pray, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
Growing up, when I first learned this prayer, I assumed that these words were being used to mean something else, the way grown-ups often say one thing and mean something else. So I was surprised when I learned that Jesus was, in fact, talking about forgiving actual, monetary debts. As the year of Jubilee commands.
And that might be another reason why the people of Nazareth get so upset. They don’t like this message. Especially when it is applied to other people.
Later in Luke’s gospel, we meet a rich ruler who hears this same message from Jesus. He asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus ends up telling him to “sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
But when the ruler hears this, he becomes sad, for he is very rich.
Then Jesus says, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
The year of Jubilee, the year of the Lord’s favor, the time when the poor have good news proclaimed to them, when freedom is restored…
To the crowd, it all sounded so good, at first… until they realized what it actually meant… until they understood that Jesus really does demand that we make some life-altering choices, on behalf of those who are the meek, the poor, the least-of-these.
This week, a lot of people got upset at the bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, because of what she said at the inaugural prayer service. Bishop Budde invited the president to show mercy to those who are vulnerable and scared in our country right now. Her message was consistent with Jesus’ vision, and the vision of the prophets, and the calls for Jubilee.
But so many do not want God’s mercy to be shown to those who are not “one of us.” And they accused Bishop Budde of perverting the gospel. She’s even received death threats.
Yet showing compassion and mercy to those who are scared, to those who are vulnerable, to those who are poor, to those who feel threatened—to “the least of these”---according to Jesus, this is what it’s all about. This is his mission. It’s the message he was anointed to proclaim by the Spirit.
But the crowds didn’t like it. And they wanted to throw him off the cliff.
And it’s why they eventually killed the prophets, and crucified Christ; because asking those with power and wealth to show mercy and compassion is sometimes too much.
And when the prophets are killed and when the messiah is crucified, it becomes so hard to have hope.
Which is exactly what those who abuse their power want. They want the people to lose hope. They want the people to give up the fight, the pursuit for justice, and just quietly accept their rule and their control.
But we know that even when death comes to the prophet, it is not the end. The prophetic vision endures.
And when death comes to the messiah, it is not the end, because crucifixion is followed by resurrection. And the year of the Lord’s favor will still be proclaimed, and shouts of jubilee will still ring out…
Because God is the God of compassion, and compassion will prevail. God is the God of justice, and justice will reign. God is the God of love, and love will not rest until it accomplishes its purpose and sets things right.
And love will do this, because it is the greatest of all powers, and no power will ever overcome love in the end. Not injustice, not racism, not prejudice, not homophobia, not transphobia, not corruption, not death, not anything else in all creation, will separate us from God’s all-powerful love.
No matter how many times they try to kill the prophets or crucify the messiah, God’s love will never fail. And God’s vision of shalom will never die.
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