NRSLuke 4
21Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" 23He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'" 24And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. 25But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 2727There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Son our Lord Jesus the Messiah. Amen.
This week’s gospel is a continuation of the reading from Luke 4 that we heard last Sunday. Having been tested by the devil, Jesus returned to Galilee, and “filled with the power of the Spirit,” he began preaching in their synagogues. Things went well for him and soon people were praising him for his mighty words and deeds. Eventually, Jesus came to his own hometown of Nazareth where he went to the synagogue for Sabbath prayer, “as was his custom.” He stood up and was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled it until he came to the passage we know as Isaiah 61 where he read: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
This was no mean feat. Reading from a scroll is not the same as opening up one of our Bibles to find a verse. For one thing, scrolls don’t have page numbers, and neither would the text have been divided into chapters and verses. These things were only added to the Bible much, much later. Second, there would have been no spaces between the words. The text was written on sheepskin parchment that was very expensive, and to make it go farther, all the words were run together without spacing. You just had to know where one word stopped and another began. Third, the text would have been unpointed. The Hebrew alphabet is all consonants, no vowels. In modern Hebrew texts, little points are written in below the letters of a word to clue you in on what vowel sounds go in between the consonants. Jesus would have needed to know the text well enough to fill in the vowels without the pointing. Like I said, no mean feat, especially for a carpenter’s son from a little, out of the way place like Nazareth!
But Jesus is not quite finished. After his reading, he rolled the scroll back up, handed it to the attendant (the acolyte!), and then, according to Luke, he sat down. Now we might think that he went back to his seat in the synagogue, but in the ancient synagogue, as in the early church, there were no seats, no pews. The people stood while the preacher sat to interpret the text. It made it a lot harder for you to fall asleep during the sermon, while the preacher could comfortably go on for who knows how long. (Hmmm……!) So when Luke tells us that Jesus sat down, he’s telling us that Jesus assumed the seat of the teacher or rabbi. But then, instead of launching into a long and complicated sermon, Jesus simply said: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Maybe he added some to those words, but the short and sweet version is simply, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus is saying that he is the anointed one. He’s the one God has chosen to bring the rule of God to earth in the form of good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight restored to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor. Some scholars hear that last phrase, “the year of the Lord’s favor,” as Jesus announcing what Leviticus 25 calls the year of jubilee, when debts were cancelled and people’s property was returned to them and everybody got a fresh start. Wow! I could go for that, and apparently the folks in Nazareth felt the same.
The reaction to Jesus’ reading and response was instant and enthusiastic. Immediately people began talking among themselves, acclaiming Jesus and his bold proclamation. Luke tells us that, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Some people were clearly nonplussed that a home boy like Jesus could read so well and speak so eloquently, asking, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” In all likelihood these comments weren’t quiet asides mumbled among the faithful, but more like public exclamations. Again, in the ancient synagogue, as in the early church, sermons were public discourse in which people openly responded to the teacher, asking questions, arguing, cheering or booing. They didn’t wait until they got to the parking lot! So Jesus knew right away that he’d hit one out of the park. He had them in the palm of his hand.
Now this is something every preacher lives for. It’s not often a speaker can catch the attention of a whole congregation, but when it happens, you want to hang on to the moment, live in that moment, and milk it for all it’s worth. You want those people wanting to come back next week for more. If I’d been Jesus, I’d have stopped right there and headed for the back of the church to get my hand shook, back patted, and my ego massaged. But not Jesus.
He’s riding a huge wave. People are impressed. They’re oohing and ahhing all over him, but over what? They’re certainly impressed with his reading skills, but do they realize that he means them when he proclaims good news to the poor, sight to the blind, release for the captive and freedom for the oppressed? No. They don’t see themselves that way. We don’t see ourselves that way. We see ourselves as bringing good news, sight, release, and freedom to others, but do we see ourselves and poor, broken, and bound? Not typically.
So what’s an honest to God teacher of the Word to do? Does the genuine rabbi back off, take the kudos and collect the offering, or does the true prophet take out the big guns? Take a look at what Jesus does. He gets out a pretty sharp stick and he starts poking. He takes on an almost insulting tone. He starts putting words in their mouths, saying: “"Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'" Nobody’s said that; on the contrary, Nazareth has been very complimentary, but Jesus tells them, “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” Jesus then brings up a couple of touchy stories from the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, both of which highlight Israel’s unworthiness. That’s sort of like going to the American Legion or the VFW and you start tearing down America’s armed forces. That’s not going to go over well. By the time Jesus is through, the crowd, that just moments earlier he had in the palm of his hand, are running him out of the synagogue and ready to throw him off the edge of a cliff.
I’ve often wondered, “Why did Jesus do this? Why did he rile those people up and provoke them to the point of violence?” Again, I go back to thinking that when Jesus said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” they didn’t any more understand what he was saying than the man in the moon. Jesus was announcing the coming of the Kingdom of God to them, the advent of God’s new creation for them, the beginning of the end of this world’s regime of death, despair, and degradation among them, but so caught up are they in their own delusions of self-satisfaction that all they could do was congratulate themselves on what a fine boy they had there. I can almost see them with their chests all puffed out, saying things like, “What a fine young man! We must be doing something right! His momma and daddy must be so proud.” Meanwhile, the message of the Kingdom goes right over their heads, around their hearts, and into the trash.
But Jesus can’t be satisfied with just the ooh’s and ahh’s of the hometown folks. If he can’t get into their hearts or their heads, then he’ll get under their skin. He will make them take him seriously, even if it kills him.
I was once asked by a young person, “How can one person (Jesus) be so nice to everybody?” Well, as today’s gospel makes abundantly clear, he wasn’t always so nice to everybody and he isn’t today. Sometimes the gloves come off. Sometimes when we want to deflect his Word, he takes out a hammer. Sometimes when we want to think that he’s talking to everybody in the world but me, he kind of gets up in your face. Thank God.
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
