At the end of Jesus’ three years of public ministry, the outcome might have seemed like a real letdown to human eyes. He had only 120 or so followers, and determined hostility from the religious leaders of his nation. Yet from our vantage point, we can see that those three years of ministry changed the world forever. And a key to Jesus’ ability to do that was his crystal-clear, resolute sense of what his mission was, what he was here to do.

• Jesus quoted from (and adapted) Isaiah 61:1-3 in the synagogue in Nazareth to define his mission. “To preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” has a nice poetic ring. What can you do each day to live into the meaning of those words in the gritty, unpoetic, day-to-day realities of life?
• Zacchaeus, “a ruler among tax collectors, was rich.” His wealth didn’t come from hard, honest work. Tax collectors paid Rome a secret, fixed amount—everything else they collected was theirs. In other words, they got rich by cheating people. What did it say about Jesus’ mission that he would go out of his way to reach out to an unlovely man like Zacchaeus? How did verse 10 express Jesus’ unshakeable sense of his mission?