“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19
“These words, which Jesus took from Isaiah, are rooted in the prophetic vision of the Hebrew Year of Jubilee. In His message and person Jesus was, in effect, announcing the perpetual Jubilee in the Spirit. The social ramifications of this were profound indeed: the land was to be healed, debts were to be forgiven, those in bondage were to be set free, capital was to be redistributed…In the Beatitudes we see the Jubilee inversion in which Jesus takes all those kinds and classes of people that in the natural order of things are thought to be unblessed and unblessable and shows that in the forgiving, receiving, accepting life of God’s Kingdom they too are blessed…
Notice His compassion in cleansing the leper and healing the paralytic, people who were outcasts of His day…Notice how Zacchaeus embrace this Jubilee life, accepting the call to generosity. Notice too the Jubilee attitude of the widow who puts her two copper coins in the offering, giving out of her poverty… Jesus’ living out of justice and shalom challenges our vested interests. It rebukes our rugged individualism and selfish hoarding. And it invites us to be the kind of people in whom justice and compassion flow freely. Jesus, who lived in the virtue and power of that Jubilee life that pulled down the kingdoms of the world, points the way.”
Richard Foster in Streams of Living Water: Essential Practices from the Six Great Traditions of Christian Faith (New York: HarperCollins, 1998) 12-14.
We are living in a time in history when God has shaken the earth. In response, we can hold on more tightly to our “vested interests” or the proverbial baskets in which we have put our eggs. Or we can live out the compassion of Christ and proclaim Jubilee through our human interactions: sharing when others hoard and forgiving when others condemn.
This is, admittedly, hard. It’s otherworldly. This is precisely why Jesus puts the Spirit within us. Read today’s Scripture again. The same Spirit that was upon Jesus is upon us. If we live by it, our giving will look like Zacchaeus and our compassion will appear like Christ. This kingdom around us will pass away. Let us live in light of Jubilee today.
Speaking of light, the sunset a couple days ago was stunning. I snapped the new header photo while walking the dog. In these challenging times, don’t miss how the heavens are declaring the glory of God. While things seem uncertain all around us, may the consistency of the sunrise and sunset reminds us of God’s sovereignty and generosity.