Our reading from Luke is part 2 of Jesus’s Nazareth address, his first sermon, if you will, that Luke the Gospel writer records. It starts off well and then gets a bit spicy, with the people of Nazareth trying to do away with Jesus. As I was sitting with the reading this week, considering the people of Nazareth’s response to Jesus’ first sermon, and thinking of my first sermon here with the Village. I’m not aiming to draw any parallels and I am grateful I’m not Jesus.
In the first half of the reading, which we heard last week, Luke says that Jesus full of the Spirit of God seemingly had begun a powerful itinerant preaching ministry, travelling about the Galilean countryside, and now he had come home to Nazareth, where he’d grown up.
He is given the scroll of Isaiah and Jesus chooses to read from chapter 61, one of the passages in Isaiah written of the figure of the suffering servant. He also paraphrases a little and squeezes in a line from chapter 58.
In that time, one would stand up to read the text and then sit down to teach, as Jesus does here and other places like the sermon on the mount.
Imagine those in the congregation that day. We know Jesus, Joseph’s son, we’ve known him since he was a little boy. What will Jesus say about this reading, why has Jesus chosen this of all readings, and why did he insert that line about setting the oppressed free from chapter 58?
Jesus sits down. The anticipation is building.
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus says, or as Eugene Peterson puts it in the Message, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.”
It’s happening. God’s favour is here now.
Because of what I’m empowered to do, because of me, says Jesus.
The lowly will no longer be looked down upon,
The homeless will no longer need to sleep in the park,
The wrongly imprisoned and political captives will be released.
The abundance and the justice of the year of God’s favour has arrived.
‘This is a good message, Jesus.’
This is a beautiful picture Jesus, but it is big and bold. We’ve had people overpromise and underdeliver before.
We don’t have the rest of Jesus’ sermon, but people notice the ‘graciousness’ in his words. The compassion, and kindness.
Perhaps listening to them was like listening to something beautiful like the words about love from our first reading from 1 Corinthians 13. They can almost carry one away until you almost want to proclaim the inevitable conclusion out loud, “Love never fails”.
Beautiful words, Gracious words, fit for a reading at a wedding. Words to live by.
But they are not simple to do, they make a big claim. We’ve all experienced the hurts, small and life-changing when the way of love is not walked. When it is broken, withheld or weaponised.
Like the words Jesus proclaimed in Nazareth, they paint a picture we long for, and maybe have experienced in part, but haven’t fully experienced with each other, that we only experience in Christ.
We know how the world works. From the place of our hurt, not wanting to be disappointed again, we can ask:
Surely not, isn’t this Joseph’s son? Right here, right now?
Jesus doesn’t defend his claim that the world is now changed because of who he is, what he’s done, what he’s doing and will do.
He just says that it is. In so doing invites us to trust in his gracious words. Jesus says: that “Yes, the good news is right here, right now” It’s who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing.
I wonder how you have imagined the scene unfolding?
Perhaps the congregation were murmuring quietly amongst themselves, or maybe they were quite animated and conversing freely.
Either way, Jesus has his finger on the pulse of the tension in the room and adds a bit more by quoting a common proverb of the day: Doctor, heal yourself. Inferring, show us you can do what you claim to be able to do.
What’s your proof Jesus, that things are different now in the world?
They’d heard the stories of the signs he’d done at Capernaum or is that kay-per-na-um, caper-…. Where’s Josh?
We’re going run with kuh-PERR-nay-uhm
They’ve heard about the signs, but they want to see them for themselves.
It’s not an unfair request really, is it?
Even in our day of rapid global information sharing we are still wary of being taken in. We used to have a saying that the camera doesn’t lie, I don’t know if that was ever completely true, but certainly in our world with the exponential increase in artificially generated images and videos sometimes its difficult to tell what’s real and what’s not. We should be careful and help others navigate different claims and headlines.
But Jesus says something extraordinary to the congregation in Nazareth. Using two stories from the Hebrew scriptures, he tells them there is going to be no sign for them.
These two stories would have been well known. They are from what we might think of as the golden age of Israel’s prophets, but both Elijah and Elisha had their ministry in what was a major low point in Israel’s history. There’s a truth there, the prophetic voice is most loud when human wisdom is left to rule the roost.
Both Elijah and Elisha were prophets of God before the fall of Israel’s northern kingdom to Assyria. They were no stranger to miracles and signs but, and also to opposition.
The stories involve God showing favour to the most unlikely people, to outsiders, while the insiders seem to miss out.
But both stories are also about people who trust in the word of the prophets and dare to trust, dare to have faith that God will keep God’s word.
First the story of Elijah who, tells King Ahab that because he had abandoned God, God was withdrawing God’s blessing and there would be a famine. Ahab is not pleased by this and Elijah essentially goes into hiding during this time and asks non-Israelite widow to take him in. She is poor and has only enough food for one last meal for her and her son. Initially she is skeptical. But trusting in the word of the prophet she makes her bread and brings it to Elijah. After which she discovers, there always seems to be a little more flour and oil to keep making bread each day throughout the famine.
