The Agenda

"The Agenda"--June 12, 2017

"When [Jesus] 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, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll  and found the place where it was written:

'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,

     to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'

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. Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing'." [Luke 4:16-21]

Everybody's got an agenda in life.  Everybody.  Jesus, too.

Everybody's got a list, whether spoken or unspoken, written or unwritten, conscious or subconscious, of things they are pursuing in life, things that matter in life, things that are worth working toward.  Your agenda is not only your list of goals, but also your perspective--it is just as much the lens through which you see the whole world as much as it is your set of things you want to do in the world.  And, as I say, whether we know it or not, we've all got one.

This is Jesus' agenda.

I mean that very seriously.  We religious folks are great at projecting our pet passions, persuasions, and politics onto Jesus.  We imagine that Jesus wants our local baseball team to win (and we forget that the folks rooting for the other team are praying to Jesus for help, too), that Jesus has strong feelings about lowering the capital gains tax (newsflash: he doesn't), or that Jesus wants my political party to win more elections (this is just the same as the baseball heresy, but with suits and ties and yard signs instead of big foam fingers).  The truth is, those are our agendas, not Jesus'.  And before we go baptizing our own particular list of personal pet peeves and ascribing them to the Messiah of God, we should probably just be honest and recognize what we are doing: trying to pass off our own agendas as Jesus'.

But to be clear, Jesus brings his own.  And he is entirely forthright and up front about it. On the day Luke talks about here, when Jesus went to his hometown, to his childhood synagogue, he came with his agenda spelled out and ready.  (This is important to note, because sometimes we make a parallel mistake along with confusing our agendas with Jesus' agenda, namely, we incorrectly believe that Jesus had no agendas at all, no particular "take" on things, and no particular angle or perspective out of which he spoke, acted, and loved people.  The danger there with that mistake, of course, is that if we wrongly conclude that Jesus had no agenda, we are back at square one baptizing our own personal agendas rather than holding them against Jesus' to see how they compare.)

There in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and essentially claims the passage he reads as his own mission-statement.  These are the first public words of Jesus in Luke's gospel, and they come right after his baptism and wilderness season, on the day he says these words from what we call the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah have been fulfilled as Jesus spoke them that day.  

That is to say, Jesus doesn't just invent his own agenda out of whole cloth. He doesn't come up with his own "neat idea" and say, "Wouldn't it be nice to work for these kinds of things?"  And he most certainly does not built a platform for his Kingdom movement based on putting himself first, or his nation or ethnic group or culture first.  Instead--as you can see for yourself--the agenda Jesus claims is from the words of the prophet, inspired by God centuries before him, and they are words of compassion, of restoration, of liberation, and of gracious care--for all.  This is the radical thing about Jesus: he has an agenda (and is quite open about it, as a matter of fact), but it is an agenda that's not all about himself!  It's not about getting what is good only for him.  It's not about how to keep himself, or his community of followers, safe and secure.  It's not about getting themselves jobs or wealth, and it's not about puffing himself up, either, to make himself look "great" or "important" or "successful" or like a "winner."

If anything, you could say that Jesus' chosen agenda is all about the people who have been labeled "losers" in life.  Jesus' agenda is about good news for the poor, release to those who are imprisoned, healing for those who are diseased, an end to oppression, and the announcement of God's "jubilee"/"the year of the Lord's favor" (the ancient practice prescribed in the Torah of taking every fiftieth year for a social re-boot in which debts were cancelled, land went back to its ancestral family owners, slaves were set free, and the land was to rest as well).  Jesus reads these words, and then claims that they find their fulfillment in him--right then and there!  And what's more, because this is Jesus, none other than the full divine presence in a human life, Jesus is also claiming that these words from Isaiah 61 are God's agenda in the world, too.

Think about that for a second, and there is remarkable clarity to be found.  If you want to know what things Jesus thinks are worth doing, look here.  If you want to get a foothold into thinking like Jesus, and also acting and speaking like Jesus, here are the crib notes.  If you want to know what things matter to God, and what are the essential planks of the platform for the Reign of God, here you go.  This is the angle from which Jesus operates--this is the perspective through which Jesus sees the world.  Sometimes we (wrongly) imagine, because we picture God being "up above" somewhere very high in the sky, that God doesn't have a vantage point or a particular perspective, but only sees everything with the distance of the 50,000 foot view (a la Bette Midler's song that suggests, "God is watching us...from a distance).  But Jesus here shows us--God does have a perspective, an angle, and agenda.  God is about the work of bringing good news to uplift the people on the bottom, to release those who are imprisoned to heal those who are bound by their ailments, and to announce jubilee freedom.  Jesus says that this is what the Spirit of the Lord has anointed (the same word we get "messiah" or "Christ" from) him to be about.

Don't miss the underlying point: this is what the Spirit of God does in the world. This is the kind of stuff the Holy Spirit will do with us, and in us, and through us, as we dare to let the same Spirit direct and propel us in the course of our Monday.  "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," Jesus says, "because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor."  Well, if you and I are followers of this same Jesus... and if you and I are indwelt by the same Spirit, then in a very real sense, Jesus' agenda is to become our agenda, too.

This is what we'll be about in our lives, more and more, as we let the same Spirit make us over into the likeness of Jesus. This is what will matter to us more and more.  This is what we will find ourselves excited about, passionate about, sometimes really angry-and-hopeful-at-the-same-time about, too.  And less and less will we be fussy about the old things we had been keeping on our personal agendas that we used to think were "oh-so-important."  We'll be less concerned about making ourselves look like "winners" and looking tough. We'll be less concerned about protecting our pride and our reputations.  We'll be less worried about ourselves, all around, actually, and more interested in practicing compassion.  And we will find ourselves reading these same words of Jesus' again and praying, "Lord, let this scripture be fulfilled today in my living them, too!"

You know the old saying: "Opinions are like belly buttons--everybody's got one."  Today, what if we owned and took a closer look at our sets of opinions, our way of life in the world, our agendas, and held them up to Jesus' to let him realign ours with his?  What if we dared to let these ancient words from Isaiah, echoed by Jesus, become our agenda, for this day, and for the next day, and for the third day, too?

Lord God, realign our hearts, our wants, and our lives with yours.