Epiphany 4 – 2022
Luke 4:21-30
Marian Free
In the name of God who shakes us out of our complacency into a new way of seeing, a new way of being. Amen.
Today’s gospel presents something of a conundrum. The Nazarenes who begin by claiming him and being amazed, very quickly turn on him.
As Luke tells the story, Jesus, who by all accounts has begun to make a name for himself, returns to the place in which he grew up. On the Sabbath he attends the synagogue and is given the scroll from which to read. As we know from last week’s gospel, he opens the scroll at a point towards the end of the prophet Isaiah and reads from what we know as the Servant Song in which the liberating power of God is announced. When he sits down after closing the scroll, Jesus announces that the words spoken by the writer of Isaiah have been fulfilled in the hearing of those present.
These are bold words and yet – possibly because word of his healing powers have reached his home – no one takes offence. Just the opposite. Even though his audience know his family of origin (and therefore possibly the circumstances of his birth), no one is affronted. In fact Luke tells us that ‘all spoke well of him’ and reminded themselves that this was Joseph’s son. He is one of their own, someone of whom they can be justly proud and of whom they might rightly have high expectations. If Jesus can perform miracles elsewhere, how much more so among his family and for those among whom he grew up?! Surely he owes them that much.
One can imagine the air of anticipation – that is until Jesus, without any adequate warning or explanation completely dispels their hopes. He cuts short their excitement and breaks into their hopeful dreams by abruptly quoting back to them what he imagines they are thinking. “Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum,” he says, before going on to explain why this is simply impossible. “A prophet is not without honour except in his own town.”
In order to illustrate his point, Jesus reminds his audience of examples of God’s reaching out to those who do not belong the the family of Israel and of the prophets who found themselves performing miracles beyond the boundaries. In other words, Jesus appears to be reminding his audience that God’s purpose has always extended to those who do not belong to ‘the people of God’ and that he too cannot be limited by their narrow expectations.
It is no wonder that the mood of the people abruptly changes. They move from being enchanted by Jesus to being enraged. He has shattered their dreams and their hopes and pointed to a much wider vision of God’s intentions than they seem to be able to encompass.
Their disappointment and frustration can be better understood if we can picture the setting in which the people of Nazareth find themselves. Historians and archeologists believe that Nazareth was no more than a village in our terms, having a population of between 3-600 people. Pottery from that era has been identified as having come from Jerusalem leading to speculation that the population consisted of a group of practicing Jews who had been sent from Jerusalem to be a Jewish presence in what was primarily a gentile region. No doubt they felt somewhat embattled and isolated. It is small wonder that they had hoped that Jesus would remain with them, performing miracles, drawing crowds, bringing people to faith, re-judaising the population. How much easier would their task be if only Jesus were to remain, to base his mission among them.
From Jesus’ point of view however, their apparent desire to hold on to him, to contain him and perhaps even to direct him, is evidence of their narrowness of vision, of their desire to build the future on their terms, not God’s. The very fact that they cannot see that the kingdom of heaven will include those outside their religious and racial boundaries is proof that they have read the scriptures in a narrow and self-centred way – one that focuses on them and on their desire to return to the glory days of the past rather than on a willingness to expand their vision and to move into the future.
The problem then, as now, is that God/Jesus will not and cannot be contained by the limits of our imagination. God/Jesus has always operated on the fringes, has always (as Jesus points out) demonstrated an interest in and concern for those on the margins and for the outsider. God/Jesus has always bent the rules and done the unexpected. Yet, we as do the people of Nazareth, continue to believe that we know and understand God and that we know how God will act in any given situation.
Like the people of Nazareth, most of us are guilty at some time or another of believing that our understanding of God (and of how God behaves) is the ‘right’ understanding. There are probably more times than we would like to remember that we have have imposed our own hopes and desires on to our images of God/Jesus. We, as much as Jesus’ contemporaries, are guilty of wanting to think that we know God well enough to know how God does/will act in any given situation.
Jesus’ intention, now as then, is to ask us to think outside the box, to let go of our cherished ideas about God and about faith and to be constantly open to the ways in which God might act in our present.
Today’s gospel challenges us to rethink our relationship with God and to ask ourselves whether our image of God makes us feel comfortable, self-confident and self-assured, or whether our idea of God constantly unsettles us, challenges our pre-conceptions and allows us to be alert, expectant and excited and open to what God might do and how God might reveal Godself next.
Tags: defying expectations, outthinking God, sermon in Nazareth
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