Loading...International Holocaust Remembrance Day
If you were to explain your life using a piece of scripture what scrap would you pick: Maybe that scrap of Nehemiah about eating fat and drinking sweet wine? Or how about the bit from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians about suffering with those who suffer?
Jesus chooses Isaiah chapter 61.
When he sits down and sees everyone staring at him he responds as if Isaiah explains who he is: A spirit-anointed, good-news-to-the-poor bringing, captive-releasing, sight-to-the-blind-freedom-to-the-oppressed, THIS-is-the-year-of-the-Lord’s-favor PROCLAIMER! The words might be ancient but the living of them is today — TODAY this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
My favorite proclamation Jesus quotes from Isaiah is release to the captives. What a beautiful phrase.
Just the mere thought of being give a new lease on life feels freeing. Jesus’ self-understanding gives me hope that my current self-understanding bears some witness to the life and times and new life of the risen and ascended ever present Jesus.
Jesus takes Isaiah’s words and owns them. We take Jesus at his word and he makes us his own. So we are part and parcel of the spirit-anointed, good-news-to-the-poor bringing, captive-releasing, sight-to-the-blind, freedom-to-the-oppressed, THIS-is-the-year-of-the-Lord’s-favor PROCLAIMERS. Because of Jesus, Isaiah explains who we are. We are scripture-fulfillers.
One of the most compelling stories of captive release comes from my favorite fashion icon, Diane Von Furstenberg. She wrote a memoir of her mother Lily and recorded the book on Audible. Hearing Diane tell the stories her mother told her of her mother’s imprisonment and suffering in two concentration camps takes her mother from what might be consigned as historical relic to real and vital and tenderly present. The book is titled The Woman I Wanted to Be. In it Diane discovers a piece of script that explains to her who she is. [Listen to chapter 1 Roots] [play clip]
At the end of her captivity Lily is asked to describe her health. Weighing in at 58 pounds listen for how she proclaims herself: in very good health. [play clip]
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