Rev.
Debbie Cato
Isaiah
61:1-2 and Luke 4:14-21
Fairfield
Community Church
January 26, 2025
Loving
God, may your Spirit be with us each, showing us your Word
and your
Way. Amen.
Start as You Mean
to Go On
“Start as you mean
to go on.” Have you ever heard that phrase before? Start as you mean to go on. Starting as I intend to go on means the way I
conduct myself in the beginning sets the groundwork for future actions — good
or bad habits follow initial motive.
It’s about consistent character and qualities so engrained that we are
barely aware of our behavior – our actions..
In our passage from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus begins his ministry as he means to go on — with the power of the Spirit. In these first few chapters of Luke, Jesus’ possession of the Spirit is mentioned three times. In today’s reading, we learn it is the Spirit that moves Jesus to go to Galilee and begin his ministry.
After his baptism, just as John predicted, Jesus begins his public ministry “in the power of the Spirit”. At his baptism, in the genealogy, and in the wilderness, it has been affirmed that Jesus is the Son of God. The 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness have demonstrated the kind of Son he is, his character, and how he will perform his ministry in relation to the temptations of unbridled power, authority, wealth, and risk.[1]
Jesus had already built a reputation for himself in his hometown and surrounding regions by the way he lived. To this point, everyone had only good things to say about him. He had not yet announced his ministry agenda. He had not yet leveled a critique in the synagogue against his own people. Jesus had attended synagogue on a regular basis, but perhaps in previous visits he only listened, watched, reflected, analyzed, and even read scripture, but had not yet provided a contemporary critique or deconstructed the scriptures.[2]
In Galilee, Jesus receives praise for his Spirit-filled teaching. But then he turns to Nazareth, his hometown, where he begins his ministry by reading from the Prophet Isaiah, connecting his work with the prophets who have gone before. Jesus is inaugurating his ministry. It is a beginning, but it is also a fulfillment of God’s redemptive work.[3]
What must it have been like I wonder, to be in that synagogue and hear Jesus say those words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”?
The Spirit anoints and commissions Jesus to announce good news about imminent physical and spiritual transformation: release from captivity, recovery of lost vision, freedom from oppression. The enslaved and oppressed cannot be absolutely free without a recovery of lost vision or a reimagining or envisioning of a life and mind free of physical and psychological chains. Perhaps bringing good news parallels proclamation of the Lord’s favor.[4]
Jesus starts as he means to go on — by declaring that he is with and for the poor, the blind, and the oppressed. He will bring good news. He will ensure release and recovery. He comes to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. And when will these wonderful things happen? Now. They happen even as the people of Nazareth hear those words, because Jesus is with them. Jesus is the fulfillment of those words. And this is who Jesus was throughout his whole ministry. He started as he meant to go on. He never strayed.[5]
Just on the other side of this passage, which we will look at it next week - we learn that Jesus’ words are met with amazement — and suspicion. The people of Nazareth, his people, his hometown challenge Jesus and become enraged when he doubles-down on the truth of who and what he is. When he starts as he means to go.
Before I even arrived as your pastor, you wrote a mission statement for the church. A statement to proclaim who and what Fairfield Community Church is and would be. It is printed on every bulletin. Do you notice it? “Creating a welcoming community for all ages to love and serve God, each other, and our neighbors.”
A couple years ago, we talked about what our core values are and we chose four that match our mission statement: We decided our values are community, children and youth, relationships, and being welcoming and accepting. This is who we are, we said. This is how we start as we mean to go on.
Making mission statements comes from the business world. Businesses were making mission statements long before the Church started doing them. We like having a mission statement that sums up all that we believe about our mission in the world. It defines our values and why we exist as community of Christ followers. It makes us feel as if we can take a deep sigh – we know who we are. We have done our job. But, sometimes we forget we must live it out. A mission statement is meant to help us start as we mean to go on.
I wonder if this, the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, is really the universal church’s mission statement. Jesus lays out, using texts from the prophet Isaiah, the need to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to help the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. We see Jesus living into this “mission statement” in his welcoming outcasts and sinners, helping the poor, and caring for those captive to their sin, their old ideas, and their material possessions. We see Jesus living out this mission statement in the ways he heals and continually proclaims God’s love.
It is a beautiful mission. It’s Jesus mission. It seems a little “too much,” a “little overwhelming.” We could spend our whole lives trying to live into what Jesus proclaims he is all about. Of course, that’s the idea. This is how we are to spend our lives. But it can only be done; we can only work toward these goals, if we, too, are filled with the Holy Spirit. We can only hope to proclaim, release, recover, and free if we are so rooted in Jesus and the Spirit that we retain this focus. Perhaps the church’s mission statement is as big and as simple as loving our neighbor as ourselves. All neighbors.
Jesus gives us all a start to our particular ministries in these words from Luke’s Gospel. Yes, we should define what it means for our particular church communities. But let us also remember that Jesus states plainly what he brings to the world in his presence. Let these words, and the work of the Spirit, fill and guide us. Let us use the priorities we agreed on to start as we mean to go as a church. As members of the church. Let us continually ask ourselves how are we, Christ’s church, living out Jesus’ priorities? Let us start as we mean to go on. Amen.
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