“Jesus Sets Us Free” Luke 4: 16-19

Jesus went back to his home town. The place where everyone knew him since he was a little boy. A place where people saw him at best as ordinary. He went back to the synagogue on the Sabbath and started to read from the scroll of Isaiah 61. He started to read words about the one who is anointed to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind. He continued on about the one who would set the oppressed free. And at the end of the reading he rolled up the scroll and told the people gathered together that today the scripture had been fulfilled in their hearing.

I think we often speak about Jesus’ saving us for eternal life, but sometimes we overlook that Jesus came to change people’s lives here, now, today. Jesus came to set the oppressed free. Maybe we don’t always proclaim this because we don’t like to consider ourselves to be among the oppressed. We like to act as if those suffering from addictions or financial strain or marital difficulties are different than us - we want to make them into an “other” at a safe distance. But then Jesus comes into our lives and reminds us that we all need saving, here and now. We all need to be freed from addictions - whether its the addiction to food or alcohol or money or the need to be liked. Jesus has come to free us. Jesus shows up and tells us that he will not let us stay the say and the while calling us to follow him as his disciples.

Jesus calls peculiar people to follow him. Its not the best of the best or even the top of their field. Its not people who know every word that is written in the Bible. Jesus simply calls those who are willing to follow and empowers them to serve in his name. It is not the degrees that we possess that make us able to serve Christ - it is simply a heart that has been set free in order to follow him.

Christ then takes our freedom for service one step further. He frees us not only from whatever chains are holding us back from serving him fully, but also from the guilt and shame that blocks us from experiencing the unconditional love of God. He sets us free from the doubts and fears that tell us we are not good enough to be a disciple and replaces it with joy and the freedom to be bearers of the Christ light.

Advent is this peculiar season for peculiar people when we stand in awe and wonder of the unfathomable love of God. But it is also this peculiar season when we can name those things that we long for - like forgiveness and restoration - that we need to fully serve God. While we normally think of Lent as a season of repentance and laying our burdens down, Advent actually offers us the same opportunity in order to pick up the yoke of following the Christ-child. 

But there is something that comes with being a disciple of Jesus Christ - that thing is the ability to serve as Christ would serve and see people as Christ would see them. You may have noticed by now that I have very little tolerance for when we try to group people together like “the blacks” or “the homeless” or “the addicts”  or “the poor” because when people are spoken of in these terms I only see people who I have served and loved deeply. I see the faces of the congregation at my first church, which was almost all African-American. I see the faces of the women I served when I was an intern in Clearfield at the women’s shelter. I see the faces of the people I walked beside week in and week out at a drop in safety shelter in Australia while I was studying abroad for IV drug users and prostitutes. I see the the faces of children living in a bad neighborhood because that’s all their family could afford as their moms and dads worked as many part time jobs as possible just to keep them in a house with food on the table. 

When we follow the call to be Christ’s disciple, we are called to see people as individuals, who are deeply loved by Christ, whether you like them or not. We are called to see and respond to people as Christ does. But what blocks us from having the eyes and hearts of Jesus? In the words of Pastor Lanecia Rouse, “We often miss Jesus because we haven’t correctly understood how God is in our midst”. We expect Jesus to show up and look and act exactly like us, but the season of Advent reminds us that Jesus shows up in unpredictable places - a stable and in unpredictable ways - born to a teenager mother as a baby. 

All too often we let our human mid-understandings and standards try to to define who is worthy of Christ’s love and forgiveness and acceptance while all the while Jesus is saying he is for everyone. That it is he who is anointed to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind. He continued on about the one who would set the oppressed free.

And because our Lord and Savior is preaching those things - so should we. We need to set aside our spiritual anxiety and claim the truth of Christ’s love found in the gospel message, especially this season as we retell the radical story of how Christ came to the save the world in the form of an infant. 

The truth is none of us are probably the ideal candidates to be Christ’s disciples by the worlds standards, but we are the perfect candidates in the eyes of Christ. Let us approach this season with awe, thanksgiving, and grateful hearts that Christ has set us free and called us to spread the good news to all the world. Amen.