Today This Scripture Has Been Fulfilled in Your Hearing

The Rev. Gretchen Daneke Graf
First Presbyterian Church
Grand Forks, N.D.

The Rev. Florence Deenadayalan and Mathuram Shiamala Baby helped participants explore the conference theme — Jesus: Proclaiming Peace. Photo by R. Todd Morriss

Centuries of biblical interpretation have viewed this passage from Luke 4 as Jesus’ mission statement. In this decisive moment that occurred in his home synagogue in Nazareth, he publicly declares his mission — to stand with the oppressed and set captives free. In all that follows in his lifetime, we see Jesus live out that intent and invite others to join him. It is a defining moment for Jesus and his followers.

Hearing that story this week in a peacemaking context has given me an additional insight that I would like to offer for your consideration. When Jesus read from Isaiah 61, he was not bringing new information to his gathered neighbors. He was reading a familiar and beloved passage — one that expressed the people’s lifelong longing for God’s reign to come among them. Like most of us, they had heard those words with a future ear — someday, some time, somehow, God will come and everything will get better.

But what is this incident is not so much about Jesus’ personal manifesto as it is an invitation to the crowd: “Can you hear these words as reality for this day? Can you believe God is doing this in you, with you, through you — now?

Christians have heard Jesus say, “This is the day” for centuries, but we are still hearing him with future ears. Someday, some time, somehow, Jesus will return and accomplish all that is promised. So we wait to be rescued from the big problems of a complex world.

But Jesus isn’t saying, “Someday.” He’s saying “Today — in your hearing.” Perhaps the key word is “hearing.” To hear this scripture involves more than words spoken and ears perceiving. It includes taking those words to heart, believing their promise, and acting on that promise from that moment on. Jesus is saying to his neighbors, “On the day that you really hear these words, they will become your truth. Hear them today.”

We are not simply waiting for some future in which God swoops in to re-create a perfect world. We are promised the reign of God among us now. Can we hear that as a reality with such conviction that we begin to live in its truth? Can we know that the oppressed have been set free because we will no longer abide a world in which some are held captive? Will we allow our own blind eyes to be opened so that the world sees itself in a new way? Can our living be good news to the poor as we share food and housing and education and healthcare and all the blessings God has poured out in abundance?

Are we willing to hear Isaiah and Jesus and God saying, “When you are willing to hear with your whole being, then it will be so, because your life will help me make it so. How about today?”