Jesus quotes Isaiah, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me”. Why does he receive the Spirit, “to bring good news to the poor.” In the Jewish faith of the day, held by the Pharisees and Sadducees, in order to enter the Kingdom of God you had to keep the law and the only people who stood a chance of doing that were the rich and powerful. In a society which basically only had two classes the rich and the poor, the poor far outnumbered the rich and they knew they didn’t stand a chance of getting to heaven because they couldn’t keep all the rules that made up the law.

Into their world came Jesus. At Christmas the first to visit the baby Jesus were the shepherds. Shepherds were total outsiders they couldn’t even be witnesses in a court of law, they were the dregs of society. At the Epiphany the second group of visitors who came to pay homage were the Wise Men who weren’t even Jews; they were foreigners who came from Persia, modern day Iran. John the Baptist who was of the priestly line through both his parents challenged the whole Temple concept and told his hearers that if they repented of their sins and were baptised then they could receive the Spirit of God. Last week we read about the wedding at Cana of Galilee when between 240 and 300 gallons of water were turned into wine a rather large amount for a party of people who numbered between one and two hundred. The message for us is that God is a generous God and he welcomes anyone.

So how does this add up both then and now. Jesus’ message is that God loves you whoever you are, wherever you are and all you need do is respond to God’s call by turning to Christ, (to use the words of the Baptism Service). Faith, your faith, is the gift of God. You can’t buy it or earn it, it is pure gift. All you have to do is to open your heart to God so that the Spirit can enter in and live with you. God is out there in the world which he created but above all he is within you. To pray we only have to stop and gaze within. Words are often meaningless, we just need to stop and be in the presence of God who is at the centre of each one of us.

That is the Good News that Jesus came to tell us nearly two thousand years ago and what was true then is still true now in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty two. But there is a catch, isn’t there always? It is in the rest of the quote from Isaiah, we are being challenged to take the Good News to the captive, the blind, to the oppressed, yes to those who are literally so but we need to see them in the wider context of those held captive by greed and hatred, blind to what is happening around them, and oppressed or as we would say today abused to name but a few ways of understanding Isaiah and so understanding Jesus and telling us what God wants us to do in his world. In summary love God and love your neighbour.

Andrew Lane SSL