Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me.
500 years before Jesus was born, God’s people the Jews were having a tough time. They were living as refugees in their own land, their cities were ruined, their land was untended, and they were tempted to give up. And God’s call came to them in the form of Isaiah 61. God hadn’t given up on them. He was still anointing, still putting his Spirit on people.
Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
Jesus: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
And so the words echoed down the years. 500 years later, a young Jewish rabbi came to love these words so much that he chose them as the text for his first sermon at his home synagogue. God is still calling, still sending his Spirit. But the words were dangerous for him to imply to himself – the Greek for anoint in this quotation is chrio. The anointed one is Christos, Christ. The carpenter next door is claiming to be the Messiah.
Isaiah: to preach good news to the poor
Anointed for a reason. The priority in Isaiah 61 is the poor. The poor who are rebuilding a province in near-famine conditions. The poor who are suffering crippling tax burdens from their overlords. The poor who are losing disability living allowance. The poor who are without clean drinking water in 2010. The poor are always God’s priority,
Isaiah: to preach good news to the poor
Jesus: to preach good news to the poor
And the poor are always Jesus’. That’s how you can tell if someone has taken Jesus’ manifesto seriously. This is good news, news that makes the world a better place.
Isaiah: He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
And if the poor are the physically needy, Isaiah goes on to talk about the emotionally needy too. It can’t be easy to have seen your country torn apart, to lose the certainties you always lived by when the Babylonians swept in. It takes time to heal a broken heart, but God tells us he’s committed to it. And if everything else is changing in our lives, sometimes it’s heartbreaking when church fails to be the stable place, the homeland, that we long for. It’s not easy to see this building turned upside down, like someone stole your church and filled it with crying children. It’s not easy to lose the school building as a place of worship when that was the place that was special to you and your family. I know, because I’ve heard from some of you, that you are brokenhearted about some of the changes that we’ve made here in Galleywood. Frankly I doubt I can do much to mend those broken hearts, especially because it was kind of me that stole your church, but I do know God can do it. God prioritises it.
Isaiah: He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
Jesus: He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted
Jesus prioritises it too, and it’s those of you who have most clearly become broken-heart binders who are my heroes here. Like the family who are members of this church who took in and fostered some kids when their mum couldn’t cope. The mum wanted contact with her kids – of course she did – but the courts said she couldn’t have them back because she had an alcohol problem. So what did the Christian family concerned do? They invited mum to come and live with them too. They walked with her through the detox programme, they stayed up all night with her, they cared without judging and they bound up some broken hearts.
There’ll be two people over by the flags at the end of this talk ready to pray for your broken heart. Prayer makes an incredible difference. Tony Campolo tells the story of being a guest preacher at a Pentecostal church. They got him to kneel down on his knees and six of them put their hands on his head and prayed for him asking the Holy Spirit to fill him up. “These men prayed long,” he says, “and the longer they prayed, the harder they leaned on my head.” One man prayed at length about a particular man named Charlie Stoltzfus. Campolo thought to himself, - “if you’re going to lean on my head, the least that you can do is pray for me! He prayed on and on for this guy who was about to abandon his wife and three children. I can still hear him calling out "Lord! Lord! Don't let that man leave his wife and children! Send an angel to bring that man back to his family. Don’t let that family be destroyed! You know who I am talking about ... Charlie Stoltzfus. He lives down the road about half a mile on the right-hand side in a silver house trailer!"
Well Campolo thought to himself with some degree of exasperation, - "God knows where he lives... What do you think God's doing, sitting up there in heaven saying give me that address again"?
He got in my car and headed home. He saw a young man hitchhiking on the side of the road. He looked broken down and depressed. He picked him up. (I know you are not supposed to, but Tony Campolo is a Baptist preacher and I think whenever he can get someone locked in to where he can preach to him, he does it.) "Hi”, said Campolo, “my name's Tony"
He said, "My names Charlie Stoltzfus...."!
