Luke 4:15-21
Jesus returned to Galilee powerful in the Spirit. News that he was back spread through the countryside. He taught in their meeting places to everyone’s acclaim and pleasure.
He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.”
Well, here we are back in Luke again. Two weeks ago we began Epiphany season with Luke’s story of the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Then last week we briefly visited John’s gospel for the story of the Wedding at Cana. And now we’re back to Luke.
In the part we didn’t read, Luke follows the story of the baptism with a description of Jesus’ time alone in the wilderness – 40 days in which he would be tempted by Satan. Forty days which he spent in prayer and fasting, listening for the voice of the One who had so recently called him “my beloved Son.” Forty day to be strengthened to stand against Satan’s best efforts. And now, he has come down from those hills and back among people.
And he has returned to Nazareth, his boyhood home – the place where “everybody knows his name.” Observant believer that he was, Jesus attended synagogue on the Sabbath. I learned a couple of things in preparing for the message – things that were fairly obvious but that I just never bothered to consider.
First, Nazareth wasn’t just a small town, it was a tiny town, with probably no more than a few hundred people at most. Their synagogue would have been a small building at best, maybe just a room somewhere, or possibly even a designated meeting place outdoors in the village center. So any crowd scenes in this story are not going to be large.
Second, Luke tells us that Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, then followed that with an explanation of what he just read to them. Now, I know I do something similar here every week, but this has always sounded to me like something different. One of the people I studied for this week pointed out that the people of Nazareth would have spoken Aramaic, but the scrolls would have been written in Hebrew and some translation would have been necessary. I knew both of those facts but just never put them together to explain Jesus’ additional teaching.
All right, trivia points over. What did Jesus say here in this brief story and why does it matter so much?
He read the scripture from Isaiah that recounts the age old promise of Jubilee – that time when debts would be forgiven and old wrongs made right – the time when the poor would be lifted up instead of always being pushed to the bottom of the pile. Jubilee was recorded in scripture and it may have been actually observed in the earliest years, but was probably only given lip service down through most of the centuries. It sounds wonderful from the side of the poor, but its message would not have been so well received by those who had benefitted from a forced sale of ancestral lands or who now owned all rights to a captive slave.
In Jesus’ day, just as in any other, the reality was that the rich were in charge of things and the poor were powerless and those in power would make very certain that the poor never had a chance to rise up. Isaiah’s prophecies were lovely words to hear in synagogue but worrisome when people actually started to think they should be put into action – and Jesus clearly was on this latter side.
Jesus’ choice of reading made it clear that the message he was sent to share was not for everyone – it was for the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the burdened and the battered. If you were among those listed, this was very good news. If you were not in that list then it might not be such good news.
One thing that we may sometimes tend to forget is that Jesus was raised by his mother, Mary, whose song of joy – the prayer we call the Magnificat – her response when she was told by an angel that she would bear the long-awaited one who would come to set her people free, included these entirely radical words:
In the part we didn’t read, Luke follows the story of the baptism with a description of Jesus’ time alone in the wilderness – 40 days in which he would be tempted by Satan. Forty days which he spent in prayer and fasting, listening for the voice of the One who had so recently called him “my beloved Son.” Forty day to be strengthened to stand against Satan’s best efforts. And now, he has come down from those hills and back among people.
And he has returned to Nazareth, his boyhood home – the place where “everybody knows his name.” Observant believer that he was, Jesus attended synagogue on the Sabbath. I learned a couple of things in preparing for the message – things that were fairly obvious but that I just never bothered to consider.
First, Nazareth wasn’t just a small town, it was a tiny town, with probably no more than a few hundred people at most. Their synagogue would have been a small building at best, maybe just a room somewhere, or possibly even a designated meeting place outdoors in the village center. So any crowd scenes in this story are not going to be large.
Second, Luke tells us that Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, then followed that with an explanation of what he just read to them. Now, I know I do something similar here every week, but this has always sounded to me like something different. One of the people I studied for this week pointed out that the people of Nazareth would have spoken Aramaic, but the scrolls would have been written in Hebrew and some translation would have been necessary. I knew both of those facts but just never put them together to explain Jesus’ additional teaching.
All right, trivia points over. What did Jesus say here in this brief story and why does it matter so much?
He read the scripture from Isaiah that recounts the age old promise of Jubilee – that time when debts would be forgiven and old wrongs made right – the time when the poor would be lifted up instead of always being pushed to the bottom of the pile. Jubilee was recorded in scripture and it may have been actually observed in the earliest years, but was probably only given lip service down through most of the centuries. It sounds wonderful from the side of the poor, but its message would not have been so well received by those who had benefitted from a forced sale of ancestral lands or who now owned all rights to a captive slave.
In Jesus’ day, just as in any other, the reality was that the rich were in charge of things and the poor were powerless and those in power would make very certain that the poor never had a chance to rise up. Isaiah’s prophecies were lovely words to hear in synagogue but worrisome when people actually started to think they should be put into action – and Jesus clearly was on this latter side.
Jesus’ choice of reading made it clear that the message he was sent to share was not for everyone – it was for the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the burdened and the battered. If you were among those listed, this was very good news. If you were not in that list then it might not be such good news.
One thing that we may sometimes tend to forget is that Jesus was raised by his mother, Mary, whose song of joy – the prayer we call the Magnificat – her response when she was told by an angel that she would bear the long-awaited one who would come to set her people free, included these entirely radical words:
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.....
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty..
Radical thinking would probably not have been a new concept in Jesus’ life.
And – as if the message itself was not enough with its emphasis that it should be put into action he then proceeded to announce that right there, that day, right in front of everyone, it had been put into action. Today was the day of Jubilee.
We, today, live in this time of Jubilee. Have you ever wondered what you hold as our own that by the rules of Jubilee are really someone else’s? Do we enjoy cheap groceries because someone else works and lives in poverty? Are we shareholders who benefit from Wall Street shenanigans that routinely cheat others out of their life savings? Just these past few weeks, how much have we benefitted from federal workers being forced to work -- to continue doing their jobs -- with no pay?
None of us, I’m certain, would knowingly do any of these things and yet we live in a system built on the exploitation of the poor for the benefit of the comfortable. If we choose to range ourselves on Jesus’ side then we must choose the side of the poor. So - what might be our role in fixing that inequality that is so ingrained in our culture?
Next week we’ll continue this story and see what sort of response his words stirred up.
And – as if the message itself was not enough with its emphasis that it should be put into action he then proceeded to announce that right there, that day, right in front of everyone, it had been put into action. Today was the day of Jubilee.
We, today, live in this time of Jubilee. Have you ever wondered what you hold as our own that by the rules of Jubilee are really someone else’s? Do we enjoy cheap groceries because someone else works and lives in poverty? Are we shareholders who benefit from Wall Street shenanigans that routinely cheat others out of their life savings? Just these past few weeks, how much have we benefitted from federal workers being forced to work -- to continue doing their jobs -- with no pay?
None of us, I’m certain, would knowingly do any of these things and yet we live in a system built on the exploitation of the poor for the benefit of the comfortable. If we choose to range ourselves on Jesus’ side then we must choose the side of the poor. So - what might be our role in fixing that inequality that is so ingrained in our culture?
Next week we’ll continue this story and see what sort of response his words stirred up.
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