Luke 4:16-30
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and 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,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?” And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘“Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’” And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, amen. Today, Jesus is going home, at least where he was brought up. I think everyone who was raised in a hometown and has a home high school has the experience of going back and being weirded out. If you've gone back for a five year, 10 year, 40 year reunion, it seems weird, right? You see the same people, but they're all different. You see the same halls, but they're not what you remember, and everything just feels a little off, not because it's actually different, though many places, they build all the cool stuff after you leave, but you're different. You have a memory of the place that doesn't fit anymore. And so Jesus goes back to his hometown of Nazareth, as it says, where he had brought up, been brought up, and he does what is normal for him. He goes to the synagogue. And then he gets to stand up and read. He reads a passage from Isaiah. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. What an amazing proclamation of grace. Jesus has come to proclaim good news to everyone who is oppressed, but you're going to can imagine what it would be like to see the son of a congregation stand up and say that this is just a normal reading, like reading from Nehemiah about the temple and the law being read like reading from First Corinthians, chapter 12. So Jesus rolls up the scroll, and he sits down, and we get something kind of interesting, Luke says, And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Now I want you to imagine what that would be like. A reader from the pews comes forward, gets up, does the reading, goes back into the congregation, and the pastor doesn't get up to speak. They just sort of turn and they look at him, and they go, we're waiting. I wonder how long the pause was. He waited as all the eyes were sitting there, and Jesus is maybe he is a looking at the ceiling, whittling his thumbs, and he looks up and goes, what were they waiting for? Well, it was normal for important guests to sometimes talk about the reading, so maybe that's what they were waiting for. But their reaction doesn't seem to be that way. It seems like they had heard about what Jesus was doing, miracles and power, though Luke doesn't actually record that right before this passage, he says, And Jesus returned, and the power of the Spirit to Galilee and a report About him went out through all the surrounding country, and he taught in their synagogues being glorified by all I think perhaps there is an assumption that the report includes not just his sermons, but mostly it's about all the healings he was doing. And we see the healings start after this, but there's an expectation. Hey, Jesus, our sick are lined up outside. Are you going to get started hospital? Jesus needs to get moving now.
But then he doesn't do any of that. He has a message, and he began to say to them today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, and that's it. Now we know how cool that is. This. Is the promise. Jesus says everything in the Old Testament is now coming true. And if they had understood that, How amazing would that be? The hope of Abraham, when he first got the vision from God, get up and go to the land I will show you, is now coming true. The hope of Isaac and Jacob Moses, the judges, Saul, Samuel, David Solomon, the prophet, Elijah and Elisha, everyone in the history of the Old Testament, Jesus is saying, Now is the time. How cool, but they couldn't know it because they didn't know what he would do next. They couldn't know because they didn't know that he would go to Jerusalem, be rejected, suffer and die and rise from the dead to pave the way through death to give us eternal life. This is the beginning of this journey, and so all they get is speech today. This Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing and they go, what now? Here comes the confusing part in the story, as it says, And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And the next sentence says, and they said, Is not this Joseph's son. And those two sentences seem contradictory, don't they like they're all going, Wow, these are amazing words. They're so gracious and awesome, and we love it. And then they go, and they said, You we saw him grow up. I helped change his diapers. Who does he think he is? So I decided to take a look at the words behind this, and you can choose to translate this in a couple of ways. One way is like this. There's a whole lot of options, but what you can translate it positively, whereas like and they marveled about and everybody said great things, but you can also translate it negatively, which would be something like this, and everybody was talking about him, and they were stunned at the words about grace he was speaking, which seems to make a little more sense, the word that they use for Marvel could also be were astonished by or were stunned by, and the word that they use for spoke well of him, could also be talked about him. And I think that's likely to be the case. Jesus says this, and then they did what a congregation sometimes does when there's news, they all started to whisper and they go, who does this guy think he is? Is not this Joseph's son. So the first time I went back to my home congregation to preach. It was an interesting experience. My pastor taught me as I was growing up, he had went into surgery, and so I was coming back for Christmas. I'm a seminary student who's never preached more than one sermon in a row without like, four weeks to write, and I get Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Sunday. It was awesome. So I come in, I'm filling in for the pastor