This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. It is important to note that this mission is specifically directed at the needs of people: poor, captive, blind, oppressed. Significantly, Jesus’ work will be good news to the poor. Mary’s prayer (1:52-52; the Magnificat) praises the Lord for lifting up the lowly and sending the rich away empty. Later, Jesus announces God’s blessing on the poor (6:20) and then refers to the fulfillment of the charge to bring good news to the poor in his response to John (7:22). The poor also figure more prominently in Jesus’ teachings in Luke than in any other Gospel (14:13, 21; 16:20, 22; 18:22; 21:3).Culpepper [105-6] provides additional insights for Luke’s use of the Isaian text:

The term used here for “captives” (αἰχμαλώτοι aichmalōtoi) does not appear elsewhere in the NT, and elsewhere Luke uses the term “release” (ἄφεσις aphesis) only for forgiveness of sins, but various events later in Jesus’ ministry can be understood as illustrating the fulfillment of this aspect of his commission. The word for “release” recurs in the line from Isa 58:6, inserted here by Luke: release for the oppressed. Jesus released persons from various forms of bondage and oppression: economic (the poor), physical (the lame, the crippled), political (the condemned), and demonic. Forgiveness of sin, therefore, can also be seen as a form of release from bondage to iniquity (Acts 8:22–23).

The restoration of sight to the blind was closely associated with the prophetic vision of the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel (Isa 35:5; 42:6–7). When Jesus restores sight to the blind (as he does in Luke 7:21–22; 18:35), he is figuratively fulfilling God’s work of salvation as foreseen by the prophet Isaiah. Jesus is dramatically fulfilling the role of the one who would be a “light for the nations” (see 2:32; Acts 13:47). Like Jesus, his followers are to be light for others (Luke 8:16; 11:33).

The proclamation of the “year of the Lord’s favor” in Isaiah 61 is connected with the Jubilee year legislation in Leviticus 25. Following a series of seven sevens, the fiftieth year was to be a time when “you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (Lev 25:10). It has occasionally been suggested that Jesus was actually proclaiming the observance of the Jubilee year through his reading of Isaiah 61, but this is far from certain. More likely is the interpretation that Jesus related the figure of “the year of the Lord’s favor” to the kingdom of God (cf. Luke 4:43). Jesus’ ministry signaled that the time for the liberation of the impoverished and oppressed had come, and in that respect at least his work would fulfill the ideal and the social concern of the Jubilee year.

The importance of the reading of Isaiah in this scene can scarcely be exaggerated. For Luke it proclaimed the fulfillment of Scripture and the hopes of Israel through Jesus’ ministry as the Son of God. It stated the social concern that guided Jesus’ work and allowed the reader to understand all that Jesus did as the fulfillment of his anointing by the Spirit. What Jesus understood by these verses, however, differed sharply from what those gathered in the synagogue assumed they meant.

Luke will continue to develop how that will work out in the real world as Jesus encounters these people in real life: lepers, tax collectors, women. It is a definition of the mission that called Israel, that called Jesus, and thereby calls his followers, to engage the world and its people and their needs as a way to fulfill being a light to that world. In every age people encounter the good news – and people often encounter the good news through their real and current needs.

God’s story is always related to human need. For example, if a woman is dying of cancer, the gospel is God’s strong word of resurrection. If a person is permeated with guilt, the gospel is God’s assurance of forgiveness. If people experience extreme suffering, the gospel is the prayer: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.” For the starving, the gospel may be bread. For a homeless refugee, the gospel may be freedom in a new homeland. For others, the gospel may be freedom from political tyranny. The gospel is always related to human need. It is never truth in a vacuum, a theologically true statement which may or may not relate to one’s life. The gospel is God’s truth, God’s message, God’s action, God’s word to a particular person, to a particular need, to a particular historical situation. (Edward Markquart, Witness for Christ – found in Stoffregen)

As Spirit-filled as this gospel is, spiritual does not mean escaping the world.

Image credit: Eleventh century fresco of the Exorcism at the Synagogue in Capernaum | Wiki Commons | PS-US