Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“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 brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, June 25, 2023
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: God pushes the limits of everything we know in promising us justice, working across borders, barriers, generations, and—in the person of Jesus—entire realities.
The good news of deliverance that the Prophet Isaiah relays in this passage is incredible in its depth. It describes a liberation with hardly any nuance or discrimination—a liberation that touches the brokenhearted, the oppressed, captives and prisoners, mourners and strangers and, we can assume, anyone who is any combination of those things (or any combination of things remotely like them). So, what we’re hearing today is that God’s justice is for everybody.
This good news is also incredible in its breadth. Much as it heals the traumas unfolding in the present, this deliverance—this liberation—reaches back in time, healing the brokenness of the past. We are told that it looks forward, as well, and that God’s promise of righteousness is intended for generations to come. So, what we’re hearing today is that God’s love for justice was, and is, and is to be.
What could limit this powerful of a love? What could compromise this promise, or act as a barrier to it? The short answer: nothing. God is promising us today that God’s justice can’t be thwarted.
In reflecting on our message today, it could be helpful to focus on Jesus’s words in our secondary text from the Gospel according to Luke. He talks about fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures—in fewer words, he essentially tells them that he is, in his very person, the completion of a long-awaited cosmic plan.
God loves justice so much that God will not limit a promise or pursuit of it to one community, one generation or even one plane of existence. God is so ferocious about bringing justice into the world that God put justice into a body that we could know. That we could experience. That we could understand. God dwelled among us for the sake of bringing justice to God’s creation, and God and promises to dwell among us again for the same exact reason.
Where might we look to see the limitless justice of God today?
