The Inaugural Address

“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 favour.”
This is Jesus’ first public statement in the gospel of Luke. This is his manifesto. His mission statement. His inaugural address.
The authority that Jesus’ is claiming here is breathtaking. He is claiming to be the Messiah, the one who was prophesied, the one for whom the Jewish people have been waiting for centuries, the one through whom God will finally act to save his people from oppression.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.”
Today this scripture has been fulfilled, is being fulfilled, in your hearing.
No one who came to the little synagogue in Nazareth on that day was expecting to hear this. As it turns out, it was more than they could handle.
Jesus inaugural address is intended to lay out his vision and mission, to tell us what he’s all about and what his priorities are.
We heard another inaugural address this past week, embroidered with all the pomp and ceremony you could imagine. Last Monday’s inaugural address was delivered to a much, much bigger audience than the folks gathered in the synagogue in Nazareth. But it did make a similar, and you might say, blasphemous, claim to divine authority.
“But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Whatever you might think of Trump’s mission to make America great again, clearly Jesus’ mission is different. He doesn’t say that he will make Nazareth great again. He doesn’t even say that he will make Israel great again, overthrowing the Roman military and restoring the throne of David, even though that’s what many of his listeners were hoping for and expecting the Messiah would do.
No, Jesus’ manifesto, his mission statement, is different. Jesus’ mission is
“To bring good news to the poor. 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 favour.”
These words have a ring of truth about them. This is what God has always promised, always called for, through the law given to Moses and the words spoken through the prophets.
In Deuteronomy, God, through Moses, commanded the people, “If there is among you anyone in need . . . do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbour. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.” (Deut 15.7)
‘What does the Lord require of you?’ asked the prophet Micah. “To do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”
God is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love, a God who lifts up the lowly and calls on us to care for those who are in need, the widow and the orphan. This is what God has always cared about. Now God is acting in a new way. Beginning this day in Nazareth, Jesus is launching a movement to bring about this mission. His words have the ring of God-given truth.
Yet it does raise a question for me when I hear these words, when Jesus’ proclaims his mission. Because I am not poor, nor imprisoned, nor oppressed. Are these words meant for me? What’s the good news here for me?
But that’s probably not the right question to be asking.
Because Jesus’ mission statement is for me a call to action. For me, for us, it’s a call to serve. The good news is that God is lifting up the lowly, that God will free the oppressed. In Jesus, God has acted decisively to launch a movement to do this, and we are being called to serve in this movement. The question I should be asking is not, “what’s in it for me?” but rather, “how can I help?” How can I, how can we, participate in this great movement of grace, justice and liberation, led by Jesus, into which we are being invited, a movement which will bring good news to the poor, free those who are oppressed, and lift up those who are vulnerable?
“You are the body of Christ,” Paul says in his letter to the Corinthian’s. Christ’s mission is now your mission. So, bring good news to the poor, release the captives, bring sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free.
And when we do these things, when we lift up those who have been brought low, the truth is that this is good for all of us. A healthy community is one in which the poor and oppressed are cared for, where members care for one another. As Paul reminds the Corinthians, “if one member suffers, all suffer together.”
Last week we talked about Jesus’ first sign in the gospel of John, the turning of water into wine. We talked about how this sign shows us that Jesus values joyful, abundant living for the sake of community. “I came,” he says, “that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
But how do we get from here to there? How do we create a community of joyful abundance, where all can live to their fullest? A world where we respect the God-given dignity of every human being?
We do it by caring for one another, and especially by caring for those in our communities who are most in need. Our mission is to bring good news to the poor, to liberate the oppressed, to lift up those in distress. That’s what’s needed so that all of us may have life and have it abundantly. Everyone benefits when liberty and well-being are extended to all, communities flourish when we care for our most vulnerable, when our posture towards those in need is one of mercy and compassion.
In the midst of all the events surrounding Donald Trump’s inauguration, there was one voice that spoke this truth, that spoke in support of Jesus’ mission to bring good news to the poor. Bishop Mariann Budde of the Episcopal Church, our Anglican partner church in the US, issued this plea to the newly inaugurated president at a prayer service on Tuesday morning:
“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgendered children … some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops, and clean our office buildings, who labour in poultry farms and meat-packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants . . . are good neighbours.
I ask you to have mercy on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents may be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger. . .
May God give us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being . . . for the good of all people.”
You know, this week, apart from everything I was reading about Trump’s inauguration, I was also somewhat alarmed to read that in a recent survey related to youth mental health, done at Harvard University, it was found that 58% of young adults reported that they lacked ‘meaning or purpose’ in their lives in the previous month. This was of concern to the researchers because of the negative impact that a lack of purpose has on mental health. The survey indicated that there are a lot of people who lack purpose and meaning in their lives.
But the good news for you, if you are a follower of Jesus, and a member of the body of Christ, is that you, and we, have been given a purpose in life.
We are to bring good news to the poor.
To proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.
To let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
This is Jesus’ mission, and we have been called to make it our own.
Amen.
Homily Yr C P3. Jan 26 2025. Trinity
Readings: Nehemiah 8.1-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12.12-31; Luke 4.14-21
Image from Washington National Cathedral
Amen