for for holidays. I preach my sermon, and everybody loves it. Why? Because I was the I was the kid coming back, and they're just like, oh, we remember you. Isn't it so great? Let's see how you grew up. Of course, then I go out into the congregation, and they do the thing. They say, Oh, it's so great to see you preaching a sermon. I remember when you used to sit in the front row and then you would fall asleep in the middle of the sermon every single Sunday. Thanks for bringing that up. I love it, yeah, yeah. And then my Sunday School teacher came up and said, I remember when you used to run around my Sunday school class. Nobody could control you. You were such a fidgeter. Oh yeah, thanks for bringing that up too. I really that's a great memory. And I think that the key is they loved it, because I was there just once, preaching, just a couple of times, and then I was going to leave. But could you imagine what it would be like if I had to give them a hard word of God's law, and all of a sudden they're saying you used to fall asleep every single Sunday, and now you're talking like that, I changed your diaper while your mom was playing the organ. And now you're talking like that. It's kind of what Jesus is going through, right? Who do you think you are? You've been doing miracles everywhere else, and now you're going to come here and not do anything. You're just going to say You're the Messiah. So what he says is, truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. This is the heart of the story. Luke is setting Jesus up to be the rejected prophet. That's the image of Jesus that is central to what the story that Luke tells is that this message of the gospel proclaiming the grace of God to everyone, to the lowly, the broken, the outsider, to the widow and Zarephath and Naaman, the foreigner. This is the message that will get him rejected, the people, they didn't care about what he had to say. They wanted miracles, just like he did at Capernaum, but the mission was not about those things. It was simple, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. He came to preach the gospel to them, just as He sends it to us that we are free from sin and death, that by His death and resurrection, none of these conditions matter anymore, because he will raise us from the dead on the last day to live forever with Him. This is the message that is rejected. We see Jesus, the prophet, in Luke 13, reminding us of this, where he says, Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. Jesus was not rejected for his miracles. He was rejected for his message. And when he goes to Jerusalem, he follows the path of the prophets who were before him, the many, many, many prophets who came to the capital city of the people of God and were rejected or killed by the people there. And he did it for us, so that we could be saved. And his father vindicated him as the great announcer of God's grace by raising Him from the dead for you and for me to continue to proclaim this message to the whole world, the grace of God is here. It now is the time of the year of the Lord's favor for you because of Jesus, and I think that is the rejection that still continues today. Because when people look at the church, what they want is not God's grace or His mercy, resurrection from the dead, forgiveness of sins. They want results. They want things that matter to them. They want power, might action good things. They want us to be what they expect, rather
than what Jesus delivered, that the primary purpose of His teaching was to announce the kingdom of God is here, resurrection is coming, and that he leads us into eternal life. And that should be enough, shouldn't it? Because. Wow, that's cool, but people want more. People think the church should primarily be a place of charity, that our job should mostly be feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, and doing all of those sorts of things. And those are good things, but they're nothing. When the church abandons the announcement of God's grace for the forgiveness of sins, that's a real job, isn't it, proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ to the world. There's lots of people who could do good things, but we have the gospel that saves other people say the church should be a place of miracles, that when God's people gather together, we should receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues and and our bodies should be healed. And God has prepared an amazing gift of prosperity for you. And it's just like the people of Nazareth who say the church did miracles in Jesus's day, it should be doing miracles. Now we have the gospel, the greatest miracle of all. How could you not want that? How could you turn from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to focus on speaking in tongues? Who cares healing the body, just to die, who cares not when we have the resurrection? People look at the church, and they see us as a political entity. The church's job is to create a moral people so that we can have a moral nation and succeed in our politics. My Church has never been about that. We're not here to push some sort of conservative agenda for our political policy. We're about the resurrection. We're about Jesus, Christ His death on the cross for us. We're here to take sinners and give them eternal life. But the world doesn't want a prophet. They don't want the announcement of God's grace. They want results that matter to them, but we know better. We do not want to reject the most precious gift that the church has, the announcement of God's grace, this amazing gift of salvation that Jesus has given us when he says the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now is that time? Now is the time for that message, and that is who we are. We follow the rejected prophet who announces God's grace to all of us in His Name, Amen.
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