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Preaching Notes / Part 3 of 3 “Jubilee Year”- 3rd Sunday Ordinary Time (January 25, 2025)

Still in Luke 4, Jesus boldly declares the “Lord’s year of favor.” This expression relates to Jewish practice that at the end of every 50th year [7 x 7 years] there would be celebrated the Year of Jubilee. The hallmark of that year was the liberation of everyone who, because of their poverty, had to sell themselves into slavery. That special year, they were set free and to return to their own land and to resume a life of liberty.

Eight hundred years before Jesus’ moment in the synagogue, Isaiah spoke about the “Year of Jubilee.” As Jesus sets the scroll down after having read the prophet’s words, Jesus announces this year is about to happen. It is about to happen in the very person of Jesus of Nazareth. He states that this text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.

In our Christian understanding of Jesus among us at all times, this “year” is not 365 days of Jubilee as it was in the hopes of Israel. The year of Jubilee as Luke attests has its beginning in the life of Jesus. That is when Jesus comes to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to set free the downtrodden. It begins with Jesus and it continues. It is passed on to His disciples, whom He commissions to do the same thing after His Resurrection and just before His Ascension into heaven.

In our time, in what we might call the Life of the Church, this year of favor, this Jubilee Year, should be a feature of all we do as followers of Christ. Not for a single calendar year, but for all the years we live and proclaim our Christian faith.

How do our lives proclaim the text Jesus proclaimed that He interpreted as having been fulfilled even as we listen?

We are challenged to be good news – gospel – to all people and especially to those who are broken. There are many different ways of being broken far beyond only the financial ways spoken about in the text. Brokenness among us is widespread. We are called to bring comfort, to bring a year of jubilee into the lives of those who suffer.

This is not optional for those who follow Jesus. It is an essential feature for all who dare to live as intentional disciples and all who truly live as a community of genuine disciples.

 

 

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