RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES

Introduction

NOTE:  My original idea for this study was to present a play about a woman who tries reflexology for the first time in her life (following the Introduction).  I couldn’t escape the feeling, though, that I wasn’t communicating in the way I intended, and I switched tacks and ended the play much sooner than planned.   As I was reviewing things in preparation for posting, I realized that if I brought a couple parts from the end forward to the beginning, it might make a little more sense, so that’s what I decided to do.

Isaiah 6:1-3  (WMB)

The Lord GOD’s Spirit is on me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the humble.

He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives

and release to those who are bound,

to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

to provide for those who mourn in Zion,

to give them a garland for ashes,

the oil of joy for mourning,

the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness,

that they may be called trees of righteousness,

the planting of the LORD,

that He may be glorified.

Luke 4:14-21  (WMB)

[Jesus] returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding area.  He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up.  He entered, as was His custom, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.  The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him.  He opened the scroll, and found the place where it was written, “The spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

He closed the scroll, gave it back to the [synagogue leader], and sat down.  The eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him.  He began to tell them, “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Good news to the poor.

Healing of the broken hearted.

Release to the captives.

Sight to the blind.

Deliverance to the crushed.

I don’t know about you, but those things sound pretty good to me.  Sign me up!  I’d like to think that’s what my attitude would have been if I’d heard Jesus proclaim that He was fulfilling those words of Isaiah.  I mean, who wouldn’t want good news, healing, freedom, sight, and deliverance?  Apparently, not those in the synagogue of Nazareth that day.

Luke 4:28-29  (WMB)

They were all filled with wrath in the synagogue, as they heard these things.  They rose up, threw Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill that their city was built on, that they might throw Him off the cliff.

Now, to be fair, it wasn’t Jesus saying that He was going to bring all those fabulous things to them that caused the people in the synagogue to become enraged.  It was His response to their snarky comment about Him being Joseph’s son.  I mean, think about it — what if you were sitting in the synagogue like you’d done every week for your entire life and all of a sudden this young man who had grown up with your children suddenly announced that God was fulfilling this grand and glorious prophecy through Him?  Would you immediately hop on board the Jesus train?

I think it’s difficult to fault those sitting there that day for their reaction.  They’d known Jesus from the time He and His parents returned from Bethlehem after His birth.  Delusions of grandeur is what a lot of people would accuse Him of.  In fact, that’s pretty much what they meant when they said, “Um, this is Joseph’s son, right?  Yeah...riiiiight...”  But it’s equally difficult to fault Jesus for His reaction.

Luke 4:23-27  (WMB)

He said to them, “Doubtless you will tell Me this parable, ‘Physician, heal yourself!  Whatever we have heard done at Capernaum, do also here in your hometown.’”  He said, “Most certainly I tell you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.  But truly I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land.  Elijah was sent to none of them, except to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.  There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, except Naaman, the Syrian.”

What Jesus was basically saying was that because of their stubbornness of heart and disbelief, God refused to take note of those in Israel and instead showered His great compassion on foreigners back in the day.  Now God was bringing His great redemption and deliverance to Israel in person through Jesus and if Israel refused to listen to God again, history was going to repeat itself.  So yeah, not exactly the kind of thing to say if you’re trying to gain friends and sway enemies to your side.

But here’s the thing — Jesus was all about subverting people’s expectations.  Not for the sake of being subversive.  That’s nothing but an attention grabbing tactic.  Jesus is Life and He is Light.  When He walked this earth, He illuminated everyone and everything.  The problem was that people thought they had God all figured out but in reality, they had been settling for less than true Life for too long and they didn’t want their less than lives illuminated and shown for what they really were.

Right now, we are living in a time that in many ways mirrors the state of Israel in Jesus’ day.  A lot of people think they have God all figured out and instead of allowing His Word to speak to them, they read and study it only to reinforce things they already believe.  That particular mindset was certainly prevalent among those who had taken on the mantle of spiritual and religious leadership in first century Israel, and it seems to me that may be one reason why so many today stick to their favorite books or verses of the Bible.  They just want to be told over and over that what they already believe is right.

Ask yourself this question:  “When I read the Bible, am I only looking for what it means to me?”  It may not seem like it, but I want to gently suggest that there is a very real danger in that approach.  It becomes way too easy to use the Bible for your own purposes and cease learning anything.  There is wisdom in every word in the Bible, and it is wisdom that needs to be learned.  But in order for God’s wisdom to become part of us, we need to have hearts that desire to learn, not hearts that are only looking for “what it means to me.”  Again, I know it probably doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong with looking at it that way, and sometimes we really do need to ask that question, but I must again gently suggest that the danger is very real and very present that we can make the Bible say pretty much anything we want it to when we are only looking for personal meaning rather than allowing it to speak God’s wisdom into our hearts and minds.

