The Most Freeing Thing Ever

I see a lot of people in various stages of bondage.  They are bound by substances, choices, other people, jobs, relationships and all manners of external things.  But there is one thing ... one thing that is truly a Messianic promise ... that can help in each of these circumstances and give us freedom wherever we are physically located.  It is the most freeing thing ever!

Jesus continues to speak to us as He reads from Isaiah's scroll from Luke, Chapter 4.  Jesus tells us He has been anointed to "preach Good News to the poor."  Then Jesus says, "He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind."  Sunday we will break this down further, but for the purposes of our blog, let's focus on "recovery of sight to the blind."  This is a loaded statement that deserves a bit of unpacking.  First, let's look at recovery.  You recover something you once had but somehow have lost.  I believe this describes all of God's people who have been made in the image and likeness of God.  We have been given the ability to see and perceive spiritual things ... a sense of the spiritual realm that is real but suppressed by this world in which we live.  We are often told that somehow what we see every day is all that there is but deep down each of us knows and senses something bigger, greater and more real.  St. Augustine called this a God-shaped hole in our heart that can only be filled by God-stuff.  Carolyn Arends, in her song "Reaching" says:

"And later lying in the dark, I felt a stirring in my heart
And though I longed to see what could not be seen
I still believed

I guess, I shouldn't think it odd, Until we see the face of God
The yearning deep within us tells us, There's more to come

So when we taste of the divine, It leaves us hungry every time
For one more taste of what awaits, When Heaven's Gates are reached"

We long for a relationship and connection to God and, in its absence, try to fill that space with the inadequate things of this world.

But we don't just recover something lost ... as we grow spiritually we open our eyes and see what was there when we were blind.  We see colors we never knew existed.  We see beauty that only connection to God can reveal.  And, and here is the most freeing thing ever ... we see ourselves clearly.  All of our warts (and this is painful) and all of our beauty (this is almost too good to be true).  One of my professors rightly talked about this trait of the "likeness of God" as transcendence.  It is the ability to step outside of ourselves and see ourselves and others clearly.  We honestly see our own motives.  We see our situations as they actually are ... not as we would like to imagine them.  We see our children as real people with real issues but also amazing beauty and promise.  We see our lives clearly and become able to tweak, make adjustments and make real change (something impossible in the delusional world of blindness).  And a church full of 1st century Jews are hearing Jesus read this beautiful promise and they have the chance to see themselves clearly as He reads and then teaches.

As I said, we will unpack this further Sunday, but I will leave you with a question.  How did those Jews react?  Did they leave enlightened and seeing, or did they leave blind?  How will you leave Sunday?  Will you learn from the one they called 'Teacher' or will you continue to live in the fog ... never becoming the transcendent creature you were created to be?  Good questions I think!  Pastor Randy