Written by Jonathan Melton
Luke 4:18-19 (NRSV) [Jesus said,]“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…the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus takes a passage from Isaiah as the text for his first public sermon. The hook, like all good hooks, comes at the end, when he adds, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
“The year of the Lord’s favor” is more than a beautiful rhetorical phrase; it is a technical term referring to the year of Jubilee. The Jubilee was the year in Hebrew scripture, after seven sets of seven years, in which debts were forgiven, slaves returned, and property rights reset. Permeable property rights! This was a radical idea, and one that scholars aren’t sure Israel practiced in any regularized way. Jesus self-identifies with this unusual celebration, reminding us that he is the perpetual, embodied Jubilee.
For Jesus, cancelling debt (forgiveness) is physical, material, and generous. When has extending or receiving the forgiveness of Jesus left you different than you otherwise would have been?
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