So Campolo got off at the next exit and turned around and headed back. His passenger said, "Hey, mister! Where are you taking me?!"
Answer: "I’m taking you HOME!"
He said, "why?"
And Campolo said, "Because you just left your wife and three children RIGHT?"
He said "RIGHT! RIGHT!"
So Campolo drove onto a side road - Straight to his silver house trailer. When he pulled into the drive Charlie Stoltzfus looked at him with astonishment and said "How'd you know I lived here?"
Campolo said "God told me! Now you get into that house trailer because I want to talk to you and your wife. God can heal your broken hearts."
Charlie Stoltzfus is now a preacher in Pentecostal churches, but more importantly his broken family got put back together. Now, I have to tell you I’ve never experienced anything like that story in my life. But I have seen God put broken people and broken families back together.
Isaiah: to announce freedom for the prisoners and release from darkness to the captives,
Jesus: to announce freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind
Jesus doesn’t quote it word for word, but I think you’ll agree he gets the general sense. It’s about those who are bound by ropes, chains, debt, blindness, addictions, compulsions, neuroses, a need to be liked or a need to be rich. Whatever you’re bound by, Jesus wants to set you free.
Isaiah:
Jesus: to let the oppressed go free
So much so that he adds these words that aren’t even in Isaiah - not at the bit of the scroll he's turned to, anyway. There’s a line in a hymn that speaks of “spirits oppressed by money hate or fear”. This is the first in a series of sermons about the call of God, and I don’t want to start this series without making it really clear that before Jesus calls you to do anything for him, he calls you to come to him and free you from oppression. Relationship with Jesus should feel like an incredible likeness as the burdens of expectations are lifted from your shoulders. You are home, and you are free.
Isaiah: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God
These words have a balance to them that those timid wall-builders needed to hear. On the one hand, it’s the year of the Lord’s favour – that’s a technical term for the 50th year, also called the Jubilee, when debts got cancelled. So if you were in debt among the Jews, Jubilee is massively good news. But on the other hand, the God coming was going to judge as well as forgive, be stern and frightening as well as warm and cheering.
Isaiah: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God
Jesus: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour
He doesn’t finish the quote, does he? He stops halfway through a sentence, halfway through a stanza of a poem. Now I’m sure many of his listeners would have liked him to go on, it’s surprising how much people enjoy a bit of condemnation in a sermon, and with Israel under foreign occupation a lot of people felt that any decent Messiah needed to do a bit of vengeance. But Jesus knew what he was doing. He proclaims grace, and then stops.
As a preacher, I used to get a bit conflicted about this. Like, if I didn’t make people feel just a little bit condemned maybe I’d gone all liberal and wasn’t giving people the whole story. And of course Jesus could be very tough indeed, especially when faced with religious leaders. But when faced with the poor, the brokenhearted, the oppressed and the struggling, Jesus was content to preach nothing but good news. I think that’s what we need this morning. If you want bad news, you'll have to buy a tabloid newspaper, we're good news people.
So here is God’s invitation this morning. If you are oppressed, if you are poor, if you are broken hearted, Jesus is here. His arms are open in welcome. He died – literally died – to extend the welcome to you. He was oppressed, his heart was pierced, he was poor, he suffered vengeance - all this because he wants you to come to him and let him free you and heal your heart. He wants you to come to him and let him anoint you with his Spirit, so that the Spirit is on you too. He wants you to hear God’s call.
I’m going to read a prayer, and if you feel it’s right for you to pray it, I’m going invite you to stand, and we’ll pray it line by line together.
Lord Jesus, I need you to set me free from the things that oppress me and stop me being the free, loving person you made me to be. I admit that however together I appear to be on the outside, I’ve screwed up and I need you to heal my heart.
I believe that you died for me, and welcome me now.
Please send your Holy Spirit to anoint me, so that I too will proclaim good news to the poor, healing for the broken hearted and the year of your favour. Amen.
