I find this to be very interesting… just interesting.  I’m not going to go further than that.  But I welcome the rest of you to go further.  What do you think this means relative to our lives? 

When the time was right for Jesus to proclaim who he was, he chose to cite a prophecy about Himself.  He could have chosen from hundreds extolling His glory, His virtue, His redemption of Israel… or some other vision of glory that is (rightfully) in the prophecies about His coming.  But he didn’t choose any of those.  What He chose, among all prophecy, all that He is (and He is a lot of things)... what He chose is this:

Luke 4:16-19
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read.  The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Whatcha think about that?  Why pick that prophecy?  Would we pick that to describe ourselves?  Would an outsider looking in at today’s Body of Christ (the Church) find this to be the first and most obvious way to describe us?  Should it be (maybe not, really… maybe it shouldn’t be - but why or why not)?  Like I said, I just find it intriguing that Jesus used this verse to identify Himself when there are so many He could have used.  Not sure what it means.  But I’m curious what you think it means…

This has always been a stand-out scripture to me personally. In thinking about it, I have always considered it as Jesus’ statement as to what He was “here” for.  I think the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed are both literal and figurative. So by poor it can mean both the poor and those who may not actually be poor but rather know that they are needy. That should be about all of us, I would say!  Similarly, for the blind (literal and spiritual) and so on.  I think the original language bears that out as well. But I am not an expert on that. Ha! We can see from Jesus’ life that is exactly what He did. These were not just words.

I think that’s a good perspective on it.  He seems to be saying “identify me by this…”.  That does not mean all the other more “glamorous” prophecy about Him was not accurate.  It just means that THIS is what He was on earth to do, and this is how we could recognize His work.

Here it is again.  One more key moment where God highlights His priority for the poor and needy, but still sends the message out to us all.  There is a blog post brewing in my mind….

This goes beautifully with our current memory verse at our house: Philippians 2:3-8
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interest of others.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross!”

Wow! and we humans tend to get all fussy when our “rights” are violated, or we feel “dissed”. 

Workin’ on our attitudes over here!!!!

Jenny

I found this in a commentary and thought it went along well with this discussion:
“It is important to note that this mission is specifically directed at the needs of people: poor, captive, blind, oppressed. We could get sidetracked here and engage in debate about the validity of a “social Gospel.” Or we could try to determine whether Jesus is speaking literally or metaphorically here. In any case, there is little question that the role Jesus takes to himself here is one of ministering to the hurting, oppressed, outcast, and marginalized of the world. 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. This is no grand social program. It is a definition of 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.”
Jennifer that Philippians 2:3-8 gets right to the heart of it too! Love that.