(A Lection Reflection on Luke 4:21-30)
If you want to say something happened in an unusually short amount of time, using “in sixty seconds” seems both specific and pretty short. This post’s title references, of course, the well-known Nicolas Cage film Gone in Sixty Seconds, about a car thief’s ability to steal a car in a minute or less.
Today’s scripture is not about stealing cars, but in its own way it’s about as violent as that film. Jesus returns to his childhood home of Nazareth, having begun his ministry elsewhere and thus being proceeded by a little reputation. He reads the scripture from Isaiah that speaks of being anointed to preach good news to the poor, freedom to the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind. He then tells his hometown neighbors, many of whom surely remember him as a boy, that “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And the townspeople, realizing that Jesus has just said he is the Messiah, are so enraged by his arrogance and possible blasphemy that they drag him out to the cliff outside of town to throw him over the edge and kill him.
Wait — that’s not right? You mean, that comment didn’t get to them? Well, no, not exactly — they “all spoke well of him.” Apparently, either they missed his meaning, or they all knew all along that he was the Messiah, but decided to play along when he set up his carpentry shop. (For those of you scoring at home, let’s be clear: it went right over their heads.)
So, if having their neighbors’ kid call himself the Savior of the World didn’t turn them from adoring fans to murderous mob, what did? Well, check this out:
“Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”
You see it? The townspeople were just fine with Jesus talking about God, and about the move of God, and about the fact that one of the most well-known prophecies in Isaiah was coming to pass right in front of them. No, they were fine with all that, because it meant they were on the inside. THEY were the ones chosen to be at the Big Unveiling, it was THEIR town that the Messiah called home. They were the Kewl Kids, privy to the Inside Information, the Secret Way. The people of Nazareth were the first Gnostics, and they were cool with that!
What took them from Grace to Rage in 60 Seconds was when Jesus told them God was moving — but not there. Good news, freedom, eyesight, all these were coming — but not in Nazareth. The good news of Isaiah was being fulfilled, and was going to be fulfilled, but they weren’t going to be part of it.
Why weren’t they? I don’t know. Commentators have proposed many reasons and interpretations, ranging from lack of faith to election to familiarity to whim of God. I don’t have a good answer, so I’m not going to try to say.
What I am going to say is this: when confronted with the fact that God is moving elsewhere but not here, how would YOU act? I can tell you how I would act — if I thought the person speaking had credibility (if I just agreed this was the Messiah, I think they have credibility), then I’d be doing some serious soul-searching, taking a long hard look at myself and my town to figure out what was up with that. In short, I’d be reflecting and repenting.
But Nazareth? Not too much into reflection, apparently. In fact, when confronted with the news that God was moving on down the road, they decide to kill the messenger. The same messenger they had been praising just one minute earlier.
See, that’s what I find fascinating about this passage. Calling something or someone “godly” or “the word of the Lord” or “sent from God” doesn’t really mean anything by itself. As long as Jesus was telling the good news, the easy words, everything was Jake. But as soon as he confronted them, they were ready to kill the Messiah themselves. Wow.
Let’s not be like that. Let’s not call something “of God” when we agree with it, and be ready to kill it when it gets hard or painful. Let’s not be the easy head-nodders of Nazareth, half listening as God himself speaks, but snapping to attention and anger when that same God tells us the truth about ourselves. Let us figure out how to hear the Good News and the Good Word with the same openness, the same application to our own lives. In the name of the One who fulfilled the scripture that day in Nazareth, amen.
This happens to preachers, too. So long as sermons are either A) uplifting and non-threatening, or B) clearly apply to somebody else- we are content, even happy. But if the message becomes personal, as I heard said decades ago, “Now you’ve quit preaching and gone to meddling.”
It is a challenge to accept or even welcome the light.
A perhaps even tougher issue is for anyone involved in ministry of any kind- is to discover or eventually realize that God is moving elsewhere but not here, for today anyway. Or at least it seems that way (so much is hidden from us here that we may not realize what good we are actually doing). If you remain confident after soul searching that you’re on the path He put you on, not much to do but press on and quit whining, and be grateful for the clarity in your life.
I can think of a simple explanation for the hostility of the people of Nazareth. Jesus was a mature adult, about age 30, when his public ministry began. There is no reason to believe that he did not have a wife and children at this time. He speaks of the need to leave family to follow him, and it is likely some or most of his disciples left families as well. We know that the Zebedee brothers up and left their father to follow Jesus.
It is natural of Jesus’ brothers to be angry at him for abandoning his family, requiring them to step up and provide support. It would be natural for their neighbors to hold negative opinions of this abandonment. However, Jesus’ behavior could be justified if he was truly following God’s call (i.e. he was an authentic Prophet of the Lord).
When Jesus appeared in Capernaum and reports of miracles came to Nazareth, there was reason to believe that perhaps Jesus was just that. Jesus had apparently led a blameless life before leaving his family and so all that would be required for Jesus to be accepted by his hometown was for him to demonstrate that he was a Prophet by doing in Nazareth what he had been reported to have done at Capernaum. When he did not, opinion turned against him.
We also know that at least one of Jesus’ brothers, James, came around to accepting that he was not only a prophet, but the messiah foretold by Isaiah, because James had a leadership role in the Jerusalem church. There is no mention of James getting involved in Jesus’ ministry in the Gospels though. I think this means that James’ change of heart came AFTER the resurrection (perhaps the risen Jesus appeared to him). Only by seeing the rising Christ did he come to know that Jesus was the real deal.
The Doubting Thomas story may be representative of all those to whom the risen Jesus had appearred in order to demonstrate his status, and to extol those who believed without seeing (for Jesus was soon to ascend and would no longer be appearring to anyone).