When Jesus Went Home to Preach - Lectionary Reflection for Epiphany 4C (Luke 4)






21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23 He said to them, “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.’” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25 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; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
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        It's never easy to go home and preach. The congregation might be proud of your accomplishment. they may have supported you in your preparation for ministry. They may speak well of you. After all, you're one of them. But be careful what you say. You could upset their view of you if you don't toe the line. Apparently, that's what happened to Jesus when he returned home to preach in Nazareth. He had, of course, already acquired a certain notoriety. People in Nazareth had been hearing amazing stories about the hometown boy who had gone on to become a well-regarded preacher and even healer. But things quickly ran off the rails when Jesus challenged their embrace of his ministry. 

              We're told by Luke that after his baptism Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit and had begun touring towns in Galilee, preaching the good news of God's realm. Eventually, Jesus decided it was time to return home to Nazareth. When he arrived at the local synagogue on the Sabbath day, he was invited to read the text for the day and offer his interpretation of it. While everything seemed to be going well, at least at first. that welcome didn't last. His proclamation of the Year of Jubilee and his announcement that he was its fulfillment didn't cause as many ripples as you might expect, but the people seemed to be amazed at how eloquent he was. Yes, they were amazed that this hometown boy was such an accomplished teacher. Who knew that Joseph’s son would turn out like this?  Then again, if we go back in time to Jesus’ adolescent years, Luke suggests that “Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor” (Luke 2:52). Had anything changed in the intervening years to have altered the view of the people?

                 Of course, time does have a way of coloring our perspectives on things. Perhaps Jesus had been away from town for a while, perhaps a decade, and a decade is a long time. Even Luke, who is the most informative about Jesus’ years between birth and baptism, doesn’t say anything about where Jesus had been living before he went down to the Jordan to be baptized and receive his ordination from John. We like to speculate. Was he a laborer working over in Sepphoris? Was he a carpenter living in Nazareth until his recent departure? Or, had he been a religious seeker? At least a few people suggest that he had been living under the tutelage of John the Baptist or among the Essenes. In any case, the people seemed relatively happy with Jesus’ message, until he decided to stir the pot.

         Could it be that Jesus saw through the warmth of the initial welcome to something less welcoming? At first. the people were excited to hear this young man who was the talk of the region. They were proud to say that he was one of their own. But it would seem, in Luke’s mind at least, that Jesus knew that the warmth would not last because all of a sudden, from out of left field, Jesus starts giving the congregation a tongue-lashing. You have to wonder where this came from? Mark and Matthew suggest that the people in Nazareth demanded signs, but Luke gives no evidence of this. So why the angry display on Jesus’ part? Luke doesn't say, so we're left somewhat bewildered by his reaction to their welcome.

What Jesus does here is to begin laying out what the people of his hometown are going to say about him. He also tells them that they’re no different than previous generations who treated God's prophets wrongly. Even if they hadn't demanded signs yet, they will do so. Indeed, they will say to him: “Do here the things we have heard you did in Capernaum.” Before they could make that demand, he told them: “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” People in the hometown are liable to be more critical than those outside might be. They might have more expectations of the hometown preacher, expecting to receive the benefits of having a hometown hero. If Jesus didn’t perform as they expected then they would reject him. He was, you might say, in a lose-lose situation. So, perhaps he wanted to be upfront about this from the very beginning.

                I’m wondering whether there’s something else going on underneath this almost petulant display. Could it be that Jesus had experienced some kind of rejection earlier in life? It’s true that Luke suggests that as he grew up he was well received by the people, but had he felt the need to leave home? Was there something in this statement about Jesus being Joseph’s son that reveals a sense of tension between him and the people? Or, could it be that something occurs in between the statement of appreciation and Jesus’ apparent outburst? Could there have been a demand for Jesus to perform some miracles, a demand that Luke neglects to mention? In cases like this, we really want to read between the lines!  

