Concrete Holiness

In Luke 4, when Jesus stood up in the Synagogue he could have read from other places in the scroll of Isaiah. He could have read chapter 42:1, “Here is my servant, who I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight, I will put my spirit on him and he will bring forth justice to the nations”. Likewise he could have rolled onto chapter 63:1 and read, “Who is this that comes… with his garment stained crimson ? Who is this so splendidly robed marching in the greatness of his strength ? It is I, speaking in righteousness – mighty to save.”  Both of these readings would have described the identity and the mission of Jesus, yet he chose something different, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me… to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind & to let the oppressed go free…” Why ? Why did Jesus read that passage ?
 
He read it because he knew that fundamentally the story of the Scripture, the grace of the Kingdom of God exists within people.  Ours is an embodied faith, concretely expressed in the lives of you & me. Jesus read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” because it is an anthem of holy action. Embodied faith can only be expressed by people engaged in holy action in particular places.
 
Think about it for a moment. Jesus the God-man, the exquisite & perplexing mystery of the Incarnation. For those of us who follow after him  – he was the enfleshed presence of Almighty God himself - accessible, totally interactive and living among ordinary people. Michael Frost says that this sense of God intimately involved among ‘the stuff of life’ means that we need to recover a sense of ultimate meaning in our own actions. While ideas and theology shape our thinking, we are fundamentally formed & transformed by the places we chose to be in & the things we chose to do while we are there.
 
As disciples we are called to deny ourselves, to empty ourselves & affectively die to ourselves – so that we may come, as Eph 4:13 says, “…to maturity to the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ”. That’s the Incarnate Word active and powerful & living within us.

The journey of discipleship is the self-revelation of God from the depths of our very being.