Political parties usually woo the voters at Election time by producing a Manifesto – a document setting out what a Party  promises it will fulfil in office.  On the whole these manifestos are largely unread by the general public, though journalists and other pundits comb them with a fine tooth comb to fire their own questioning of politicians.  There is a danger in these manifestos for the party that is ultimately elected. The watchdogs of our nation – people like Jeremy Paxman – can’t wait for Election promises to bite the dust, as they often do.

For opposition parties this doesn’t matter. As they weren’t elected they can ditch their policy document until it’s time for another election. Nobody cares whether they will fulfil the promises because they aren’t in a position to do anything. Indeed, some of the less electable parties can fill their manifestos with the wildest dreams, safe in the knowledge that they will never have to deliver.

Sometimes, Manifestos are less verbal. This week, in India, Gordon Brown, when he wasn’t jumping on the Big Brother band-wagon, was trailing his political hopes in readiness for taking over from Mr. Blair.  In Today’s Gospel, Jesus was setting out his manifesto – both in words and in his own person.

The context of today’s passage is that it is the start of our Lord’s public ministry. He returned toGalilee after he spent forty days in the Wilderness facing temptations by the devil. This was his spiritual retreat through which he was prepared for his ministry and mission.  The Manifesto for this is both the Gospel we have in words and the Gospel who is the person of Jesus Christ In the words of Isaiah Jesus gives us a bite-size resume:  He came to Nazareth, the place of his formation and began his public ministry there in his local Synagogue; He stood up to read.

There is an emphasis in both this passage, and in the Old Testament reading from Nehemiah, on our HEARING the word of God. In both passages the Word is read in the context of Worship. We hear the Word of God together as a Community. Whilst private, personal study of the Bible is an absolute must for every Christian, it is when we hear it together that it forms our community’s growth in faith. Heard within the context of worship we are reminded that the Bible shapes our community prayer.

The emphasis of the Christian message is that it not only shapes our own personal faith – though it surely does that – but that it shapes the Church. God does not call us to a private salvation. There is really no such thing as ‘private’ religion – our faith must always be set in a community context. When we divorce our faith from that of our fellow-Christians it tends to fly of at a tangent.

Illustrated perhaps by the man who knocked at the door of a monastery and told the monk answering his call: “I’ve lost my faith.” 
“Never mind” said the monk, “we still have ours!”

This community aspect is found in the passage which Jesus selected from the prophet Isaiah.  As God’s anointed one he brings Good News to the poor; he proclaims release to the captives; the recovery of sight to the blind; and freedom for the oppressed.  This is not the message of personal salvation but one that is directed to society at large. The Church is here to bring the whole of Society into God’s loving embrace – not just a few individuals.

I think it was the great Archbishop William Temple who once said that the Church is the only group which exists for the benefit of its non-members and what he was reminding us of is that the Church is not an introspective group concerned only for itself but is an outward reaching body which is charged with touching the lives of those outside with the love of God.  Whilst we are here to be fed with Word, Sacrament and that kind of Christian Fellowship which the New Testament calls Koinonia (Holy fellowship in which we are drawn together by the Holy Spirit) – our personal salvation is bound up with the salvation of the world. 

There are churches which behave as if only those inside matter – sitting behind locked doors which only the most persistent can get through. They exist only for themselves and, often, from the lofty height of self-righteousness, sit in judgement on those outside.

A bit like the Church were a man kept hammering on the door for admittance but was refused entry because he was judged to be a great sinner.  One day as he bashed on the door, God came by and asked him what was wrong. “They won’t let me in!” he cried. God shook his head. “I know how you feel. They won’t let me in either.”

One of the glories of the Church of England – and yes, there are plenty of those – is that it exists to serve the Nation in the sense that our ministry is an all-embracing, open-hearted ministry. We have access to parts of society that others cannot reach. We are an open   Church which takes seriously our commission to minister God’s saving love to all.  Our manifesto to do this ministry is found in today’s Gospel for Jesus is not only laying down the credentials for his own ministry but also for the subsequent ministry of the Church.

