A Conflict in Mission

Luke 4:14-30

Meet the Nazarenes. They are neighbors, friends, relatives, colleagues and co-workers of Jesus and his family. They watched young Jesus grow up as he was apprenticed to his father learning the trade of carpentry. They were members of the same synagogue as Joseph, Mary, Jesus and the rest of the family. They watched Jesus grow up, learn the faith, and develop his own vibrant spirituality. No doubt there were some in the crowd who were Jesus’ own teachers, responsible for teaching him the ways of the Jewish faith.

They were a people who were not unfamiliar to oppression and marginalization from foreign powers, most immediately, the Romans. Farmers and fishermen, they knew poverty, food insecurity, and a lack of economic surety as they lived a “peasant life [resting] uneasily on a narrow margin between subsistence and abject poverty (Green, 202).

These Nazarenes were devout, they had strong faith in YHWH God their deliverer, they knew their scriptures, and they clung to the promises of God. In particular, they clung to the promises of an anointed one whom God would send, promises recorded in the prophet Isaiah. God promised to bring deliverance, freedom, and release from oppression. The Nazarenes knew that God had not forgotten them and that one day they would receive deliverance from all the forms of bondage that oppressed them; they would receive freedom from the bondage of economics as they would be delivered from their poverty; they would receive deliverance from the bondage of politics as the condemned would receive clemency and the oppressed would experience revolution; they would experience bondage from spiritual forces of evil as the demonic powers that caused societal, spiritual, mental, and physical illness would be defeated (Culpepper, 106). They believed they would experience God’s salvation. They believed, they hoped, they expected, and they waited.

Then one day, Jesus, Joseph’s son, stood to read the scriptures during the public worship service of his hometown synagogue. This in and of itself would not have been all that unusual. It was common for various people to participate in the service, and multiple people would typically read the scriptures. It was customary for some of these people to even provide an interpretation of the scriptures – not dissimilar to our practice of listening to a sermon. So, when the congregation saw Jesus rise to read the scroll, nothing seemed amiss or out of place. After Jesus was handed the scroll of Isaiah however, something slightly unusual did occur. Jesus began to search the scroll for a specific passage, and did not simply read the assigned verse. Then, instead of reading just one passage from Isaiah, Jesus read from two different passages, Isaiah 61:1 and 58:6, but read neither in its entirety, combining the two, melding and molding aspects of each verse to create his own unique proclamation.

Then things get much more unusual. After concluding the reading, Jesus stops speaking and hands the scroll back to the assistant, and then sits back down. All eyes remain on Jesus. It would appear as though they were waiting for some words of explanation or interpretation from Jesus. Perhaps this was because Jesus had fulfilled this role in the synagogue before, or perhaps it was because what Jesus did in combining two readings was so unique it required explanation. Either way, while seated, Jesus notes the congregation’s interest and simply says as means of explanation, “today this Scripture has been fulfilled just as you heard it.” Mic drop.

At this, the silence of the crowd slowly transformed into a buzz of simultaneous conversations. Some were conversing about the messenger as they wondered at Jesus’ audacity, or beamed with pride at the hometown boy. Some were discussing the message as they wondered if finally, the prophecy of God’s anointed was fulfilled. Had God had finally acted to bring about deliverance?

All were ecstatic at the fact that God’s anointed messenger, and the enactment of God’s message of deliverance and release should begin in Nazareth. This would no doubt favor the local Nazarenes above all other people because their hometown boy was the bearer of this message. But they began to wonder, if this was the case, if Nazareth was to receive God’s unique blessing and receive the fulfillment of God’s deliverance, why then had Jesus been going around the rest of Galilee performing miracles and offering healings in places like Capernaum before he returned home?

Jesus, seemingly aware of the shift in the Nazarenes, from disbelief, to wonder, to thanksgiving, to greed, recognized that his neighbors were missing one key element of Jesus’ message. Jesus’ proclamation announced God’s deliverance for all, it was an inclusive vision of blessing and release for any and all who were poor, marginalized, exploited, forgotten, imprisoned, and sick. The Nazarenes believed they were the sole and only rightful recipients of God’s blessings. They viewed God’s deliverance as a blessing exclusive for and to them alone.

And so, Jesus did what Jesus always will do, he called them out on their selfishness, short-sightedness, and lack of understanding of the true nature of the ways of God. And these Nazarenes in turn responded to Jesus in the ways Jesus’ opponents will always respond, with sheer, murderous rage. Who did Jesus think he was, anyways?

Ironically, what seemed to offend them most was not that Jesus would claim the mantle of God’s anointed, but that Jesus dared to tell them that God’s deliverance extended beyond the Nazarenes alone and included all the poor and oppressed. To be clear, Jesus never denied God’s deliverance would be extended to the Nazarenes, but just that it would not be exclusively theirs. The Nazarenes were so appalled that God’s blessing of deliverance could extend to others that they themselves failed to receive God’s love for themselves. Because they wanted to keep God’s blessings from others, they rejected it for themselves.

Best,

Rev. Dr. Kyle Erickson

 

References:
Culpepper, R. Alan. Luke. The New Interpreter’s Bible. Nashville, TN; Abingdon Press, 1995.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. Grand Rapids, MI; William B. Erdmans Publishing Company, 1997.