“Today this scripture has been fulfilled” – Reflection St Andrews on The Terrace
25 October 2026 Paul Barber
Isaiah 61:1-4 The Good News of Deliverance
1 The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
Luke 4: 16-21
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
Morning (Clinton Lee Scott)
“messenger of the morning – harbinger of a new day”
‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
Jesus announces his ministry with a bang – claiming that one of the great prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures has been fulfilled in this moment – the Spirit of God is upon him, he has been anointed to bring good news to the poor….
These texts have been chosen by Pat & I because they are foundational to the theology and world view of Christian social justice teaching, especially the various theologies of liberation.
There is not time today to unpack all the explosiveness contained within these pivotal biblical texts, but I will try to illustrate some of it at least
This reading is scripture in scripture – New Testament scripture Luke has Jesus quoting Isaiah in the Hebrew scriptures.
Jesus’ words are profoundly political – he declares he is the ‘anointed one’ i.e. the Messiah, who proclaims the ‘year of the Lord’s favour’ (but very significantly Jesus stops reading at that point – before the Isaiah text which goes on to proclaim the ‘day of vengeance of our God’ – I will come back to this ).
The people of Nazareth – Jesus hometown, are among the first to be told and they greet his words initially with adulation
The Gospel of Luke was written most likely in the year 80-90 CE – that is some 50 years after Jesus’ ministry and after the fall and sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. The trauma and despair of this pivotal event in Jewish history cannot be understated. From that time on, with the temple in ruins, Jerusalem could no longer be the centre of the Jewish faith, the political hopes for restoration of the glory days of King David’s kingdom centuries ago had been shattered and the Jewish communities scattered. From this point on Judaism becomes a religion focused around diaspora communities all across the known world from Alexandria to Tarsus to Ephesus to Corinth and Rome, where Jewish believers gathered in the synagogue to pray, hear scripture and teaching, and encourage each other in the faith.
This text gives us a small insight into actual Jewish practice of gathering and worship in the period of early Christianity. These synagogues were also the places where Paul, Barnabas and other early missionaries for the Jesus Way first went with their message about Jesus in the decades following his crucifixion. And Luke writes about this in his other biblical book – the book of Acts of the Apostles.
Luke places this synagogue scene at the start of Jesus ministry. After his baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus spends 40 days in the desert being tempted by the devil and, after literally conquering his demons, he returns to Galilee his place of origin, teaching in the synagogues and stirring up a storm of interest and enthusiasm.
By the time he gets to his hometown Nazareth, the word is out that he is a rising star, someone to watch. When he is handed the scrolls of scripture to read on the sabbath, he has an attentive audience and “they were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth”. This from the little snotty-nosed kid who grew up the son of a carpenter in their town… he had come a long way.
They would have been impressed in his knowledge of Hebrew to be able to read from the scriptures (most would not be able to read at all), translate it into the Aramaic the language of his people and then interpret and teach…
But were they also a sceptical audience who really questioned whether he was the real deal? Because, as the story continues, things go a bit downhill from that point on – but that is a story for another day.
Today we want to look at this message about the good news to the poor.
The book of Isaiah is one of the great biblical texts and rich in poetry and prophecy. It is assembled out of writings and teachings over several centuries. Scholars point to there being several distinct phases of the writing and writers.
The Isaiah text that Jesus quotes comes from what scholars call the Third Isaiah, this part of the book was mostly likely written in the period after the Jewish people returned to Judea in 539 BCE after the exile in Babylon ended when the Persians conquered Babylon.
The return was a difficult time for the Jewish nation – they had steadfastly maintained their faith and traditions in the 70 years of exile in Babylon but their return found them back in their own land but still they were not free from foreign domination, their land and economy was in ruins and their hopes of the full restoration of their kingdom disappointed.
Isaiah directly addresses their distress with a promise of hope, the assurance that all will be made good. Speaking as the voice of a prophet anointed by God – the Hebrew word for ‘anointed’ is the basis for the term Messiah – ‘anointed one’ – he has come to proclaim the ‘year of the Lord’s favour’. This is almost certainly a direct allusion to the joy of the year of Jubilee in chapter 25 of the book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible.
The Jubilee concept is a deeply influential strand of the Hebrew Bible and a core part of the vision of liberation theology. Every 50 years – the year after seven times seven years is the time of Jubilee. Seven is one of the very special numbers in the ancient world representing the seven days of creation, the seven days of the week, a sense of completion, wholeness and harmony.
The Jubilee envisages slaves being set free, debts forgiven and land that has been purchased being returned to its original owners. It is a vision of a different kind of social and economic relationship that seeks to ensure no-one accumulates too much wealth and that people are never permanently alienated from their land and heritage.
