Breakfast Club Devotion #26 - Isaiah 61: Bible Time Machine

Have you ever considered if you had the opportunity to go back in time and witness any single event in history, what event would you choose? Of the many times and places in history that I would like to be a “fly on the wall,” the one I would choose is Jesus first public ministry in his childhood home of Nazareth. As Jesus the young rabbi stood up to read in the synagogue, the book of Isaiah was handed to him. “And he opened the book and found the place where it was written : ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.’” (Luke 4:18-19) Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61:1-2a. Then he closed the book and sat down, and everyone in the synagogue looked at him. He further explained, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, for those in attendance, Jesus had just read the prophet’s words about the future messiah, and announced to the people that he was the fulfillment of those words. While his announcement was remarkable, equally remarkable was the content. Jesus essentially stated that a primary focus of his ministry is to bring good news to the poor, the captives, the blind, and downtrodden, and to proclaim a time of God’s favor, a phrase that many interpreters take to be a reference to the Levitical Year of Jubilee. Clearly these statements have multiple layers of literal and spiritual meaning, for multiple stages of historical fulfillment. But at the very least we can conclude that Jesus is concerned about the groups mentioned, and the literal and figurative, spiritual, emotional, social, or other forms of poverty, blindness, captivity and down-trodden-ness. Many times it is not clear to us what God would have us do with our time on this earth. But this passage - similar to Matthew 5:3-11 or Matthew 25:35-36 or Matthew 28:19-20 or John 15:12-13 or others - is a case in which the directive is clear and unavoidable – take God’s good news to those who are downtrodden.