Jesus' mission statement

What was the central message of Jesus? The word gospel means "good news". What is this good news? In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus began his public ministry in the following manner (chapter 4).

    16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

    18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

because he has anointed me 

to proclaim good news to the poor.

    He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

    and recovering of sight to the blind,

    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

I have often wondered about how this passage should be interpreted. In particular, who are the poor, captives, blind, and oppressed? Is this literal (i.e. material) and/or spiritual? For example, is Jesus only concerned with those who are "poor in spirit", enslaved to their sin, and captive to their sin,...? 

This fourth chapter of Luke gets even more puzzling because of the reaction of his audience. At first, they are enthused and praise him. But, Jesus challenges them by recounting two incidents from the history of Israel. Their praise turns to anger and they try to kill him! Why?

                                                                                            Image is from here.

These issues are addressed in the last two chapters of A New Heaven and A New Earth: Reclaiming a Biblical Eschatology by Richard Middleton. These chapters are a beautiful culmination of the arguments in the previous chapters. Here is a brief summary of Middleton on "The good news at Nazareth." (chapter 11)

The passage from Isaiah that Jesus reads is Isaiah 61:1-2.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;

Middleton points out that the text in Luke (who wrote in Greek and used the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament) is not identical to the text above (translated to English from the original Hebrew text). An important but subtle difference is that Luke's account adds the line "to set at liberty those who are oppressed", which is found in Isaiah 58:6. It is helpful to look at that verse in its context, where God tells Isaiah what to tell his chosen people, Israel, what real worship is.

Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that did righteousness 

and did not forsake the judgment of their God;

they ask of me righteous judgments;    

they delight to draw near to God.

       "Why have we fasted," they say, "and you see it not?"

"Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?"

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,

    and oppress all your workers.

⁴ 

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

    and to hit with a wicked fist.

Fasting like yours this day

    will not make your voice to be heard on high.

⁵ 

Is such the fast that I choose,

    a day for a person to humble himself?

Is it to bow down his head like a reed,

    and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?

Will you call this a fast,

    and a day acceptable to the Lord?  

“Is not this the fast that I choose:

  to loose the bonds of wickedness,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
    and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you; 

    the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

This is clearly saying that real worship involves not just fasting and praying but also being practically concerned for and involved with the hungry, naked, homeless, and oppressed. This makes it hard to take a purely spiritual interpretation of Jesus's pronouncement of the nature of the Kingdom of God. In passing, I note how this all aligns with the judgement of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25. On the other hand, this does not rule out that there is a important spiritual dimension to Jesus mission. Elsewhere he talked about how people were spiritually blind and slaves to sin.

Middleton also puts this "Nazareth manifesto" in the context of the whole creation-fall-redemption-renewal narrative of the whole Bible. He discusses at length how "the year of the Lord's favour" is a reference to the Sabbath year and the year of Jubilee commanded in Leviticus 25. Both years are built around three inter-related ethical practices. The first is that those who were sold into slavery due to indebtedness were to be released. Second, the land is to have a rest, during which time the poor will be able to share in whatever the land produces. Third, in the Jubilee year, there is an economic reset and all land is to be returned to its original owners. "These three practices together embody and an ideal of the periodic breaking of the cycle of poverty and bondage in ancient Israel, They constitute a communal practice, an ethic of redemptive living." In different words, this would make the modern trend of inequality, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer", impossible.

A later post may discuss why the people in the synagogue quickly turned Jesus from a hometown hero to a local villain. They were angry because he told them that the "good news" was also meant for "the other"; those they looked down upon or were their historical enemies.