The second story is of Elisha, Elijah’s successor, who gets wind that Israel’s king is very distressed. He has received a letter from the King of Aram, or Syria, asking the King of Israel to heal his army commander, Naaman, from a skin disease. The King of Israel seems to miss that this would be an occasion to call on the Man of God, and instead is concerned the King of Aram is trying to set him up as an excuse for conflict.
Elisha has Naaman come and see him, but when he arrives, Elisha doesn’t even come out and greet him. Instead, gives him a message to wash in the Jordan River seven times. Naaman feels snubbed and affronted and turns to leave. But his servants, convince him to take the Israelite prophet at his word. He washes in the Jordan and the Word of the Lord comes to pass, and Naaman praises God.
Throughout his ministry Jesus’ faces pressure to perform signs and wonders. Here it is as if Jesus wants to remind his audience that the test of a prophet is their message, not their signs. The message that the world is now a different place because of Jesus, is a reality. It is unstoppable. Ignoring God’s kingdom and what God is doing, does not make it ‘unreal’ and does not render it powerless. If some ignore what God is doing, there will be others who respond to God’s work.
The congregation in Nazareth are invited to trust in who Jesus says that he is, the fulfiller of the promises of God, and that through faith in him, they will come to taste the Good Life he has promised in his sermon, where all can flourish and have enough.
If we look at the world or our communities around us, it can sometimes be hard to see God’s Kingdom at work. Some things never seem to change. Other times when good progress has been made for peace, justice, and humanity’s flourishing, it seems to be unwound and rolled back. But just because some ignore what God is doing, doesn’t stop God from being at work and inviting people to join in.
Jesus calls us to look around, in the most unlikely places.
But in our reading, this invitation is not taken up. The Kingdom Jesus announces sounds so good, but at the same time, it’s a bit uncomfortable. If we’re honest, there are some people we would rather that God’s face didn’t shine on. Sometimes this is borne out of our hurt and grief, or sometimes out of prejudice. But the people of Nazareth prickle at the idea that they may miss the benefits of Jesus’ beautiful gracious words and that others, outside of Nazareth, may receive God’s favour. Their offence runs away with them and they miss the point of Jesus invitation to trust who he is.
They are so offended they do what we humans are so good at doing when we come up against something that makes us feel uncomfortable and challenges our way of seeing the world.
We try to push it off a cliff. We try to push it off a cliff.
More than one biblical commentator I’ve read this week notes an irony here. Earlier on in Chapter 4, when Jesus is tested in the wilderness, the Devil, tries to entice Jesus to be spectacular, by throwing himself off the top of the highest point of Temple and letting God’s angels prevent his death. Jesus of course resists, knowing such a spectacular display of power undermines his message of the upside Kingdom where the least is the greatest.
Here just a few verses later he is again asked to be spectacular, and for his refusal, they attempt to throw him from a cliff. Luke gives us the impression this is an angry mob and Jesus is in danger here. But then there’s this brief sentence “but he passed through the crowd and went on his way.” I don’t imagine this is like the movies where the main character easily gives their bumbling pursuers the slip. When Luke uses this way of speaking in his Gospel it is to indicate that God is at work, demonstrating that Jesus’ message and mission won’t be thwarted.
I wonder how the crowd processed all this. As the heat of their anger cooled, I wonder what thoughts came to them. Perhaps some started to feel a bit silly that things got so out of hand. Maybe relieved that they were unable to act on their impulse. But perhaps some let the wick of their anger smoulder, sheltering it from voices of reason and compassion that may have extinguished it completely. Maybe they nursed anger’s spark with ungracious words and thoughts, ready for it to flare up again one day.
Illustration City
When things come up that don’t fit the way we are used to seeing the world it can get really uncomfortable. Like so many of Israel’s King’s who preferred to ignore prophets like Elijah or Elisha, we too can sometimes gravitate to the voices, stories and sources we’re familiar with or like or our way of doing things.
Sometimes that even applies to how we read scripture. One of the things I believe is important and that I promise to do as your minister and as a preacher is to embrace the full breadth of scripture. The Joyful, encouraging and wonderful parts. But also the parts that are dark, difficult, confusing, and challenging. God’s wisdom and story are revealed on every page, cover to cover. I will endeavour to do so, sensitively, fairly, faithfully, and with words of grace.
The words of Jesus to us are gracious, kind and compassionate. Bringing hope and life. But sometimes they put their finger on something for us, on something that makes us feel uncomfortable. Something where Christ wants to do some work, some shaping and forming of us. They challenge our idea of what the Good Life in God’s world looks like. Sometimes that challenge means letting go of our ways of doing and seeing things and embracing Christ’s upside-down way, the unspectacular, compassionate and gracious way.
Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth, announced good news, the world had changed because of what God was doing in Christ Jesus. The old order of things is passing away, the the spectacular and powerful no longer hold the sway. God is to be found with the most unlikely. Jesus invites us to have faith in who is and what he does so we might see, experience and participate in the Goodness of God in the world. How will we respond to Christ’s gracious words, words of invitation that long to shape us into the images of God we were made to be?
Amen.