Proclaim!. Marcus George Halley
Jesus stands up in the synagogue to read the words of Isaiah, he is doing a series of incredibly important actions. First, he is reminding the congregation of God’s work. Second, he reinterprets the meaning of that work to meet the needs of his context. It is remarkable that in reciting the words of the prophet, Jesus engages in some interesting interpretation. According to the oracle in Isaiah 61, the prophet says that God has sent him to:
• Bring good news to the oppressed (v. 1)
• Bind up the brokenhearted (v. 1)
• Proclaim liberty to the captives (v. 1)
• Release to the prisoners (v. 1)
• Proclaim the years of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance for our God (v. 2)
But when Jesus references Isaiah in Luke 4, he spins it. According to Jesus, God has sent him to:
• Bring good news to the poor (v. 18)
• Proclaim release to the captives (v. 18)
• Proclaim . . . recovery of sight to the blind (v. 18)
• Let the oppressed go free (v. 18)
• Proclaim the years of the Lord’s favor (v. 19)
So much of Jesus’s other words may be attributed to translation, but it is curious that the middle proclamation, the “recovery of sight to the blind,” seems to be an innovation, something that we don’t find at all in Isaiah 61. It seems that Jesus is making clear that not only does he stand in continuity with the Jewish prophetic tradition, but he is remixing it. Not only has he come to set people free, to heal, and to restore, but he has come so that we might see what we otherwise could not.
To understand what this seeing might be, it is important to understand the world of Luke. For Luke, time was separated into two ages, the Age of the Flesh and the Age of the Spirit. As Luke’s Gospel unfolds, it becomes clear that the Incarnation, what Fleming Rutledge refers to as “the definitive invasion” of the territory that belongs to “the occupying Enemy,” has inaugurated the new age of the Spirit (Rutledge, Advent, 19). This is reflected in the topsy-turvy nature of society captured in Mary’s song—the Magnificat.
And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.” (Luke 1:46–55)
Just as in Jesus’s later interpretation of Isaiah 61, Mary’s song makes clear that what is happening in this moment is connected to something has been happening for centuries. The overturning of society was the fulfillment of a promise “made to our ancestors, to Abraham and his descendants for ever” in the same way that Jesus was the walking fulfilment of Isaiah’s oracle.
Jesus’s inauguration of the new Age of the Spirit did not immediately put an end to the Age of the Flesh. Rather, the Church lives in the interval between the death of the current age and the fullness of the next. As Fleming Rutledge later says, “The church is analogous to paratroopers who secure a place behind enemy lines. We are God’s commandos, guerrillas, and resistance fighters in the territory occupied by the enemy, who participate in establishing ‘signs and beachheads’ signifying the ultimate victory” (Advent, 19).
What does all this have to do with mission and seeing? The Church of God is called to be the vanguard of heaven. We are those who, by God’s grace, have been given a glimpse into the ultimate reality of God’s reign and are thereby called by God to establish outposts of that promised reign through good works, the development of spiritual practices, and the pursuit of justice and mercy. Christians are people who commit to living lives that, in big ways and in small, speak the joy of God’s coming reign. We are also those who see the ongoing renewal and re-creation of the world even in the face of existential threats like climate change and nuclear war. Far from being an excuse to abandon the world to whatever fate may come, our collective belief that God is out ahead of us renewing the world propels us out into the world in mission convinced of God’s ultimate victory and the eventual triumph of justice, compassion, and peace.
At its best, the Church can be the place where God’s reign is experienced more clearly than anywhere else. As the community of disciples gathered around the Risen Christ, we affirm, simply by our gathering that the relentlessness of life, not the yawning abyss of death, has the final say. We have compassion, justice, vulnerability, bravery, joy, and peace written deep in our communal DNA, even if centuries of schism, heresy, contention, and injustice have obscured them. Whatever else we are and whatever else we do, it has been given to us to bear witness to the kingdom of God on the earth by building communities capable of bearing the light of Christ into the darkness of the world.
The worshiping community where I have most clearly seen the crashing-in of the reign of God was during my yearlong internship with Church of Common Ground. The Church of Common Ground is a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta that worships, builds community with, and advocates alongside members of Atlanta’s homeless community. This community worships outdoors 52 Sundays a year, singing and praying under an awning or tent when the weather becomes inclement. When I was there, the church had a storefront location that housed their support ministries: a daily Bible study, support groups, numerous AA meetings, a weekly foot clinic, and a space where folks could come in, grab a drink of cool water, charge their phones, receive their mail, or clear the chairs out of the way to stretch out on the floor and take a nap. What I witnessed in this community each day was drama and chaos, but also a church that intentionally gave their prayers direction and focus. They prayed for dignity to be shown to those who experience poverty and homelessness and then invited people from so-called “big-steeple” congregations and wealthy neighborhoods to worship and build relationship and community with them. They prayed for ways to deal with hunger and then made sandwiches and incredibly strong and often bitter church coffee, offering them freely to whoever asked. They prayed for forgiveness of their sins and then opened their hands to receive the bread and wine, surrendering bits of their guilt and shame in the process, exchanging them for morsels of the bread of angels. This community showed me the degree to which it is possible for us to be radically changed in worship by paying attention to the ways that the kingdom of God comes very near to us if we are open and vulnerable enough to experience worship just beyond the edge of what makes us comfortable.
Church of the Common Ground is where worship-as-mission first came alive to me.
When I served in Missouri, I stumbled into facilitating the anti-racism trainings required for ordination. I worked with a small team of folks who would drive many miles to offer this training to those who needed it. When I first began, I expected it to be a miserable process that people had to be coerced into. From feedback forms, that is what many participants expected as well. What my team and I worked hard to do was to establish brave and courageous space where learning could happen without shame and where participants could be inspired to make changes in their faith communities that might open them up to relationships imperiled by the subtle (and not-so-subtle)