A close friend of mine likes to say that there are two different kinds of people, those who set the trends, and those that follow them, and in this case it is clear that Luke, and Jesus before him, were the trendsetters. Because right here, right at the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus delivers his mission statement. He announces who he is, of what his ministry consists, and what his church will be and do. He publicly announces what his agenda is – he just puts it right out there. He wants there to be no misunderstandings when it comes time for people to decide whether they want to be his disciples, he wants no one to say that there was not full disclosure of what they were signing on for, he is not going to sugar-coat anything in the hope of building a mass following.

Quoting the prophet Isaiah, Jesus says that his mission is to bring good news to the poor. To bring good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the political prisoners, and the inauguration of the year of the Lord’s favor, the Jubilee.

A quick pause here to talk about the year of Jubilee. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the year of Jubilee was supposed to take place every fifty years, and in that year all the slaves were to be set free, and all the land that was originally shared in common but which had aggregated in the hands of the wealthy would be redistributed to all. While the scholars doubt that Israel every actually implemented the Jubilee, the hope of such a radical redistribution of economic blessings remained alive among the vast majority of society who were not of the social and political elites.

Getting back to Jesus’ mission statement: The gospel, Jesus is saying, is for the poor, for the oppressed, for those on the margins of society. He has come to free from the oppressive structures of society those on the edges – the impoverished, the crippled, the political prisoners, all who are held down by the economic structures of the day, structures which were kept in place to benefit the foreign occupier, Rome, and then the political, economic and religious elites in Jerusalem. He has come to turn the world upside down.

Jesus was as good as his word, remaining true to that mission statement throughout his ministry. His primary ministry was to the poor, to the peasants, to the rural peasantry subjected to exploitation by those in power in Jerusalem. Healing was at the heart of his ministry, not just curing those with disabilities and disease, but restoring them to the communities from which their illness had exiled them.

And where the world taught that the kingdoms of this world are eternal and to be obeyed,

he preached the kingdom of God, a realm where the power of Herod is dwarfed by the power of the babe in the manger;

he preached the kingdom of God where treasures surpass the earthly treasure which is consumed by moth and rust;

he preached the kingdom of God where the power of state execution pales in comparison to the compassionate power of the Redeemer of the world.

Jesus was as good as his word throughout his ministry, remaining true to that mission, and so was his church. When Paul and Silas preached in Thessalonica, residents of the city complained to the authorities: “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also.” (Acts 17:6)

Friends, I don’t know about you, but I find all this talk of turning the world upside down if not threatening, then at least challenging. Perhaps you might as well, since most of us are not among the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed or the imprisoned. We can find it difficult to contemplate the overturning of the social and economic structures from which we benefit. But perhaps we might take some comfort from trying to see how this might be perceived as good news by people in those very situations.

I imagine, for instance, many of the suffering people of Haiti. I heard a news report this past week from a hospital where the doctors are telling a distraught 12 year-old girl that her foot must be amputated, her mother screaming in protest but knowing that it must be done to save her loved ones life. And yet there being no hope for prosthesis, as there would be in this country, because of the poverty there. A sad story, to be sure – but also one that is repeated seventy times each day in that one hospital.

Or think for a moment of the plight of those in this country who have no health care insurance, who do not have access to government-subsidized Medicare or Veterans Administration treatment, who cannot get coverage because of a pre-existing condition, who lost coverage after they were laid off and COBRA expired, who cannot afford the coverage and so clog our ERs each and every day.

Or think of some of the millions of folk who have lost their jobs in the past couple of years due to the collapse of our economic system due in large part to the recklessness of investment banks and insurance companies deemed “too big to fail”, corporations who were bailed out of their losses and propped up by our tax dollars, and yet who continue to this day to pay outlandish bonuses to the very people who ruined our economy in the first place.

How many of these folk, folk in Haiti and in this country and even in the pews with us here today, would give almost anything for the world to be turned upside down?

Well, Jesus had his mission statement, but what about us? There are tons of best-selling books out there on helping you figure out the purpose for your life, but for me it seems axiomatic that a Christian’s understanding of his or her purpose, and the church’s understanding of its purpose, must be informed by Jesus’ understanding of his purpose and mission. And while the modern tendency is to believe that it is “all about me”, for Jesus – and for his church, and for his followers, for us – it’s not about me at all. Jesus, the one who elsewhere in the gospel tells us that those who lose their life for the sake of the gospel gain it, says that his purpose is the welfare of others, and specifically, the spiritual, emotional, and physical welfare of those who for whatever reason have been shut out of their share of the blessings of this life.

So the sidelines of life are no place for the Christian, for the follower of the one whose self-proclaimed mission was to turn the world upside down in favor of the last and the least. We are, to quote a popular sports mantra, to get in the game. And in that game, charity – while necessary, and important, and indeed a good thing – is not enough. Charity helps treat the injury – justice prevents further harm. As Riverside Church’s late preacher, the Rev. William Sloan Coffin, once said, “Is charity ever a substitute for justice?.... In times of oppression, if you don’t translate choices of faith into political choices, you run the risk of washing your hands, like Pilate, and thereby, like Pilate, plaiting anew Christ’s crown of thorns for ‘inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.’” (Credo, William Sloan Coffin, p.66) So as Christians, we get into the game.

When a natural disaster strikes our neighbors next door or across the seas, we shoulder the responsibility to be bearers of emergency aid and to help with the rebuilding.

When a nation’s medical system becomes so outdated and inefficient and unfair to the poorest segment of society, when its costs and bureaucracies leave almost all of us one illness away from financial ruin, then we are called to the table – Democrat, Republican, Unenrolled -- to work out a new solution.

When our economic system is rigged in favor of the fat cats on Wall Street to the extent that they bear no risk for decisions which put hard-working ordinary men and women out of work and on the street and digging into their own pockets to subsidize huge corporate profits and bonuses, we are called to speak truth to power and work for systemic change.

When government becomes so set in its ways that bloated bureaucracies exist solely to perpetuate themselves, and private wealth is siphoned off not for public good but to line the pockets of the special interests, we need to stand up and say, “Enough.”

When our democratic system has devolved to the point where only the wealthy can hope to successfully run for office, and corporations are allowed to buy the Congress, we need to strive for better ways to finance elections and so help ensure that this Republic is indeed governed by the people, and for the people.

Yes, I know that if we take Jesus’ mission statement as our own, the challenges will be great, the road long, the struggle seemingly unending. And yet, if we do, we will have ringing in our ears those closing words of Jesus, the one whom we follow, the one whom overcame even death on the cross in pursuit of that purpose-driven life: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

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