Emphasis Preaching Journal

Here we have the heart of Jesus' message. Walter Russell Bowie called this gospel, "the compassionate Christ." The heart of that compassion began when Jesus stood up in his hometown and unrolled the Isaiah scroll. He told people he had known all his life what he had come to do: "Bring good news to the poor ... proclaim release to the captives ... recover sight to the blind ... let the oppressed go free and proclaim that moment was the year of the Lord's favor." One translation adds: "to heal the brokenhearted." And so the whole gospel was really an unfolding of what he said he had come to do. He left us a standard by which we judge the work of the church: our response to human need.

It is said that Billy Sunday, famous Evangelist from another era, always opened his Bible to Isaiah 61 from which Jesus read. He placed his notes carefully on that passage as he began to preach. Perhaps every preacher would do well to place his or her notes on this great scripture. Perhaps our sermons might take a different turn if we took seriously these words that Jesus read at the beginning of his ministry.

If the season of Epiphany is the season of light and revelation then perhaps today's scripture illuminates the church's mandate for our time. When did we see him hungry, naked, thirsty, or in prison?