Luke 4:16-21
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.”
Luke 4:22-30
All who were there, watching and listening, were surprised at how well he spoke. But they also said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son, the one we’ve known since he was a youngster?”
He answered, “I suppose you’re going to quote the proverb, ‘Doctor, go heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.’ Well, let me tell you something: No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn’t it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian.”
That set everyone in the meeting place seething with anger. They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way.
Today we pick up the story we began last week – the declaration by Jesus that the day of Jubilee had arrived.
The Hebrew people had long held fast to the promises received though the many prophets that God would one day send a savior who would release them from their subservience to the Roman Empire. This promise, as it is found in Isaiah 61 – to set the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the burdened, and the battered free – is the promise Jesus read and claimed as becoming present and real in himself, that very day.
But there is one piece of the promise as it is written in Isaiah that Jesus neglected to include in his reading and that is a line at the end which reads “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.”
Any mention of vengeance is completely missing from Jesus’ version of the promise. This omission is never explained – to us or to those present that day. We, today, can easily enough understand this as Jesus being a man of peace and not in the vengeance business – and yet, for a people held in virtual slavery and oppression for centuries, vengeance was exactly the piece of the promise they preferred to focus on.
For an oppressed people it is all too often only the possibly of revenge that holds them together and keeps them moving on through their oppression to another day. When you are bullied and broken and dehumanized you secretly roll a promise of vengeance around on the back of your tongue and it tastes so good. Even promises of freedom and healing don’t sound as good anymore if you take away the possibility of that sweet revenge, and those listening to Jesus that day wouldn’t have taken kindly to being denied that vengeance.
But they are still, at first, caught up in the idea that this is a home-town boy, one of them, and he’s speaking with such wisdom and authority. They’re liking what they hear – until Jesus goes a step too far. Way too far.
The Hebrew people didn’t just want revenge against the Romans. They were just the current oppressor. Over the centuries these people had been oppressed by all kinds of “others” – they didn’t even bother to differentiate by nationality anymore. They simply hated everyone who wasn’t one of them. Anyone who could be described as Gentile. God was God of the Hebrews - he belonged to them and didn’t care about anyone but them -- and a major piece of the promise – for them – was that there would be vengeance taken against their enemies.
And this is where Jesus went over the line for them. He first points out that prophets aren’t ever accepted in their home territories and he illustrates this with examples from the lives of their greatest prophet, Elijah, and his successor, Elisha:
The Hebrew people had long held fast to the promises received though the many prophets that God would one day send a savior who would release them from their subservience to the Roman Empire. This promise, as it is found in Isaiah 61 – to set the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the burdened, and the battered free – is the promise Jesus read and claimed as becoming present and real in himself, that very day.
But there is one piece of the promise as it is written in Isaiah that Jesus neglected to include in his reading and that is a line at the end which reads “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.”
Any mention of vengeance is completely missing from Jesus’ version of the promise. This omission is never explained – to us or to those present that day. We, today, can easily enough understand this as Jesus being a man of peace and not in the vengeance business – and yet, for a people held in virtual slavery and oppression for centuries, vengeance was exactly the piece of the promise they preferred to focus on.
For an oppressed people it is all too often only the possibly of revenge that holds them together and keeps them moving on through their oppression to another day. When you are bullied and broken and dehumanized you secretly roll a promise of vengeance around on the back of your tongue and it tastes so good. Even promises of freedom and healing don’t sound as good anymore if you take away the possibility of that sweet revenge, and those listening to Jesus that day wouldn’t have taken kindly to being denied that vengeance.
But they are still, at first, caught up in the idea that this is a home-town boy, one of them, and he’s speaking with such wisdom and authority. They’re liking what they hear – until Jesus goes a step too far. Way too far.
The Hebrew people didn’t just want revenge against the Romans. They were just the current oppressor. Over the centuries these people had been oppressed by all kinds of “others” – they didn’t even bother to differentiate by nationality anymore. They simply hated everyone who wasn’t one of them. Anyone who could be described as Gentile. God was God of the Hebrews - he belonged to them and didn’t care about anyone but them -- and a major piece of the promise – for them – was that there would be vengeance taken against their enemies.
