4th Sunday after Epiphany

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30 

Luke 4:21-30

²¹ Then [Jesus] began to say to [all in the synagogue in Nazareth,] “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” ²² All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” ²³ He 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.’ ” ²⁴ And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵ But 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, ²⁶ yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. ²⁷ There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” ²⁸ When 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. ³⁰ But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

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First Impressions, Part II

Grace to you, beloved of God, and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

“He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘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 set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor … Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”(Luke 4:17-19, 21b); NRSVue).”

Oh my Lord, isn’t he the son of Mary and Joseph, the carpenter? Beautiful reading, so eloquent, so profound! The Spirit of the Lord is surely upon him. And see, he is declaring us recipients of God’s favor, the good news of restoration and freedom. God has blessed us! Better days will come for us! 

The last sentences you heard are not in the text. They are the fruits of my wonderings about what Jesus’ amazed fellow villagers could have been saying among themselves at the synagogue after feeling so graced by such merciful words. Couldn’t Jesus have taken the compliments and just enjoyed a good time with his hometown folks for a bit? C’mon!

Sure, the son of Joseph could have done it and benefited from it. The carpenter-to-be could have made good connections and secured some clientele or partnerships.  The Son of God, however, had other plans and powers way beyond making perfect 90-degree angles using two planks of wood. 

Luke does not tell us why Jesus chooses to give his next-door neighbor a glimpse of his divine mission. Maybe he overheard something. People tended to get loud and agitated in synagogues depending on the issue. Or, it could just be that the Son of the Living God was a true prophet and got a whiff of what was about to come next in their minds. Either way, Luke wants us to know that Jesus knew what was in the heart of his fellow Nazarenes. “Doubtless, you will say, Doctor, cure yourself!”

This was a common expression in patronage relationships of Jesus’ time. It was used to argue that one must not act on behalf of others without benefiting their own. So Jesus anticipates that they heard what he has done in other places before arriving in Nazareth, specifically in Capernaum, and will demand him to bless them based on: we raised you, so you belong to us. Praise be to God for you, but you will do for us, period. If you did for them, you are obliged to do to us, period – which is a form of bondage. Somewhat, Jesus anticipates that, and he wants to let them know he knows. 

What he also wants them to know is that despite their first prophetic and awesome first impression of him, they were not ready to take the true nature of his mission to heart. “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

Now comes that part that Jesus anticipated would strike a nerve. Christ is not a trickster nor a deceiver. Perhaps he loves them too much to sugarcoat what it would mean to follow him. He reminded them that in times of profound distress to God’s people, the prophets of Israel were sent to be good news of healing and deliverance from despair to foreigners and outsiders, to those that would not belong (Luke, 4: 25-27; 1 Kings 17:8-24; 2 Kings 5:1-19). Jesus gives them an honest hint of what the fulfillment of the promise of good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed would look like. It included them but also others who they would otherwise exclude. You belong to us, they thought. And Jesus’ response was, actually, no, but you belong to me also. That is what is preposterous to them. The first impression of amazement they got from the son of Joseph gets replaced with a sense of dread and rage once the true nature of the Son of the living God is revealed. Now, Jesus must be killed in a prelude to the cross. 

Nothing of that is new. The love of God, father, creator, protector, and preserver, sometimes can be uncomfortable because God will often send us out of our comfort zones to do stuff we did not want to do (See Jeremiah 1:4-10. I am sure everybody relates. The most loving of parents have done that to us growing up, and we have not reacted to that very well, have we? Yet, beloved of God, that has always been the mission.

The voice of the Lord has also said through Isaiah: 

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my spirit upon him;

he will bring forth justice to the nations

I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;

I have taken you by the hand and kept you;

I have given you as a covenant to the people,

a light to the nations,

to open the eyes that are blind,

to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,

from the prison of those who sit in darkness (Is 42:1, 6–7; NRSVue).

This servant is you, me, the Christ, and every part of his body, from highest to the lowest, is every beloved child created for the glory of God. God has always worked towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is all over scripture. It is the whole point. It is not new. We just have named what God’s hope has always been for us. That is the work God sends us to do.

It takes a lot of love to do this work, though. It is not easy to practice this love that is always patient, kind, never envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, that does not insist on its own way; that is not irritable and vindictive; that does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. The love that bears, believes, hopes, and endures everything (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). It is hard because that is the love of Christ. It takes a lot of effort for humans to practice this love because our Lord has no sin, and we are full of it. It is hard to love those we don’t know. It is hard to love those who do not love us back. It is nearly impossible for us to love those who want to hurt us, so we just walk through them and do not retaliate. We all fall short of his glory. We are all beggars for his mercy. Yet, this is the love of Christ, and without this love, his body cannot be.