Everyone loves listening to a great orator.  Everyone appreciates an orator’s ability to captivate and inspire audiences with powerful and motivational speeches.

Great speeches create a sense of purpose and continuity. Successful orators recognise that great truths can be remembered best by one small quote. Keeping things short and succinct will make one’s words more memorable than a great big rambling speech. Then of course it takes a big personality to put the weight of truth and integrity behind his or her words.

When Jesus is invited to stand up and preach back at his own hometown synagogue he chooses his reading with care. What Jesus chooses to read is to be a statement about his own mission priorities. He chooses to speak of social injustice. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” he reads, “… because he has anointed me to proclaim glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed.” Then Jesus points to himself as the fulfilment of the ancient prophecy before handing back the scroll and sitting down. Jesus has obeyed all the rules of public speaking, he has considered the purpose of his reading, chosen words that will best convey his purpose, and delivered them powerfully and succinctly.

How will Jesus’ listeners respond to his claim? Today’s reading doesn’t give us the listeners’ response so we have time to imagine what our own response would have been. Would we have been inspired and motivated to hear Jesus speak these words? Would we suddenly see the ancient prophecy as just that, an ancient prophecy, or as mission to be fulfilled under Jesus’ exciting new leadership? Can we hear the poetry of these words resonating two thousand years later?