And this is where Jesus went over the line for them. He first points out that prophets aren’t ever accepted in their home territories and he illustrates this with examples from the lives of their greatest prophet, Elijah, and his successor, Elisha:
No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn’t it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian.”
Now this may not sound too inflammatory to us because we don’t know all the players, but the key piece to our understanding lies in the fact that Sidon and Syria were Gentile areas. What Jesus pointed out with the two stories he chose to cite was that twice in Hebrew history God had bypassed the Hebrews in need to grant grace to two hated Gentiles.
And this is what totally inflamed the Nazareans that day. While he dwelt on the promise from Isaiah they were fine with Jesus, even proud to call him one of their own -- but by citing the stories of Elijah and Elisha as he did, he took their vengeance away from them. He took their promise away from them. To their minds, Jesus tried to take their God away from them. And, just like that, they flipped from admiration to rage and a desire to kill this person who would say such things (most likely because they were terrified he might be right.) This person they were just admiring was now someone to be silenced by any means.
When I was in seminary, a hundred years ago or so, my preaching professor encouraged us to approach the story on which we were preparing to preach from multiple directions – basically to take a few minutes to “see” the story from the point of view of the various people involved. In this particular story there’s not that many individuals mentioned – there’s just Jesus and “everyone else,” but when we took a few minutes to try to understand the expectations of “everyone else” a story that could be pretty bizarre at least began to make a little sense. We don’t need to agree with their murderous rage at the end of the but we can, at least, recognize the frustrations and fear that drove them to it.
This is a good method to use in dealing with any disagreement with others. Do I understand why they are responding in a certain way? What lead them to hold their opinion? Where do their fears and anger come from? Would I respond the same way if I were in their shoes?
Jesus didn’t respond to their anger with anger of his own – he just quietly slipped away. We don’t always need to “win” a disagreement. We live in such an “us and them” time right now where, if we are right, then everyone else must be wrong. If you don’t do things the way I do them you are not only wrong but actively evil.
Yes, some things are evil and must be resisted – Jesus didn’t passively stand around and wait for them to throw him off a cliff but he did see them compassionately – he understood where they were coming from – and rather than resisting and fighting he went out and continued teaching that god’s people were one people – and all people were God’s people. All people are valued and loved.
And this is what totally inflamed the Nazareans that day. While he dwelt on the promise from Isaiah they were fine with Jesus, even proud to call him one of their own -- but by citing the stories of Elijah and Elisha as he did, he took their vengeance away from them. He took their promise away from them. To their minds, Jesus tried to take their God away from them. And, just like that, they flipped from admiration to rage and a desire to kill this person who would say such things (most likely because they were terrified he might be right.) This person they were just admiring was now someone to be silenced by any means.
When I was in seminary, a hundred years ago or so, my preaching professor encouraged us to approach the story on which we were preparing to preach from multiple directions – basically to take a few minutes to “see” the story from the point of view of the various people involved. In this particular story there’s not that many individuals mentioned – there’s just Jesus and “everyone else,” but when we took a few minutes to try to understand the expectations of “everyone else” a story that could be pretty bizarre at least began to make a little sense. We don’t need to agree with their murderous rage at the end of the but we can, at least, recognize the frustrations and fear that drove them to it.
This is a good method to use in dealing with any disagreement with others. Do I understand why they are responding in a certain way? What lead them to hold their opinion? Where do their fears and anger come from? Would I respond the same way if I were in their shoes?
Jesus didn’t respond to their anger with anger of his own – he just quietly slipped away. We don’t always need to “win” a disagreement. We live in such an “us and them” time right now where, if we are right, then everyone else must be wrong. If you don’t do things the way I do them you are not only wrong but actively evil.
Yes, some things are evil and must be resisted – Jesus didn’t passively stand around and wait for them to throw him off a cliff but he did see them compassionately – he understood where they were coming from – and rather than resisting and fighting he went out and continued teaching that god’s people were one people – and all people were God’s people. All people are valued and loved.
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