Jesus has just spent 40 days being tempted in the wilderness. He entered the wilderness directly following his baptism. Having been baptized and receiving the words from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased”—perhaps it was those words and the Spirit that rested upon him at his baptism that gave him all he needed to get through that time of temptation in the wilderness. Then, too, maybe the temptations of the devil really weren’t all that tempting to Jesus. To each temptation Jesus calls upon the words of his Jewish faith to counter the temptation. Even in the face of hunger, thirst, loneliness, and isolation he resists.
Jesus will not turn the stone to bread.
Jesus will not worship the devil.
Jesus will not throw himself from the heights to test God.
He returns from the wilderness and the first place he goes is home. His ministry begins in Galilee. It starts out well enough. In fact, it starts off great. Word of him is spreading, he is teaching, and he is praised by everyone. Even if we didn’t know the rest of the story we would probably realize this can’t last.
As the saying goes, “You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” These people who are so happy with Jesus’ teachings in today’s gospel, how long will it take for them to turn from pleasure with him to anger at him?
Does it please you to hear what Jesus quotes from Isaiah? What does it mean to you to hear these words?
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me 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.”
Do you find yourself in this passage? Really.
Are you poor? Your financial situation may be desperate in ways that none of us here would suspect. Or perhaps it is a poverty of spirit, or of hope, or, perhaps meaning.
Are you being held captive? You may never have known a day in jail or prison in your life. Yet, some are captive to addiction; food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, can all deeply damage people who cannot free themselves from the hold these things have over their life. But there are other ways we can be held in captivity. Some of us are held captive by our own minds and certainties. We think we know a person, or a type of person. We think we can categorize, separate, profile, or predict what a person may do based on their sex or gender, skin color, or country of origin. Captive to racism or prejudice, imprisoned by the long held ideas we have failed to question, this, too, is to be captive.
Are you blind? What is it or who is it that you are not seeing?
From what do you need to be set free?
I confess, we confess, our imperfections, our failures, our shortcomings. I know I can do better. I know I can be better. “We are not yet what we shall be.” So said Martin Luther.
Luther said, “This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
In this, I believe Luther had it right. But the other part that we need to remember is that Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise and God didn’t wait until we were perfect to send us Love in the form of Jesus. We are not yet what we shall be but we are already loved and forgiven and hearers of the good news.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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