Not Your Hometown Boy

Last week the Gospel reading ended with a cliff hanger.

            After the word gets out about him and his preaching and teaching,

            Jesus comes to his home town.

Everyone gathers at the synagogue to see for themselves what he has to say.

 

He reads Isaiah 61 about the acceptable year of the Lord, 

and then declares, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

Now this could be taken in two different ways:

            as the Messiah who says, “I’m going to restore the whole nation.”

                        The lands would be returned and the Romans would be ousted,

                        just what the people of Nazareth would want.

OR what Jesus is, 

            that is, the achievement of Isaiah’s promises in the person of Jesus literally.

 

Which way to understand this has to do with one’s relationship with Jesus.

You won’t be available for getting this 

            until you recognize your condition in relationship to Jesus.

 

You need to see your own need in order to be helped.

            And to receive help you must give up – 

give up assumptions about your own adequacy, 

and your own ability to take care of yourself, to make yourself holy.

 

So in these comments that Jesus then makes to the people of Nazareth,

                        in his disassociation from their claim on him,

                        and in his identification with the fulfillment of the prophet’s words,

            it is as though to say to them 

that they have no understanding of who he is,

that they have no spiritual awareness.

 

This was quite provoking.

 

Look carefully at what comes next in the passage.

His fellow townspeople are amazed 

at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

Here’s the hometown boy gone away and now come back, 

            he’s preached a fine sermon,

            and with words that link him to the Messiah, 

the Restorer of the nation.

“Is not this Joseph’s son?”  

They can lay a claim to him as their native son.

Nazareth will become famous as the hometown of the Messiah.

            We’re somebody!  

            We’ve got status; we’ve produced the Messiah.

And so we can count on some preferential treatment in the glorious future.  Right?

 

Hence the proverb that Jesus quotes, “Physician, heal yourself,” 

meaning, “take care of your own.”

This interpretation is born out 

in the examples from the stories about Elijah and Elisha

that Jesus likewise will provide powerful works and healing 

NOT for the hometown folks 

but for foreigners, those outside the covenant.

He shows that the prophet is no longer of that native place,

                        he no longer belongs to just that place,

            and indeed, is then not accepted in his hometown.

Nazareth no longer can have an exclusive claim on him.

 

Isaiah 61 and the acceptable year of the Lord – 

Jesus states, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

And when they take pride in their native son, 

            he then turns on them and tells them that they don’t get it, 

calling into question their whole understanding of the scriptures and the prophets.

 

No wonder they wanted to do him in.

 

Do you see how radical Jesus can be?

 

Jesus working from scripture,

            places his actions and teachings in the context of Isaiah 61.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

He is saying that his basis for his teaching and actions 

is the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God.

 

He is demonstrating a radical shift in history

            in terms of the understanding of who the Messiah would be.

We’re not talking son of Joseph of King David’s line anymore.

            Joseph, after all, was not his biological father.

What is the genealogy of Jesus?  This:  “In the beginning was the Word…”

 

He is saying, “The Kingdom of God is at hand, folks,

            here, right here and now, in me.”

The fullness of the Kingdom is fully actual and present in Jesus,

            whether we realize it or not.

 

The people of Nazareth did not.

 

And they were so provoked by the young upstart

            that they wanted to shove him off the cliff.

And somehow the Spirit-driven Jesus simply 

                        walks through their midst and out of Nazareth.

 

In Luke’s Gospel each chapter is intricately interwoven.

To understand more fully what one passage offers,

            we would do well to look at what is going on 

just before and just after the passage.

 

For instance, just look at how many references there are 

to the Spirit in the chapter.

Vs. 1  “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan 

                        (where he had just been baptized)

            and was led by the Spirit for 40 days in the wilderness…”

 

And after the testing by the devil, vs. 14,

            Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee.

 

So it seems rather clear then, when he reads from Isaiah 61,

            “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,”

                                    he is speaking the obvious.

 

What comes next in the chapter after the un-pleasantries in Nazareth 

            is Jesus preaching in Capernaum.

And there the people are much more deeply affected by his teaching.

There they are utterly astounded, overwhelmed, struck out of their minds.

 

And the unclean spirits are stirred up just by his presence among them.

They recognize him, and know that they must give way, must leave.

They, these spiritual concentrations of energy, or whatever they are,

            recognize the spiritual potency of Jesus for what it is,

                        in a way that the mind of the flesh can miss so easily,

                                                focused as it is 

on getting things all figured out intellectually, rationally, 

according to our mental constructs of how things are supposed to be.

 

Now, note this:

When Jesus read that passage from Isaiah 61, and then applied it to himself,

            this was not an exclusive statement about himself alone.

 

Jesus represents the truth of the New Creation,

            the first fruits of the resurrection [1 Cor. 15:23]

            in whom all are made alive.

 

So this was not an exclusive statement about himself alone.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.

 

Are you aware of that?

 

Do you see Isaiah 61 fulfilled in your life?

            the poor receiving the good news, 

the blind seeing, 

the captives set free, 

the oppressed released from suffering?

No?

            Are we then like those of Nazareth?                        Heaven forbid!

 

How can we come to greater awareness,

greater recognition, greater realization 

of who Jesus is, 

and how we are in him, 

and that how he is, we are to be also?

 

Luke added something to the Isaiah 61 text: recovery of sight to the blind.

            We are blind, or if not blind, with limited vision.

Our attention is on one thing about Jesus,

            and so we miss something outside of that specific field of vision.

We need to have our field of vision expanded

                        in order to see what we are missing.

 

Want a good way to expand the field of vision?  Try this:

            Read 1 Corinthians 13, today’s epistle lesson.  It’s about love.

But it is not romantic love or familial love, but agaph love,

            that uniting, unitive love that describes the relationship within the Trinity,

            the love that flowed out from the Trinity as Creation,

            the love that unites us with God, 

            the kind of love that can heal us and the world.

Read this chapter over and over as a form of self-examination,

                        and your field of vision will expand.

            

We can ask ourselves if we have gotten too comfortable with Jesus,

            if we think we have him all figured out,

            if we are secure in assumptions about how he acts, 

                                    what he says, what it all means.

 

Then we can see beyond the familiar

            and behold in Jesus the Glory of God, the Light of the World, 

                        the Very Revelation of God

                                                right here in our midst.