January 26, 2025 Sermon
Sermon title: “Jesus Returns to Nazareth”
Scripture: Luke 4:14-21
(Other lectionary suggestions include Nehemiah 8 (selections), Psalm 19, and I Corinthians 12:12-31a.)
Luke 4:14-21
The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry
14Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth
16When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The real fireworks of Luke 4 starts after today’s Scripture reading. Jesus has just read from Isaiah 61, the business about preaching good news to the poor, letting the blind see, and releasing the prisoners. All that is fine, until Jesus says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The reason the congregation was irritated by Jesus is that they remember him as a young boy, the son of Joseph and Mary, and they really weren’t going to let him grow up! “Who does this guy think he is? Isn’t he the carpenter’s son?” And so on.
Have you ever done that? “Local boy makes good,” but we remember when he was just a child, knee high to a grasshopper, as some would say. And we don’t really want to hear any criticism from this upstart! But that is what Jesus did: he CHALLENGED them to see beyond his childhood, pay attention to what he was saying as a MAN! And they were in no mood to hear it.
The “back story” here is that Jesus has just resisted temptation in the wilderness, and the Spirit has sent him back into Galilee, and we are told that he showed up in “all their synagogues,” as Luke puts it. He was now visiting his home congregation, and the local folks wanted to see what they produced! They were not happy, because the little boy had become a man, and he had grown-up things to say.
These “grown-up things” involved grace for ALL people, not only Jesus’s hearers. But Jesus’s hearers didn’t want to hear that! They wanted to hear that God was going to save ISRAELITES and punish their enemies. We can’t know what Jesus said, but apparently, he said some things related to larger issues from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. Jesus was calling on Israel to be a light to the nations. He was apparently saying Messiah-like things: he had “not come to inflict punishment on the nations, but to bring God’s love and mercy to them.” This was an Old Testament idea, but most first-century Jews did not want to hear it. From the very beginning of Jesus’s ministry, he was talking about peace and not about war. It is easy to be critical of Jesus’s home “church,” as it were. But how would WE have reacted? Are we ready to make peace with Putin, North Korea, or China?
At this point I’d like to say something about what it means to be a minister. Of course, you want a person that you’ll like, and most ministers want to be liked! But ministers also have a responsibility, too, whether they are just out of seminary or have been preaching for years. I think in today’s Scripture lesson Jesus was telling his listeners what he thought they should hear, whether they liked it or not! And his message was that God loved ALL people, not just the ones they saw in synagogue every week.
I heard a story from a UCC minister before I came to this church. There was this church that had just hired whom they thought was a great minister....and his first sermon was terrific! Well, on his next Sunday in the pulpit, he preached the VERY SAME SERMON, and he did this for several Sundays in a row. Finally, somebody got up the courage to say something to the preacher, saying, “You know, Reverend, that sermon you have been preaching is a great sermon, but I think now we’d like to hear something else.” The minister said, “As soon as you start doing those things I mentioned in that sermon, I’ll move on to something else.”
Well, I’m not sure that’s so funny, but it does make a point: we do need to do what God wants us to do. And it is the job of every preacher to tell the people what he/she thinks they should do. Being a minister is an interesting occupation: one wants to serve a church faithfully, but what does that entail? You want a minister whom you like, and the minister wants to like you. Think about it: it is strange to pay somebody to tell you maybe something that you don’t want to hear. Have you ever thought about that? You want somebody to lead you spiritually, and in most denominations you pay your minister! It is an interesting vocation: you may be paying somebody to tell you what you may not want to hear! I don’t have an answer. I like this church and I think you like me. But to be truly faithful to one’s calling, sometimes the preacher may have to step on some toes! Don’t worry! I have nothing weighing on my heart right now, or nothing that you don’t already know. But being a minister and preacher is an interesting calling. How does one serve God and serve the congregation, too? In today’s Scripture, Jesus was telling the people what he thought they should hear, and they were so angry with what he had to say that they tried to do away with him. But he somehow escaped.
Let me get specific about what Jesus said and what made his listeners angry. He talked about centuries earlier in the days of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. There had been a 3-and-a-half-year famine in Israel, and the prophet Elijah was sent to help out a widow, but not a Hebrew woman! She was from Zarephath, near Sidon. And he helped her: Elijah helped a non-Jew, and Jesus’s listeners didn’t like hearing this!
The prophet Elisha was sent to help somebody, but again, not a Hebrew but a Syrian general by the name of Naaman. He was a leper and needed help. Elisha healed him, once Naaman got serious about getting healed. But those listening to Jesus didn’t like hearing this, either, and they tried to throw him off a cliff. They were not successful.
Verses 28 and 29 say this: “When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue flew into a rage. They got up and threw him out of town. They wanted to fling him off the mountain on which the town was built. But he slipped through the middle of them and went away.”
Says N. T. Wright, “Israel’s God was rescuing the wrong people.” From the beginning Jesus was about love and forgiveness, even loving and forgiving one’s enemies. This was not a popular message among many of Jesus’s own people. Jesus was not going to be a military leader, and “Unless they could see that this was the time for their God to be gracious, unless they abandoned their futile dreams of a military victory over their national enemies, they would suffer defeat themselves at every level - military, political, and theological.”
I’ll have to hand it to Jesus: he certainly didn’t try to cozy up to his first audience! Did he hear, “Good sermon! Good sermon!” No, they tried to kill him on his first day in the pulpit! Such courage! Such honesty! What a man! What a Son of God! Amen.
Pastor Skip
