Luke 4:14–30
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 18th April 2021
There must have been a stir in and around the town when it got out that Jesus was coming home and would be preaching in the synagogue that Saturday. He had quit his job a year ago and the wildest rumours were circulating about what he was saying and doing. Most people came to synagogue that day.
It was a courtesy to ask a visiting rabbi to read from the Prophets and then to speak. Jesus chose his own reading—actually a couple of well-known passages strung together from the Book of Isaiah. It was a reading that was familiar to most Jews. It began: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me …” It was God promising that to send a messenger at the end of the age to announce his return. This messenger would signal the arrival of the age of salvation. As I said, they had heard it many times and could guess what the sermon would be about. But the way Jesus read the passage made them sit up. He did what we are taught not to do: he emphasized the pronoun. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me … And that turned a long-range prophecy into the announcement itself. He read it like he was the prophesied end-time messenger. People probably thought he had made a mistake, but when he rolled up the scroll and returned it to the leader, and all ears were straining to hear him, he said “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears.” There could be no doubt, he was claiming to be the herald of the new age.
The reading went like this:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me (this was a reference to his baptism, when God anointed him as the promised king). To announce salvation to the poor, he has sent me. To proclaim freedom to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To release the oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
This was his reading, and what followed next was not a sermon, but an announcement. He simply affirmed that the reading was coming true as he spoke it: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears.”
What was he saying? “To announce salvation to the poor he has sent me.” Salvation for the poor! Who were they—and the captives, and the blind, and the oppressed? Themselves, of course. They, the chosen people of God, who for their rebellion had been sent into captivity among the nations, who were like prisoners in a lightless dungeon, who were trodden down and oppressed by Rome, who had been reduced to a state of virtual beggary by the judgement which lay heavily upon them. They were the poor—every one of them in the synagogue that day— it was part of their national self-understanding.
But now according to Jesus, all that was coming to an end. The final Jubilee was about to begin. Everything wrong was about to be put right. No wonder they were amazed at what Luke calls “his words of grace.” God’s return meant he was now about to forgive them.
The Jubilee was a unique provision of their law. Moses laid it down that when Joshua led them into Canaan, the land was to be divided up and each family was to receive a share. “Families,” note! Not every man and woman. This was when men were still men, and women, women; when a man needed his woman and she needed her man—to do the heavy lifting; when a man’s first task was to care for and protect his wife: to plant a crop and build a home, so she could have children, and they could be a family. And each family was given a share in the land by God, as an abiding possession—their “inheritance.”
The world being what it is, some families ran into misfortune and were forced to sell. But under the law of Jubilee, land could not be sold outright, as with our freehold system; it could only be leased until the next Jubilee. So, at the start of every fiftieth year, the great ram’s horn trumpet was blown throughout the land—debts were cancelled, slaves went free, and every family could return to their ancestral inheritance. There was this periodic renewal every 49 years. How long the system lasted no one knows. After the invasions and exiles no one knew whose land was whose, and it became impossible. But the law remained, and the promise, that in the tenth Jubilee, whenever that would be, God would bring about a great final restoration of everything. This was what Jews waited for, and this was what Jesus announced that day in Nazareth. There was quite a stir.
So, what was his message? To announce the year of God’s favour—yes, but what did that mean? Nothing less than a whole new world! Or more precisely, a new age! Jesus does not mention the kingdom of God, but that is what he is talking about. The old age has run its course, evil has done its worst, God has come to establish his government in the world, and that will mean liberation from all manner of evils: climatic disasters, global warming, floods, fires, famines, epidemics; war, poverty and oppression, inept and unjust government, human sin and all forms of predatory behaviour, sickness and insanity, even death. They had experienced it all in large measure. Prophet after prophet had promised God would one day bring it to an end. Jesus announced that the time had come. That was his gospel: “the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel.” (Mark 1:15) And if that was his gospel, it should also be ours.
At this point we need to do a reality check. Some of you sitting here will be thinking people would have to be mad to believe all this. And, of course, Christianity’s big problem is that it didn’t happen. There was no new age. The world continues as it always has. Jesus must have been deluded; this proves it.
Luke is aware of this reaction; it is very like the response of the people in the synagogue that day. As his Gospel unfolds, and as we shall discover in the weeks ahead, one thing Jesus was not: he was not deluded. A man who healed thousands, and stopped a storm, and fed a hungry crowd, and raised a dead girl was no fantasy merchant. No! The answer to the problem—and it is a problem—lies in the reaction to the message.
You can imagine what it would be like if one of you went off preaching for a year and then came back and announced that he was God’s appointment to save the world. Murmuring was rising all round the synagogue, and Jesus began to dialogue with people’s thoughts.
You will say to me, ‘Doctor, heal yourself!’ and, ‘What we hear you have been doing in Capernaum, do here in your own hometown.’
They reckoned the promised King-Messiah would look a bit more impressive, dress for the part, travel first-class, recruit a less disreputable band of followers. They were not impressed. And they were doubtful about what they had heard of his exploits in other places; if he wanted any following from, he should prove himself. And it is much the same now: Jesus does not measure up to our expectations of a world-changer.
