When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, [Jesus] went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,

    and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” (Luke 4:16-21)

This is Jesus’ revolutionary agenda. What a moment this must have been! He was on earth to fulfill this agenda both in physical, real terms (the poor, the blind, the oppressed), and in spiritual terms (the poor in spirit, the spiritually blind, and the spiritually oppressed). 

Who else came for these people? What great leader was sent to the poor, the blind and the oppressed? For that matter, what popular figure ever went after this crowd? What leading personality, with the exception of maybe Johnny Cash, has cared about the prisoners serving time? These are the focus of Christ’s physical ministry. If you’re a free, relatively healthy individual with a job, a home and a future, and you got Jesus, consider yourself fortunate indeed. You were definitely on God’s mind, but you were not on the primary invitation list.

Or perhaps you are poor in spirit, blind to God’s will, captive to sin, and/or oppressed by the enemy … in which case, you’re fortunate. Welcome to the club. Jesus is for you. Jesus is for the last, the lowest, the weakest, the poorest, the least desirable. If you are none of these, don’t bother; Jesus will not make sense.