1/24/2010
Nehemiah 8: 2-4, 5, 6, 8-10 + Psalm 19 + 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 + Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21
To get to Nazareth Luke has provided us with several manifestations or “Epiphanies” that reveal who it is who has come among us and what is happening.
First the Shepherds had a manifestation. Then the church led us to Matthew for another with visitors from the East. Then the presentation in the Temple with prophesies and prayers by an old man and an old woman. Next Jesus was baptized and a voice from the heavens manifested the identity of this one Baptized by John. Last week we were at Cana for a wedding where another Epiphany moment occurs over jugs of water turned wine. Now we are at home in Nazareth where one more manifestation takes place in the synagogue. Amazement and wonder continues, and always the power of the Holy Spirit is unmistakable.
Our look at the people of Nazareth sitting in that synagogue is really a look at ourselves. Luke is not just giving us the facts of what happened on a particular day in a specific place. As the opening verses say, he is providing his Gospel so that we might know the “truth.” By “truth” he is not referring to a provable fact. Luke wants us off the surface and the superficial. This is the meaning of “truth” in Luke’s gospel: deeper meaning.
The people of Nazareth would rather stay on the surface, in the shallow. They begin by complementing Jesus with their superficial comments: “Isn’t he nice!” “He uses such big words so easily.” “We know his family, they’re such nice hard-working people.” “He has done wonderful things so we hear, wait till he does even greater things here at home.” “He is our home-town boy.”
Then he takes up the scriptures, and you notice he does not open the book to the lesson assigned for the day. It says he searched for a passage to read. Something different is coming. Then he speaks the first word of his mission. The first word publically spoken in Luke’s Gospel is important. In that word his whole mission is summed up. He says: “Today.” With that word, his mission as God’s anointed is announced, and for Luke’s purpose so is the mission of the church which proclaims the Gospel. The church too is anointed with the power of the Spirit on Pentecost. So the mission of Jesus and the mission of the church are the same.
It is a three fold ministry:
a ministry of preaching Good news of the coming of God’s Kingdom
a ministry of social justice, bringing freedom to those held captive by forces of evil; a ministry of bringing sight to the blind, that is, a ministry of compassion
To be Son of God is to be on a mission of liberation. Wherever human life is impoverished, imprisoned, impaired, it will become enriched, free, and enabled. All this will be done by the power of divine favor. SON OF GOD is not a title of privilege. It is a call to transformative action. (Privilege was the temptation just rejected in the desert.)
The people of Nazareth wanted privilege not a transformation into action. They wanted to be secure, affirmed, and receive the perks of being friends of Jesus. They were unprepared to recognize in Jesus the anointed one of God because they failed to see themselves in any of the prophet’s categories (the poor, the blind, the captives and oppressed). Superficial and shallow, they looked after what they could
get, not what they could become. Their presumed privilege blinded them to the truth of their lives and they failed to grasp the initiative God was offering them. Blinded by their privilege of proximity and familiarity with Jesus, they quickly turned to resentment as they realize that Jesus has taken God’s favor to others beyond Nazareth especially Capernaum said to have a heavy non-Jewish population. Resentment produces anger which is not really anger at Jesus. It is anger at themselves for their own failure, to live as the prophet has instructed them; so as always, the innocent, in this case, Jesus becomes victim of this anger. What they expel from that synagogue is not Jesus, but the truth that they are blind, captive, poor, and oppressed. They are offended, and so are we by God’s grace to all those of whom we do not approve. Jesus does not go elsewhere because he is rejected. He is rejected because he goes elsewhere.
Today this Gospel is proclaimed in this church. We cannot leave here and remain shallow and superficially wonder what we will get because we are here. This was the mistake of Nazareth. We are to be transformed like the Son of God, anointed by the Spirit because of Pentecost our own Baptism and Confirmation.
We are commissioned to preach good news to the poor. To do that well, we must first know ourselves to be the poor transformed into a people who rely on nothing but God alone. That is poverty. It is not a matter of economics. It is a matter of where we place our trust and what we live for. We must know ourselves to be transformed captives free from slavery to wealth, possessions, status and power. God is our only authority, not what other people think. We must know ourselves to have been healed of our blindness to the presence of God in every human being.
The good news is preached best when it recognizes its solidarity with those who hear the message. We are still poor, captive, blind, and oppressed. Yet in the recognition we are released. What we see in the people of Nazareth, we must see in ourselves, and in the seeing become wise and stunned by the truth of God’s grace to all and accept our call to extend that grace where ever it is dulled or dimmed by evil. This must happen today says Jesus through Luke, and “today” must never be allowed to become “yesterday” or slip again into a vague “someday.”