The Christian body will be recognizable by the way it treats others and at the very beginning of his ministry Jesus lays down the authentic way we can realise this.

• Good News to the poor

• Release to the captives

• Sight for the blind

• Freedom for the oppressed.

These four things alone have shaped the Church of England’s ministry.  So, for example in the 19th century the Church of England was the slum Church – working in deprived communities – bringing both practical and spiritual help to those who lives in abject poverty.  Today, the inner-city churches of our Diocese, for example, are places where the Church engages with the socially deprived -  but there is a sense in which all of us are called to share in this work. On the whole, Epping is a fairly affluent community but that too brings its own form of poverty – that of the Spirit.  There are many out there who are living impoverished lives because they have no spiritual dimension.  We are to proclaim Good News to those poor too.

The ministry of release for captives has taken the Church of England into Prisons, Refugee Camps, and Mental institutions. This year we shall celebrate the bi-centenary of William Wilberforce’s fight against the slave trade -a glorious chapter in the life of our Church as Christians changed society’s attitude to slavery.  We know, however, that this was only a partial victory.  Only this week the news carried the story of the traffic in child slave labour happening on our own doorstep in London. Throughout the world people are still enslaved and the Church Missionary Society has launched a campaign taking its inspiration today’s Gospel “Setting Captives Free”.

But these is more than one form of captivity and there are many in our society today who are enslaved by drugs, by alcohol, by consumerism, by gambling, by sex, and more subtly by ambition or acquisitiveness.  They too need release

Bringing sight to the blind has taken the Church into a  ministry of care and healing. Our Hospital chaplaincies, our ministry to the physically blind, the whole healing ministry of the Church can all be seen in this context.  But there is more than one kind of blindness. There are the spiritually blind who need help to see a wider vision – and be led to that horizon which is God’s Kingdom. Jesus healed the blind but he also created space for the sinner, the aimless, the ones who had lost all vision that life could be a wonderful experience if it accepted the love of God.  The Church has long accepted its role of spiritual guidance, soul-friendship, nurture, and through its educational work, teaching, Sunday school work, learning programmes, has sought to open eyes to the possibilities that God can bring to lives open to him.

Freedom for the oppressed. A ministry that the Church has undertaken through agencies like Christian Aid , the Children’s Society, the Mothers Union  etc.  In this context you can place the current debate about Fair Trade with its obvious intention of upholding the right of the world’s food growers to be treated fairly and with dignity and honesty.  But there are other forms of oppression – the prejudices that exist in society for those who are racially different, those struggling with issues of human sexuality; the homeless. Then there are those in abusive marital relationships and children & young people whose home-lives are loveless; and those who are bullied at school and in the workplace; old people treated like refuse. Oppression takes many forms.

To all these situations and more Jesus calls us to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour – to say to them that they are loved, accepted, wanted and yes, needed, in God’s Kingdom.  Today’s Gospel does not just set out our Lord’s Manifesto – it sets out ours and as a Church we need to continuously ponder how we can share in the delivery of these Divine promises – for this is not a Manifesto we can discard between elections. This is nothing less than the blueprint for building up God’s Kingdom of Love.  In Jesus Isaiah’s vision was fulfilled but it must go on being fulfilled through us.

Daniel Berrigan, a radical American Jesuit Priest wrote a poem, The Face of Christ, in which he saw Christ mirrored in the face of man – and especially in the broken, the despised and those without hope.  At the end of the poem he warned against those who judged and condemned those who needed God’s love and salvation. 

The Christian God reproves
Faithless ranting minds,
Crushing like upper and lower stones
All life between.

Whereas Jesus sought them out:
Christ, fowler of street and hedgerow
Of cripples and the distempered old
-eyes blind as wood-knots,
tongues tight as immigrants –
takes in His Gospel net
all the hue and cry of existence.

Heaven of such imperfection,
Wary, ravaged, wild?

Yes, compel them in. 

Who knows, if we succeed through our witness to God’s love in bringing others into the Fellowship of the Kingdom – we might just slip in with them too!