Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel starts with a dramatic account of the start of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. It is one of my favorite scenes. Luke builds up the dramatic tension as Jesus is handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He reads Isaiah’s well-known prophecy – written some seven hundred year earlier. The synagogue crackles with anticipation as all eyes fix on Jesus. He sits and then informs the congregation that this prophecy is being fulfilled – in Him.
Freeing of Captives
Isaiah’s prophecy speaks of how the return of the Messiah will result in the freeing of captives, granting of sight to the blind, and the end of oppression. In the subsequent verses of Luke that we read in today’s Gospel Jesus gets to action and shows us what the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy looks like.
In Capernaum, Jesus’ first act is an exorcism – the literal freeing of a man captive to the power of Satan. Jesus’ immediate next move is to Simon’s house where He finds Simon’s mother-in-law suffering from a different manifestation of Satan’s power in our world: physical illness. Jesus treats the fever as a personification of Satan’s evil. He rebukes the fever itself. It leaves Simon’s mother-in-law immediately, freeing her from her form of oppression and allowing her to begin serving others. Later that same day Jesus amplifies these initial miracles with more healings and exorcisms. He is showing that the aim of the Kingdom of God is to set not just some of us free but all of us.
God’s Constant and Eternal Love
As always, the Gospel is telling us a story of God’s constant and eternal love. In spite of our living in and collaborating with a fallen world, God has sent the second person of the Holy Trinity on a rescue mission. Jesus came to spring each of us individually from our particular captivity.
God’s invitation to shed our captivity by joining our will to His is always offered. The door is always ready to spring open at our knock. But this world throws up so many obstacles and we create them ourselves. As Paul says to the Corinthians in today’s reading – the Spirit of God is judged as foolishness to this world. Let us pray then for the courage to be judged as fools by the world for our love of God.
