Because

 This week's verses are Luke 4:16-21:

And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to Him. And He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

And He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all the people in the synagogue were intently directed at Him. Now He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

 In these verses, Jesus has the five minute teaching in church, and reads from Isaiah 61. It's perfect timing, because he shares the verses that pertain to what he is doing on earth. People don't get the reference at the time, but they applaud anyway.

When he speaks, does it make us ask ourselves questions? Questions like:

• Is the Spirit of the Lord on me?
• Do I bring Good News to the poor?
• Am I maintaining captivity, or releasing people from it?
• Am I helping people to see the truth or am I helping to hide it?
• Do I defend the oppressed or help keep them down?
• Do we acknowledge before others that we are living in the Christian Age of humanity?
• Am I a part of God's plan to do any of these things?
  

Jesus is telling us where he is going, and we have to ask ourselves if we're on the same path. We go as far as the doors of the church, but do we acknowledge God's call on our lives to go further? God has given us the Holy Spirit, but I don't know if we always acknowledge that fact, or the fact that the Holy Spirit is there for a reason. We miss the "because" in these verses.

We weren't saved from Hell just to provide a reliable source of tithe income. We're not here to just consume Christian music and read the occasional Christian book. If we stop there, we fall into the primal sin of Cain. We make limp vegan sacrifices. Sin crouches at our door, and we exempt ourselves from the responsibility of facing it by deciding that we're not our brother's keeper. "You do you, because I'm loving me."

We decide to just let everyone else do what they think is best, let them live with the consequences of their bad decisions, suffer with the cards they were dealt at birth, and then once a week we celebrate that we ourselves have been set free from that sort of thing.

And that's a bit how the people in the synagogue missed the point. "Oh those are some lovely words. I'm so glad you read them. Can you read us some more nice words, and maybe sing a catchy song, quickly, before I have to take off to go watch football? Let's give a clap offering for Jesus!"

But if we're going to call ourselves by Christ's name, and acknowledge his call to us to follow him, to take care of his sheep, to share his kingdom with the world now and through time, wouldn't it make sense for us to pay attention to what he says and ask what that might mean for us? To look at the map he lays out for us and see if we're on the right track?

So, here, when Jesus is saying what he's there for, we have to listen and respond. Are we there for those things too? Do our lifestyle choices look like the person he is describing? Does anything he say resonate with us? They're pretty words, but God's word should not be void. It should produce like action. Is there action?

When Jesus is talking, he's talking about salvation. When he found us we were poor, spiritually. We were captive to bad decisions, and their consequences. We were unable to see the big picture, the eternal perspective, or even our true selves. We were oppressed by dark forces, and we didn't even know what world we were really living in. And many of us have found that he's taken care of our material needs, and gotten us out of flesh and blood situations too.

So, if we acknowledge any of that, which is often one of the first steps of becoming a Christian, but then we let others exist in that world of confusion, pain and lack, are we really any different than Cain? "Yeah, I don't know if slaves made my clothes, or if my neighbor is going to hell, or if I'm ignoring someone who needs my help so I can put away more money, or anything like that, but whatever. I'm here in church, right?"

Meanwhile, while we sit, Jesus reads the verses from Isaiah and can confidently say that he is fulfilling those verses even as he speaks them. That should be our example. He knows his purpose, the big "because," and he's living it. What would it take for us to get there?