                The references to Elijah and Elisha would fit with Luke’s overall vision of the gospel moving from Judaism into the Gentile world. Luke’s audience was likely composed of Gentile Christians. It seems to represent the growing tension between Jewish and Gentile Christian communities. In the book of Acts, Luke tells us that when Paul encounters resistance in the synagogues he moved to Gentile communities (Acts 13:44-47). In this particular case, Jesus tells the home crowd that their resistance to the Gospel allows for the Gospel to go elsewhere, to places that are more receptive to the message of Jubilee.

    To illustrate his point, Jesus mentions two specific instances. The first example is the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. Why did Elijah go to this foreign woman to seek refuge? Weren’t there any widows in Israel who could minister to him (but of course that’s the point; he was persona non grata in Israel)? So Elijah sought refuge in the land of the enemy, bringing blessing to a Gentile. The second example is similar to it. This time it's the story of  Naaman the Syrian general who came to Elisha to seek healing from his leprosy. Why did this leper experience cleansing when the lepers of Israel did not?  When Jesus shared these stories, the people got angry, really angry, so angry they wanted to kill Jesus.

As we listen to this encounter, and Jesus’ provocative sermon, do we hear something familiar? Do we hear in the exchange that is occurring now? Is there an ethnocentrism present that causes us to close our hearts and our borders to those in need? I’m thinking of the many refugees that are escaping from Afghanistan, Central America, Syria, and many other places in the world. Over the past few years, the American government and its people have become rather unwilling to embrace these folks. 

When Jesus brings up the two stories of the widow and the general, the crowd gets riled up. They feel insulted. So they turn on him. Where just a few minutes earlier everyone was admiring the hometown boy made good, now they're so enraged that they want to throw him off the cliff. Fortunately, that didn’t happen because the time of his demise had not yet come. So Jesus simply walked through the crowd and continued on, never to return home again.

            What should we make of this scene? How might those of us who are called to preach handle it? When you look more closely, Jesus seems to have caused the problem facing him. The people might have murmured a bit about his declaration of the year of Jubilee, at least those with something to lose. But this is different. This is an intentional provocation. He had attacked their sincerity and questioned their motives. If we would do this from our pulpits, surely the church board would quickly ask for our resignation. 

            We're living in an age where the mantra of "Make America Great Again" has dominated the public conversation. Across the country, laws are being passed that would ban "Critical Race Theory" in the schools. Although no one seems to know what CRT is or whether it's being taught in the schools, it's largely an effort to protect white privilege. So addressing concerns such as this can get you in trouble. It seems that many Americans find it difficult to receive criticism of our counrtry. This isn't new. It's just a new "issue." I remember growing up hearing the slogan: “America, love it or leave it.” The message communicated to us was that true patriotism is an unquestioning one. America is great. To question its greatness or its holiness is unpatriotic. It even borders on treason. We hear politicians today declaring that America has nothing to apologize for and that a leader who apologizes is a weak leader. We’re number one, and no one, especially no one from within should question that status! We hear the same thoughts emerging within the Christian community. We’re the true religion. Every other religion is demented or evil. We must defend our honor in every way we can. If you challenge it, especially if our version of Christianity is a mixture of Christianity and Americanism we will get angry!  

                What started out so well in Nazareth ended with Jesus turning away from the cliff and essentially shaking the dust off his sandals.  He didn’t resist them physically. He acted nonviolently,  but it's clear that for Jesus the focus of his ministry would lie elsewhere—in more fertile ground. At least until he headed to Jerusalem and confronted a new set of enemies that didn't kindly to his message. You know how that ended!

Image attribution: Tissot, James, 1836-1902. Jesus Unrolls the Book in the Synagogue, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56774 [retrieved January 22, 2022]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Jesus_Unrolls_the_Book_in_the_Synagogue_(J%C3%A9sus_dans_la_synagogue_d%C3%A9roule_le_livre)_-_James_Tissot_-_overall.jpg.

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