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Week Forty-Three, Day Five

Isaiah 61:1-3

We come to the end of our study of Isaiah. With just a few weeks left in this year, we will have to hurry through the rest of the First Testament. Still, this book was so important to Jesus and the New Testament writers that it seemed important to spend a few days here.

The 61 st chapter begins with words familiar to most Christians. That is because when Jesus was beginning his ministry he went to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled it and found this passage in Isaiah 61. That was tougher than it sounded because, of course, it would be many centuries before Isaiah would be divided up into chapters and verses. Jesus found the place because he knew where to look. He had read it many times, studied it, and knew what it said. Our brief study has been a faint imitation of the practice of the one whom many of us claim to be disciples of. This is what Jesus read that day:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God. Isaiah 61:1-2

Jesus read this passage and then said that the words were fulfilled in their hearing that day. In other words, he claimed before his hometown synagogue that he had been anointed by God to do this work. This is generally interpreted as Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah, the servant about whom Isaiah spoke.

That certainly may be true, or perhaps all Jesus was doing was saying that, like the ancient suffering servant, he, too, had been called to do these things. In the same way, the Church of Jesus Christ can only call itself the “Body of Christ” when we take up the agenda of Christ under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

When you read the story in Luke chapter four you learn that it almost ended badly. Jesus’ fellow worshipers tried to throw him off a cliff. Some say that was because he claimed to be the Messiah. I don’t think so. I think it was because he left out the last eight words in the scripture we just read. He stopped reading before he got to the phrase, “the day of vengeance of our God.” It infuriated them that he left out their favorite part. Then he compounded it by telling two stories in which God sent healing to outsiders.

You see, Isaiah’s inclusive vision didn’t just get Jesus crucified at the end of his life; it got him in trouble his whole life long. I think making the message of inclusion the cornerstone of our life and ministry might get some of us in trouble today. Maybe that is why we don’t.

Blessings, Michael President, Hope for Peace & Justice

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