500 years before Jesus was born, God’s people the Jews were having a tough time. They were living as refugees in their own land, their cities were ruined, their land was untended, and they were tempted to give up. And God’s call came to them in the form of Isaiah 61. God hadn’t given up on them. He was still anointing, still putting his Spirit on people.
Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
Jesus: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
And so the words echoed down the years. 500 years later, a young Jewish rabbi came to love these words so much that he chose them as the text for his first sermon at his home synagogue. God is still calling, still sending his Spirit. But the words were dangerous for him to imply to himself – the Greek for anoint in this quotation is chrio. The anointed one is Christos, Christ. The carpenter next door is claiming to be the Messiah.
Isaiah: to preach good news to the poor
Anointed for a reason. The priority in Isaiah 61 is the poor. The poor who are rebuilding a province in near-famine conditions. The poor who are suffering crippling tax burdens from their overlords. The poor who are losing disability living allowance. The poor who are without clean drinking water in 2010. The poor are always God’s priority,
Isaiah: to preach good news to the poor
Jesus: to preach good news to the poor
And the poor are always Jesus’. That’s how you can tell if someone has taken Jesus’ manifesto seriously. This is good news, news that makes the world a better place.
Isaiah: He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
And if the poor are the physically needy, Isaiah goes on to talk about the emotionally needy too. It can’t be easy to have seen your country torn apart, to lose the certainties you always lived by when the Babylonians swept in. It takes time to heal a broken heart, but God tells us he’s committed to it. And if everything else is changing in our lives, sometimes it’s heartbreaking when church fails to be the stable place, the homeland, that we long for. It’s not easy to see this building turned upside down, like someone stole your church and filled it with crying children. It’s not easy to lose the school building as a place of worship when that was the place that was special to you and your family. I know, because I’ve heard from some of you, that you are brokenhearted about some of the changes that we’ve made here in Galleywood. Frankly I doubt I can do much to mend those broken hearts, especially because it was kind of me that stole your church, but I do know God can do it. God prioritises it.
Isaiah: He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
Jesus: He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted
Jesus prioritises it too, and it’s those of you who have most clearly become broken-heart binders who are my heroes here. Like the family who are members of this church who took in and fostered some kids when their mum couldn’t cope. The mum wanted contact with her kids – of course she did – but the courts said she couldn’t have them back because she had an alcohol problem. So what did the Christian family concerned do? They invited mum to come and live with them too. They walked with her through the detox programme, they stayed up all night with her, they cared without judging and they bound up some broken hearts.
There’ll be two people over by the flags at the end of this talk ready to pray for your broken heart. Prayer makes an incredible difference. Tony Campolo tells the story of being a guest preacher at a Pentecostal church. They got him to kneel down on his knees and six of them put their hands on his head and prayed for him asking the Holy Spirit to fill him up. “These men prayed long,” he says, “and the longer they prayed, the harder they leaned on my head.” One man prayed at length about a particular man named Charlie Stoltzfus. Campolo thought to himself, - “if you’re going to lean on my head, the least that you can do is pray for me! He prayed on and on for this guy who was about to abandon his wife and three children. I can still hear him calling out "Lord! Lord! Don't let that man leave his wife and children! Send an angel to bring that man back to his family. Don’t let that family be destroyed! You know who I am talking about ... Charlie Stoltzfus. He lives down the road about half a mile on the right-hand side in a silver house trailer!"
Well Campolo thought to himself with some degree of exasperation, - "God knows where he lives... What do you think God's doing, sitting up there in heaven saying give me that address again"?
He got in my car and headed home. He saw a young man hitchhiking on the side of the road. He looked broken down and depressed. He picked him up. (I know you are not supposed to, but Tony Campolo is a Baptist preacher and I think whenever he can get someone locked in to where he can preach to him, he does it.) "Hi”, said Campolo, “my name's Tony"
He said, "My names Charlie Stoltzfus...."!
