Campaign announcement

Photo by David Everett Strickler on Unsplash

People who run for office, whether they run for President of the United States or president of student council, make big promises.

When I ran for second grade class president, I think I promised all-day recess.

I won.

Do you think I kept that promise?

Did it matter? Enough second graders believed me to put me in office.

To be clear, I think I thought I could pull it off. I wasn’t trying to fool my fellow second-graders. I just didn’t know that the second grade president had less power than the cartons of milk in the cafeteria!

I’m a fan of U.S. presidential history, so I looked up some of the biggest promises that presidential candidates made (and broke):

In 1928, Herbert Hoover promised “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” A year after he won the White House, the U.S. plunged into the worst economic depression in its history.

In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt promised: “Your boys are not going to be sent to any foreign war.” In fact, he sent 12 million to fight in World War II.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson promised: “We are not about to send American boys nine or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” Over the next four years, he sent 536,000 “American boys” to Vietnam.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan promised a constitutional amendment to put prayer back in public schools.

And in 1988, George Bush said: “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Two years later, he signed multiple new taxes and tax increases into law.

Those of us who are old enough know that candidates will say almost anything to get elected. We are also old enough to know that once in office, no candidate ever delivers everything he or she promised. Sometimes, they never even intended to keep those promises. Other times, they find out that they just can’t keep them.

The Gospel of Luke 4:14-21 tells the story of Jesus going back to his hometown near the start of his public ministry. Let’s see what happens:

14 Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

18 “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 set free those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

I’ve heard people call this the “Jesus’s campaign announcement.” After all, candidates do often go back to their hometowns to announce that they’re running for office.

Jesus, however, is not running for office. He is announcing that the office, if you will, already belongs to him. Just before he appears in Nazareth, the Gospel of Luke 3:21-22 shows the Holy Spirit anointing him and heaven pronouncing him the Son of God.

So Jesus does not need to campaign for votes; he is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God. His identity and power come from heaven, not the consent of the governed on earth.

So, if Jesus is not running for office, what kind of campaign announcement is this?

Jesus announces the “year of the Lord’s favor” (4:19). The campaign he launches is a campaign to bring the Lord’s favor to the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed. In other words, those who need it most!

The “year of the Lord’s favor” is a likely reference to the year of jubilee that we find in the Book of Leviticus 25:8-13.

According to this text in the Bible that Jesus reads and uses in his ministry, the people of God are to celebrate the Lord’s jubilee every 50 years. They are to “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all of its inhabitants.”

Scholars note that there is no record that ancient Israel ever kept jubilee.

So those who are waiting for liberty have been waiting a long, long time when Jesus appears in the Nazareth synagogue.

Jesus’s announcement in Luke 4:14-21 is that he is the Lord and that the Lord’s jubilee starts now. That he is launching a campaign to “proclaim liberty throughout the land for all of its inhabitants.”

What does this mean?

If you’re in debt, you get out of debt. If you’re broke, you get an adequate, honest livelihood. If you’re disabled, old, and sick, you get your health, strength, and youth back. If you’re homeless, you get a home. If you’re stuck in a dead-end job with low pay, you get free of it and you get new work that is dignifying, fulfilling, stimulating and takes care of all your needs. If you’re a criminal, you get out of prison and your record is expunged. If you’re a refugee, you get to go home in peace and safety.

In short, jubilee is like God pushing a giant reset button for “all inhabitants of the land,” which means God pushes a giant reset button for the land, too. Everything goes back to its clean, pure, starting state. Like going back to the innocence and wonder of childhood, when life was…eternal.

This is the Lord’s jubilee.

This is the campaign that Jesus announces in Nazareth.

“Today,” he says. “This Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

In other words, Jesus doesn’t make a campaign promise he’ll maybe get around to keeping once he’s in office. No, he is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God, and is keeping his promise even now.

How do we know? Because Jesus brings good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and freedom to those who are oppressed (4:18-19). This is what we see him do from Nazareth, on through the rest of the Gospel of Luke and through his Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts. It is what we see him doing even now where people have eyes to see.

I know this is hard to believe. When we look around at the world today, it may seem awfully hard to see the Lord’s jubilee.

I think that is because we are so used to the kind of power that kings and presidents use–and want more of for themselves–that we assume that that is the only kind of power at work in the world.

So we project that kind of power onto Jesus and assume that he must be like the power of militaries, multinational corporations and nation-states. We imagine that Jesus must be a better version of the CEOs, generals, kings and presidents we see in the news.

But Jesus’s life, death and resurrection reveal that his power is wholly different from the powers at work in the world today. He does not work to the same ends and through the same means that those powers work.

Where faith is present–often among seemingly insignificant and unimportant people in passed over places–Jesus’s power is at work to forgive, heal, resurrect and set free. This is what he announces in the Gospel of Luke 4:14-21. This power is often strange and unseen to us because the world’s power is all we know. Until we turn our eyes upon Jesus–and away from the powers of this world–we will miss the Lord’s favor.

A week before I wrote this, a fallen and sinful man became president of a fallen and sinful government that rules a fallen and sinful nation that exists in a fallen and sinful world.

Know that I would say the same thing if a different person took the oath of office on January 20.

That man, in his inaugural address, made many promises. But at the end of his term, whenever that turns out to be, the government, nation, people and world will be no less fallen and sinful than at the start. And none of it will be closer to jubilee because no president has the power to bring what only God can bring. I’d be saying this if anyone else made the inaugural address on January 20.

Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God. He alone has the power to bring jubilee to “all inhabitants of the land.” His power is at work in the world, but it is not of the world. The Christ can (and does) do what no corporation, government or military has ever been able to do in thousands of years.

In the shadow of the presidential inauguration, we must ask: On whom will we fix our eyes? In whom will we choose to believe and put our trust?

The Christ announces the year of the Lord’s favor and the Christ is bringing it through is own means and power.

Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

Will you choose to believe it?

Grace and peace.