Mission Statements

In 1974, author and business Peter Drucker introduced the practice of advising corporate executives “to define the purpose and mission of their businesses as a kind of strategic imperative.” While “mission statements” surely existed before this, Drucker’s work ushered in a whole new era of individuals and companies drafting mission statements which tried to give voice to a company’s reason for being or what we think is ours to do.

In today’s gospel, Jesus is offering us his own “mission statement.”

We hear from Luke 4 today where Jesus appears in his hometown synagogue and opens up the scroll (reading from Isaiah 61) and says, “The Spirit of the God is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

This was really his first public address in his hometown (in Luke’s gospel) and Jesus defines himself as being in the tradition and mission of Isaiah the prophet.

Do you have a mission statement that you have articulated for yourself? To what degree might it overlap with what Jesus mentions?

We’re told that two things happen after this. He closes with, “This passage is fulfilled in your hearing…” which I will come back to in a minute. And we’re told that he preaches in such a compelling way that the crowds marvel and start asking, “Is this the Jesus we know from Nazareth? Where did he get all this???”

Jesus then goes on to infuriate the crowd by telling them stories from their own tradition where prophets have been rejected and outsiders were chosen by God because the people were too stubborn or hard-hearted to welcome a truth that did not fit with their perspective. And they try to throw him off of a cliff! Clearly they got the message!

What do you think Jesus would be preaching about these days that might get people feeling so mad or defensive? 

What truths might be hard for a place like Rochester (or wherever you may live – collectively speaking) to accept or take in?

Part of today’s gospel reflects ourselves back to us. It holds up Jesus’ mission statement and begs the question about how closely we might have patterned our lives according to that same mission.

What does his mission mean to us in our lives?

What does the work of bringing “glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed and economic reparation” look like in today’s world?

He concludes his reading by saying, “This passage is fulfilled in your hearing…” Clearly this has a double meaning. It can mean that as we’re hearing it, he is fulfilling it. But it can also mean that if we truly HEAR it (and thus act on it), this is how the passage actually gets fulfilled. I suspect that both are meant to be the message for us.

Jesus embodied those words and now asks us to do the same.

I think often of the prayer written by Theresa of Avila, the Spanish mystic, writer and social reformer. Her famous poem “Christ Has No Body” has inspired many in its simplicity and profundity. In it she says, “Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks Compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world…Christ has no body now but yours.”

For today, may we take in the mission statement of Jesus and learn from the gospels how he applied it. And then may we go and do likewise as we become his hands and feet in this world.

Note: Today is also our cultural celebration of Labor Day. We honor and uplift the dignity of work – especially for those who do work that is often underpaid, undrerecognized and under appreciated (like all those ‘essential workers’ we became aware of during COVID). May we continue to uphold worker rights, pay living wages and work towards a world where everyone’s contributions are valued and compensated justly.