Luke 4 – The Nazareth Manifesto

Introduction: ‘Without a vision the people perish’ (Proverbs 29:18)

People need a vision of what they could and might be.

Organizations and churches have their vision and mission and values statements:

SHAP: Light for the city. Refreshment for the soul.

BARKER: To inspire hope. Inspiring every learner, every experience, every day.(Aspirational: Just beyond reach)

KAMBALA: Empowering young women of integrity. New Head: Mrs Jane Danvers. ‘Honouring our Anglican heritage and traditions.’

Aspirational statements for people to ‘get on board’ and be stretched, challenged and inspired by.

AUSTRALIA? Dr Daniel Nour, Street Side Medics, Coptic Christian

PERSONAL vision statement

The Nazareth Manifesto

The passage we have before us this morning has sometimes been called ‘The Nazareth Manifesto’ and it could be considered the nearest thing that Jesus offered to a ‘Vision Statement’ – poetic, lofty, aspirational.

Context: Jesus has just spent 40 days in the desert, fasting, being tempted. Compare to stories in which the hero endures an ordeal, passes a test, before the adventure can begin. Jesus is also being linked to Moses (and the Israelite slaves he liberated) who spent 40 years in the wilderness.

Action: Jesus comes to his home town, Nazareth, and goes to the synagogue on the sabbath day. He’s thirty years of age, an age when he can teach, read a passage of Scripture and comment on it. He is either passed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah or asks for it. A set passage or a chosen passage? He unrolls the scroll: the Spirit anoints someone to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, healing to the blind, freedom to the oppressed. Then he sits – a teachers’ usual posture – and says – ‘That’s my vision.’ Not those actual words. Just 9. Short and sweet. Less is more. ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ And the people were amazed, not at the brevity, but the content, the claim. He wasn’t saying- ‘One day God will do something to ensure that this Scripture is fulfilled.’ He was saying – ‘ That promised time has arrived, it has now begun to be fulfilled, and I am the one, right now, beginning to bring it about, bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, healing to the blind, freedom to the oppressed.’

And by the end of Chapter 4 we have seen Jesus ‘setting people free’, delivering a man of demon possession, curing a woman of high fever, and a summary verse says: ‘the people brought Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness and laying his hands on each one he healed them.’ (4:40). That is, we see Jesus realizing, actualizing that vision.

It’s a vision that centres on freedom: freedom for those who are oppressed, good news for those who are held captive in one way or another, burdened by sickness, restricted by blindness, reduced by poverty. Setting people free is the vision Jesus is reaching for.

Fight, Flight and Faith – Nikki Thompson

I was reading this book at the same time as I was reflecting on this passage. A gift of someone who remembered I knew Greg VDK back in the 1990s, an outstanding young man – keen intellect, humble, poetic, a committed Christian – who died in a car crash. His sister, who wrote the book, has struggled with anxiety over many years and the book records her struggle and her longing to be free from the debilitating effects of her anxiety disorder.

She writes about the role that faith and prayer and medicine and counselling played in her healing – which is far from complete. And she wrestles with God and the mystery as to why there is no complete healing or resolution, no final freedom for her, as yet, from anxiety. It is a very honest account of how she has and hasn’t been set free to be the person, wife, mother, daughter, friend, she most longs to be. On the ‘up’ side she says ‘Anxiety has been my teacher. I have learned truths both practical and spiritual. I like to think anxiety taught me to accept my humanity – to be humble and realistic in my humanness in this now-and-not-yet space…and to see the Father’s embodied compassion..as always wrapped around me, coming down to meet me.’

And yet, she speaks of anxiety as her ongoing ‘thorn in the flesh’ and she still finds herself ‘in the valley with panic and trembling.’

She has and she hasn’t been set free, and she holds firm to Jesus her Lord, as someone who sympathizes with all who suffer and who is on the side of freedom. She maintains faith and hope in him as one who sets people free – and her concluding words are to acknowledge him as her ‘rock and redeemer.’

Conclusion: ‘Without a vision the people perish’ (Proverbs 29:18)

Jesus puts before us a vision of people being set free. Poetic, lofty, aspirational, like all vision statements. And it has and hasn’t happened; there is a ‘now’ and ‘not yet’ aspect to it.

Many of us could sing of being set free. That great Charles Wesley hymn, ‘And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour’s blood. My chains fell off, my heart was free.’

Many of us could echo the words of Paul and say: ‘It’s for freedom that Christ has set us free’ (Galatians 5:1)

And yet, we pray, like we did today that ‘Almighty God may set us free from all our sins.’

And we live in a world where millions long for release, and restoration and healing and freedom in one way or another. There are all sorts of ways in which we and others do not yet experience the freedom and joy that are there in those words: ‘the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, healing to the blind, freedom to the oppressed.’

So, what do we do? We pray and we work and cling to the aspirational vision contained therein.

We pray for those who long for freedom, from all that is crippling and hampering them, limiting and degrading them, we pray for release from illnesses and disorders, from addictions and oppressions. We pray God to draw near, to act, to continue and complete what he began in and through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, back when Jesus declared – ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

We pray, and we work to do whatever we can, as best we can, with whatever talents and capacities and energy we have to actualize that vision. (Like Dr Daniel Nour whose Christian faith is one of the things that inspires him to provide medical care and service to those trapped in homelessness).

‘Without a vision the people perish’ (Proverbs 29:18). The vision of Jesus was to set people free. Hasten the day, O Lord. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.