I was always taught that every time you read the Bible, God is basically doing surgery on your heart — there’s something He is trying to tell you and there’s some sin or transgression or rebellion that He wants to deal with and take care of.  So every time you read the Bible you should be asking, “How does this apply to me and what is God trying to fix in me?”  I’m beginning to understand, however, that such an approach is really sort of missing the point.  The Bible is about getting to know God and learning the wisdom of God so that it can inform your every thought and every word and every deed.  The question I was taught to ask actually prevented me from coming to the Bible with an attitude to learn God’s wisdom because it meant I was looking at the Bible as a how-to manual or a self-help guide and I can tell you from experience that yeah, you’ll probably find something you can use or something that will help you feel better, but it’s the same as if you were starving and someone tossed you a chunk of bread.  You’d feel better right away but in the long run, you’d get hungry again if you never learned how to find food for yourself.  The how-to manual / self-help guide way of reading and studying the Bible will only result in temporary fixes and in the end, you’ll still be starving.

So what does all that have to do with Jesus and His subversion of expectations?  Just this — I think we need to take a good, hard look at what we think of God and Jesus and the Bible and allow our expectations and assumptions about all of them to be subverted in a big way.  I say that not as a criticism or condemnation but as a plea.

Through Jesus, God has offered us everything.  Life, joy, healing, hope, refuge, wholeness, love.  Yet it seems like there are so very many who aren’t experiencing much of any of that.  The truth is, far too many of us have spent a lifetime being unable to receive what God offers because we’ve been convinced we don’t deserve it.  And that core belief has kept so very many from health and healing.  The absolutely heartbreaking thing is that the vast majority of people have zero recognition that they are chained to that particular wall, imprisoned in cells not of their own making.  They continue berating themselves for not having enough faith, for not believing strongly enough, for not asking for the right thing.  Worst of all, way too many are turning their backs on a God they’ve never actually met.

I recently read a devastating review of a book written by a woman (the review, not the book) who had been failed in a massive way by people in the church.  This woman had suffered from some kind of abuse and had turned to those in her church for help (it wasn’t entirely clear if these were just friends or if she had also counseled with pastors, but it seemed like perhaps it was a combination of both).  As she phrased it, rather than help her work through the turmoil of all her emotions and feelings, she was told merely to “forgive” and “pray for her perpetrators.”  She wrote that she had “resigned from her faith” because rather than acknowledging her nobility as a human being, she felt “forced to live in the shadows of the sins of [her] perpetrators” by those who, instead of treating her with compassion, gave her nothing but simplistic answers that didn’t even come close to dealing with the ocean of anger and despair and shame she was feeling.

This is the legacy of a church that thinks it has God all figured out and has refused to allow itself to be subverted by the One they claim to follow.  We’re so sure that anger is always a sin.  We’re convinced that the only way forward is to forgive no matter what the circumstances.  And we have pushed these false “truths” onto the shoulders of those already crushed and broken by the sin and contempt of others, many who claim to be Christians.  We have planted our flag in the ground of believing that God desires us to suffer every day in every way, not realizing that we’re shoving that pole into the hearts of survivors of abuse who are left with nowhere to turn except an unsafe God Who they think gets a kick out of seeing them bleed.

My dear friends, THIS MUST STOP.  Instead of being Job’s friends and speaking without wisdom, we must allow Jesus to do what needs to be done.  If that means completely demolishing everything we thought we knew about Him, then I pray we have the courage to let Him do just that.  Because people are bleeding out every single day.  And too often those who claim the name of Jesus have so very little to say to them except to repeat all the things we think we know and to our lasting heartbreak, we discover that those things fail to speak to the real issues at heart.

I invite you to take a stand with me.  I invite you to allow yourselves to be subverted by Jesus, not only for your own sake but for those we’ve been called to be God’s Light and compassion to in their darkest of hours.

I may write things that challenge you, I may bring up things that make you uncomfortable.  Just remember that Jesus confronted people and made a lot of them feel extremely uncomfortable.  He challenged everything they thought was truly Life and He illuminated all those places in their hearts that people tried to keep in the dark even when they didn’t realize that’s what they were doing.  Now ask yourself, will you be in the group that tries to throw Jesus off a cliff?  Or will you be like Job and wrestle it out with God until you truly see Him and come to an understanding of Him based not on your preconceptions but on who He really is?