It is not clear whether this vision was ever fully realised during the centuries of Jewish history especially as they struggled under domination and rule first by the Persians, then the Greeks and finally in Jesus’ time the Romans. But it is a wonderful example of the importance of imagining a different, fairer world – that is the essential first step towards remaking the world to make that vision real. Imagine how different our economic system would work if you can only buy the right to use land for up to 50 years before you have to return it. Think about what the means in the context of our Te Tiriti relationship here in Aotearoa, for example.
I also recently listened to two visiting ministers from Palestine talking about the struggle for Palestinian Christian communities in the West Bank to continue to exist. They have been there since the time of Jesus – they represent a direct link in faith, culture and place to Jesus and his earliest followers. But as we hear in the news today, they are under constant attack from settlers, a discordant echo of the struggle for nationhood in biblical times, as the displaced become the displacers…. The quiet and dignified determination to stay from the Palestine Christians humbles me – we have survived the Romans, the Turks, and the British – we will survive this. It is our land, they say, as they seek to tend and harvest the olive trees that have stood there for centuries. We need to ask our politicians to do more to support people suffering in Palestine, to speak and act boldly for peace and dignity for all.
We are two weeks away from the 7th November general election, a moment where every person in this country is called upon to take their political responsibility seriously and join in voting for our new Parliament and government. It is the moment when we get to ask how we can use our vote to help build our nation in the spirit of the ‘year of God’s favour’, the Jubilee vision.
Our context is two thousand years distanced from the times that Jesus’ synagogue sermon spoke into and some 2500 years distanced from the Isaiah text. Yet those themes of disappointed hopes, alienation from tribal land, and social and economic inequality and injustice are very much present in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2026.
The pervading sense of dissatisfaction and disappointment with our political leaders dominates the narrative. Those leaders appear not even to be trying to get beyond saying how bad the others are – the absence of vision especially from the two largest parties is driving people to look for alternatives, dare I say it, other Opportunities….
Whatever happens on 7th November we are almost certain to have a different government to the current one – and the current three-party coalition is in itself new in so far as the largest National Party has had two coalition partners with significant number of MPs and more influence in Cabinet decision-making, changing the role of Prime Minister and Cabinet. It is quite likely any new government could involve four parties with a new party holding the balance of power – the Opportunity Party.
The race is too close to call which in turn means every single vote counts. A decision not to enrol, not to vote amounts to a surrender of the chance to change the government, the chance to participate in the shaping the way our land is ruled.
Today is the last day to register to vote – there are still hundreds of thousands who could vote who are not registered, especially among younger people. Make it your task today to contact as many people as you can to ask them if they are enrolled and remind them today is the last day to do it.
Today after church we are completing the three-part election series Thriving in This Land, and I invite you to continue to participate in thinking about what economic and social justice looks like today in our land.
We need to address the despair of our younger people one in four of whom report high levels of mental distress as they face record high youth unemployment rates, less access to training and education opportunities and inadequate welfare support. No wonder they disengage from the political process when the system seems not to care about them.
Homelessness is rising in our country even as we continue to build lots of houses. On Monday night I joined with about a hundred others in Strathmore to protest the rushed sale of Kainga Ora land into the private market just before the election. Plans for new social housing there have been cancelled and now the land is being sold off to private developers who will be looking forward to building millionaire pads up there with a nice view of the city. There was no community consultation and no opportunity to suggest other alternatives for using the land. I heard the stories from people whose children had grown up in those homes, who said that while they were not the flashest of places, those social houses gave a solid base for schooling, building community and a future.
As the Hebrew prophets well knew thousands of years ago, the wealthy build their houses to suit themselves and walls to keep the poor out. Unless we make a deliberate decision as a nation to build more social housing, ensure that rents are affordable for those on lower incomes, and assist people into home ownership, we will continue to inflict profound instability into peoples’ lives and drive people onto the streets, into their cars and into despair.
It is our duty as followers of the Jesus Way to be bringers of hope – that is Jesus’ message that Luke brings us today. I mentioned earlier that Jesus stops his reading from Isaiah after the words ‘the year of the Lord’s favour,’ and he omits the next words proclaiming the ‘day of vengeance of our God’. Jesus’ deliberate omission of this phrase can be interpreted as a significant reframing of the understanding of the Messiah and Jesus’ understanding of his mission.
In Jesus’ teaching there is no vengeance, no revenge against those who oppress us. Jesus’ message is clear – hope, renewed spirits, healing, restoration of social and economic relationships – that is inaugurating the new Realm of God. The message is clear – this work has already begun today, and we can choose to be part of this millennial project today with every act of kindness, justice and forgiveness, whether it be in our daily lives, our communities as well as the national and international relationships.
Jesus’ vision is that all should be remade into the just and fair realm of God’s love and the task starts now. As Clinton Lee Scott puts it in the contemporary reading, let us be the “messenger of the morning – harbinger of a new day”.
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” – let us join in this glorious task of shaping this new realm of God’s love with all our hearts, and minds, and souls – and with our votes!
Audio of selected readings and reflections
Audio of the complete service
THANK YOU