Preachers Too Can Announce, "Today This Scripture is Fulfilled in Your HEARING."

Jesus saves through audition

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus inaugurates his ministry by reading from the scriptures in his hometown synagogue. Whether Mary’s boy chose the passage— from the prophet Isaiah— or whether it was the assigned reading for the day, Luke does not specify.

In either case, Jesus finds the verses on the scroll and reads:

“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.”

Having read from the prophet, Jesus sits down as one among the congregation. With their eyes fixed on him, Jesus makes an announcement, the oddity of which often goes unnoticed, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

• Jesus fulfills the promise, which he himself had laid on the lips of Isaiah, verbally.

• Our access to the salvation he brings is auditory.

Much preaching moves immediately from this passage in Luke to lift up the church’s advocacy for justice, her accompaniment alongside the poor, and solidarity with the oppressed. That this passage coincided in the lectionary with the reaction to Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon at the National Cathedral concentrated even more attention on these marks of the church’s lived witness. Yet the word Jesus announces in Nazareth is not a summons for his fellow worshippers to do work on behalf of the poor and oppressed. Jesus straightforwardly suggests that all the work prophesied by Isaiah has somehow come to fruition in the happening between Jesus’s mouth and their earballs.

The worshippers in Nazareth haven’t lifted a finger to help the poor or free captives.

They’ve only heard a word from the Word.

While the lection from Luke frequently— ironically— provokes calls to Christian action, it should instead compel believers to reflect upon the odd scandal of Christian proclamation.

The promised salvation is fulfilled through audition.

Or rather, to proclaim the gospel is to justify the ungodly.

In his book Story and Promise, Robert Jenson writes:

“What happened to the world with Jesus was that at the end of the long history of Israel’s promises, a sheerly unconditional promise was said and became sayable in the world.”