Proclaiming a troublesome message

“…‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21)

Nehemiah 8:1-10

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12:12-30

Luke 4:14-21

 

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Year C: Third Sunday after the Epiphany, 23 January 2022

And Jesus went back to his home town and ‘as was his custom’ (v.16) he went to the local synagogue on the Saturday. He ‘unrolled the scroll’ and ‘found the place where it was written’ in what we recognise as the opening verses of the 61^st chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah to make a bold and challenging proclamation with the very clear implication that this applied to Jesus and that this was happening right now in front of the synagogue congregation as well as the people in the region.

What did Jesus say?  He had four messages to announce:

1. Good news to the poor.
2. Freedom and release for those imprisoned.
3. Recovery of sight to the blind.
4. A year of the Lord’s favour.

We can read into this a very radical challenge to the religious and political status quo both then and now. No wonder his own people and religious brethren pursued him to the brow of the hill to kill him once the full implications of what he was saying sank in.

Who are the poor? How do we help the poor?

When Jesus stood up in that synagogue and proclaimed a year of the Lord’s favour he did not waste words.  He went straight to the core of his purpose and mission drawing on a text that would have been very well known to his own people and the synagogue minders.  For some reason the passage recalling this bold proclamation in the synagogue and which is read on this Sunday in the ‘Year of Luke’ stops short at verse 21:

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

In a touch of enormous irony, the fulfilment of scripture this very day that Jesus stood up in the synagogue meant that Jesus very nearly met death as the locals rose up and took him to the brow of the hill in Nazareth to throw him to his death. His fine words and popularity (refer to verse 15 ‘praised by everyone’) quickly turned to hatred, persecution and exclusion from Nazareth and the synagogue there.  That, too, was a fulfilment of scripture. A bold proclamation backed by practical witness and living out of a set of values brings its own opposition and death.

And what values do we live out of?
What is our manifesto or proclamation?
Does it appear to be any different to those manifestos – corporate, ideological, nationalist, religious etc. that dominate our world?
Does our proclamation make a difference and how and why and where?
Can we tell stories from our own water wells where others may draw the living water?
Is our religion a religion of just words?  Is our religion a religion merely of the head but not of the head and the heart?
Who knows?
Who cares? 

If Jesus made his proclamation in 50 words – give or take that he spoke not in English but, presumably, in Aramaic in his local town – then what is our 50 word-20 second pitch? And how do our words and gestures carry credible weight in a world where cynicism, broken promises and fatalism prevail?

Put another way, anyone who wants to proclaim a year of the Lord’s favour that is more than just words but that involves fundamental change either in the way people live, or think or expect is landing herself or himself into serious trouble. Jesus’ time had not yet come but his time would come and there would be payback time for quoting Isaiah and applying it to himself in such a way that someone in the authority got seriously upset. Did that stop Jesus? No more than his cousin John the Baptist it did not. What defines Jesus is not how he defines himself in the finest of Greek philosophy or the exactitude of Jewish Law but in what he does and how he does it. Therein lies the power and love of God at work through his Word.

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FURTHER NOTES ON THE GOSPEL OF THE DAY (Luke 4:14-21)

Preliminaries

In characteristically Lucan style this extract contains a simple and bold proclamation with the focus on the good news of liberation for the poor. But, this is not done without referring to Jesus being ‘filled with the power of the Spirit’. The Holy Spirit working powerfully in Jesus then and now is announcing freedom to those imprisoned and oppressed.

v. 14-15 The beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilea

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

According to Luke, Jesus’ public ministry begins in Galilee. It follows a time of preparation and testing in the desert. Significantly, Jesus starts at a local level and ends up in Jerusalem some time later. From Jerusalem a new wave spread out across the world in the following centuries.

v. 16-17 Proclaiming good news of liberation

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written..

This evidence that Jesus could read. And read he did. He may have already decided to read this particular passage from Isaiah. Is it not significant that this passage from the many he could have chosen was used?

v. 18-19 The prophet Isaiah readout

‘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 favour.’

This resembles a proclamation rather like what the American or French or Irish revolutionaries might have announced. Here is what we stand for and this is why we have been sent …. so to speak. The quotation cited here by Luke is an edited version of Isaiah 61:1-2. Reference to vengeance in verse 2 is dropped in characteristically Lucan fashion (see for example Luke 7:22)

v.20-21 The Word that is living

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

This forms a dramatic conclusion to Jesus’ intervention at the Synagogue. He makes it clear that this is no formalistic reading from some ancient text. Rather, what is foretold and announced by the Prophet Isaiah is happening right here in Nazareth. Yet, his townspeople will reject him and he will not perform any miracles there because of their lack of faith. What an indictment of Jesus’ home village.