So Campolo got off at the next exit and turned around and headed back. His passenger said, "Hey, mister! Where are you taking me?!"
Answer: "I’m taking you HOME!"
He said, "why?"
And Campolo said, "Because you just left your wife and three children RIGHT?"
He said "RIGHT! RIGHT!"
So Campolo drove onto a side road - Straight to his silver house trailer. When he pulled into the drive Charlie Stoltzfus looked at him with astonishment and said "How'd you know I lived here?"
Campolo said "God told me! Now you get into that house trailer because I want to talk to you and your wife. God can heal your broken hearts."
Charlie Stoltzfus is now a preacher in Pentecostal churches, but more importantly his broken family got put back together. Now, I have to tell you I’ve never experienced anything like that story in my life. But I have seen God put broken people and broken families back together.
Isaiah: to announce freedom for the prisoners and release from darkness to the captives,
Jesus: to announce freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind
Jesus doesn’t quote it word for word, but I think you’ll agree he gets the general sense. It’s about those who are bound by ropes, chains, debt, blindness, addictions, compulsions, neuroses, a need to be liked or a need to be rich. Whatever you’re bound by, Jesus wants to set you free.
Isaiah:
Jesus: to let the oppressed go free
So much so that he adds these words that aren’t even in Isaiah - not at the bit of the scroll he's turned to, anyway. There’s a line in a hymn that speaks of “spirits oppressed by money hate or fear”. This is the first in a series of sermons about the call of God, and I don’t want to start this series without making it really clear that before Jesus calls you to do anything for him, he calls you to come to him and free you from oppression. Relationship with Jesus should feel like an incredible likeness as the burdens of expectations are lifted from your shoulders. You are home, and you are free.
Isaiah: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God
These words have a balance to them that those timid wall-builders needed to hear. On the one hand, it’s the year of the Lord’s favour – that’s a technical term for the 50th year, also called the Jubilee, when debts got cancelled. So if you were in debt among the Jews, Jubilee is massively good news. But on the other hand, the God coming was going to judge as well as forgive, be stern and frightening as well as warm and cheering.
Isaiah: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God
Jesus: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour
He doesn’t finish the quote, does he? He stops halfway through a sentence, halfway through a stanza of a poem. Now I’m sure many of his listeners would have liked him to go on, it’s surprising how much people enjoy a bit of condemnation in a sermon, and with Israel under foreign occupation a lot of people felt that any decent Messiah needed to do a bit of vengeance. But Jesus knew what he was doing. He proclaims grace, and then stops.
As a preacher, I used to get a bit conflicted about this. Like, if I didn’t make people feel just a little bit condemned maybe I’d gone all liberal and wasn’t giving people the whole story. And of course Jesus could be very tough indeed, especially when faced with religious leaders. But when faced with the poor, the brokenhearted, the oppressed and the struggling, Jesus was content to preach nothing but good news. I think that’s what we need this morning. If you want bad news, you'll have to buy a tabloid newspaper, we're good news people.
So here is God’s invitation this morning. If you are oppressed, if you are poor, if you are broken hearted, Jesus is here. His arms are open in welcome. He died – literally died – to extend the welcome to you. He was oppressed, his heart was pierced, he was poor, he suffered vengeance - all this because he wants you to come to him and let him free you and heal your heart. He wants you to come to him and let him anoint you with his Spirit, so that the Spirit is on you too. He wants you to hear God’s call.
I’m going to read a prayer, and if you feel it’s right for you to pray it, I’m going invite you to stand, and we’ll pray it line by line together.
Lord Jesus, I need you to set me free from the things that oppress me and stop me being the free, loving person you made me to be. I admit that however together I appear to be on the outside, I’ve screwed up and I need you to heal my heart.
I believe that you died for me, and welcome me now.
Please send your Holy Spirit to anoint me, so that I too will proclaim good news to the poor, healing for the broken hearted and the year of your favour. Amen.
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