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\u201cThe 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\u2019s favor.\u201d \u2026 He began by saying to them, \u201cToday this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.\u201d (Luke 4:18-19, 21)

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Is our faith and generosity just a spiritual reality?\xa0 Or does it need to put on flesh and walk around in the neighbourhood?\xa0 That question popped up in our devotion yesterday, and when it does, I often think of these verses from Luke.

Jesus has just been baptized and tested by the devil in the wilderness.\xa0 It\u2019s the beginning of his ministry, and here in Luke, this is his first act of ministry.\xa0 He joins for Sabbath-day worship in his home-town synagogue and stands up to read these words from the prophet Isaiah.\xa0 Nothing strange about that.\xa0

But then he attributes these words to himself and declares them fulfilled.\xa0 So begins Jesus\u2019 ministry.\xa0 These words, become his mission statement.\xa0 This is the kind of Messiah Jesus will be.

He is a Messiah who not only preaches and teaches a spiritual word of salvation for souls: he is a Messiah who is anointed to carry out real action in the world: setting the oppressed free.\xa0 That\u2019s good news indeed for the financially oppressed poor, for the physically oppressed blind and imprisoned, and really for any person oppressed by anything.\xa0

The church is called to follow its Lord into his mission, which means we are also called not merely to spiritual acts of enacting freedom, like forgiveness, but also very practical acts of enacting freedom, like addressing poverty, racial injustice, homelessness, health care, and so much more.

We cannot so easily divide the spiritual bits of our faith from the lived bits. \xa0Jesus lived, healed, taught, freed, died, rose, and ascended quite really and truly in this world.\xa0 It enacted spiritual freedom from sin and death, but also began to effect freedom from very real physical, fiscal, and practical bonds of oppression.\xa0 The blind saw, the lame walked, the dead were raised to life.\xa0 This was his mission.

Sin has broken not only the spiritual relationship between God and the souls of humankind, but also the operations of every business, bank, school, government, church, and family.\xa0 So salvation in Christ plays on every plane, both spiritual and concrete.\xa0 This is the salvation we receive in Christ: not just from sin, but also from the real-world impacts and effects of sin.\xa0 In turn, this is the very real freedom that we then proclaim and seek to bring into this world and into the lives of our neighbours.\xa0

That which we have received from God, we offer.\xa0 The Jesus who has saved us, we seek to imitate and reflect, trusting always that he still does this work of bringing freedom of every kind today.\xa0 \xa0\xa0\xa0

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