Nazareth did not believe; the people turned against him. Well, so what? How would that stop him healing the world, if he really could, and God meant him to? But what if Israel refused to believe? What if the nation itself turned against him? If Australia turns against him, that will not derail God’s plans. Australia will just miss out. But what if Israel—the chosen people—refuse him. The kingdom of God was promised to the Jews; can there be a kingdom of God without them? This is where the question of believing becomes a game-changer. A week before he died Jesus looked out across Jerusalem and wept: “Would that today you knew the things that make for peace, but they are hidden from your eyes.” Disaster would now overtake them: “because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” The Saviour came—God came—the new age began, but Israel turned its back. What then?
At this point Jesus reminds them of a couple of chapters in their own history. In the time of the great falling-away, when God brought a three-year drought on the land, and sent the prophet Elijah to turn things around, Elijah lodged not with an Israelite family, but with a Gentile woman in Lebanon. And his presence brought great blessing, That is an important point: if you reject God’s messenger, you reject God, and you forfeit the blessing of God, whatever that blessing may be. The widow of Zarephath and her family were fed throughout the whole time of the famine, and her son was returned from the dead. And then there was Elisha and Naaman; Elisha was Elijah’s successor, and Naaman was the commander of the Syrian army. There were any number of lepers in Israel at that time, but it was this Syrian whom Elisha cured.
This was all too much for the people of Nazareth: first the blasphemous claim that he was the promised king, and now the impossible suggestion that Israel might forfeit the blessing of God in favour of their Gentile enemies. The synagogue exploded. With cries of “Blasphemy,” Jesus was hustled out of the building and up the hill to where executions were carried out. The Jews did this by stoning. It was a communal method. The guilty one was pushed from a rise and stunned by the fall; then the accuser threw the first stone, and the whole community joined in. They kept throwing stones until he was dead.
It is difficult to be sure just what happened next. Luke says Jesus walked through their midst and went on his way. Perhaps when it came to it, Jesus turned to face the crowd, and face the one who had to take the initiative—lay hands on him. Perhaps he could not. Perhaps he lost his nerve, and as Jesus moved forward the crowd became confused and opened up and he went away. What is clear is that Jesus’ ministry in Nazareth was finished. He would go somewhere else and his blessings would go with him.
Luke tells us this story for several reasons. Firstly, he wants us to hear Jesus preach the gospel; this was one way he did it: he read the Scriptures, pointed out the promise, and declared that he had come to make it come true. People then had to decide whether they would believe him. Luke’s second reason is to alert us at the beginning of Jesus’ mission to the fact that Israel would not believe in him, also that this was likely to turn violent. It was as if this one little incident prefigured the whole course of his mission. Perhaps even his escape from the crowd prefigured what happened later. They would grab him again—not a mob this time, but the leaders of the nation—they would kill him, but God would take him out of their hands, and raise him from the dead. His mission would continue.
So, did God then withdraw his promised kingdom? The answer is yes and no. Yes, the new age of healing and peace was withdrawn, or better, postponed. But having come to his world, he did not leave it unchanged. “He came to his own and his own did not receive him, but to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”—and live forever (John 1). And this is Luke’s third point: Israel’s promised blessings would begin to be enjoyed by others. Through his death and resurrection Jesus opened the door for us Gentiles to come into his kingdom.
What this was to mean at a global level is that Israel would forfeit its place as the recipient of God’s mercies, and they would pass to the nations of the world. We have seen this playing itself out in the last 2000 years of world history. Not that Israel has lost its place as the chosen people of God. Islam teaches that the Jews have lost their place permanently and been replaced by Muslims. Many Christians think that Israel has been replaced by the Church. But this is not the teaching of Jesus or of the New Testament. The Church will forever be Israel and the nations. “You will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” said Jesus. “Until,” he said: “until.” “Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled,” he says in another place (Luke 21). “A hardening has come upon Israel until the full number of the Gentiles come in,” says Paul (Romans 11). There will be no kingdom of God without the full participation of the Jews. But for now, Israel remains hardened, and wherever the gospel has gone elsewhere in the world, there has been blessing.
Which brings us back to us here. Jesus announcement of a new age for the poor is before us this morning, and we have to decide what we will do with it. Who are the poor? We are the poor! How are we poor? Our world is out of control. Politicians do their best, but as fast as they fix up one problem, another opens up. It is like we live below a big dam wall. Cracks keep opening up and water starts to gush out. They block one hole and another opens up; and the holes get bigger. At a personal level, we struggle for happiness, but it eludes us. We are surrounded by the battered, the bruised, and the blighted. We struggle to shore up our lives. With enough money and everything insured, we can create a bubble of happiness. And then the insurance company refuses to pay, or your wife walks out, or the scammers get you, or your health breaks down. And overshadowing it all is death which is coming for us all. Yes, we are the poor.
But here in the lucky country it is not like this. “I am rich, I have prospered, I need nothing.” That is what they were saying in the church at Laodicaea. But Jesus says to them: “Actually, you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” (Revelation 3) And so are we. The decision before us is whether we will trust Jesus and believe his gospel of the kingdom—become part of his kingdom now—or continue with our futile efforts to make a life for ourselves. If we say no to him, it will not hurt God. He will just turn elsewhere and the blessings that could be ours will go to others.