Rejected (Luke 4:16-30)
Rev. Peter Heckert
01/23/22

+ Grace to you, and peace, from God our heavenly Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. + Amen.

The text for our meditation for this third Sunday of Epiphany comes from our gospel text, especially where Luke records, “And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to [Jesus]. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’”Here ends our text; my dear Christian friends …

He stops short. It’s intentional, no doubt about it, that He stops short. As Jesus is reading the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue “where He had been brought up,” all in attendance fully expected Him to continue through this pericope in the scroll of Isaiah. They expected Him to read,“to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” but also that He would finish it by saying, “and the day of vengeance of our God….” He stops short. Why does He do this?

As always, context is key, and in this case, I think context is the key, so let’s consider what led up to this point, and where things go afterwards. The previous chapter of Luke’s gospel account sees the babe of Bethlehem, all grown up by now, in the Jordan River being baptized by His cousin John. After the brief excursus Luke gives us in Jesus’s genealogy, we come to chapter four, and see things pick up with Jesus being tempted by the devil, and thwarting the old evil foe with God’s Word. All this has been leading up to Jesus commencing His earthly public ministry in the backwater of Galilee, as Luke records, “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about Him went out through all the surrounding country. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.”

He’s begun the work that He was sent to do here on earth. He’s going around, teaching in the various synagogues, performing miracles, proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom of God. And everyone is—rightly—singing His praises. Then … He comes back home to Nazareth, to people who knew Him since He was *yea*-high, who had kids that He grew up with, who might have even worked with Him in Joseph’s carpentry shop. No doubt, they’d heard about what their boy had been doing since He left town, and were excited to have Him back to teach in their synagogue, as He had in others around the region.

So Jesus gets up, reads the text we heard, rolls the scroll back up, and gives it back to the “attendant.” I’m sure you could hear a pin drop as Jesus takes His seat; everyone is waiting for what He’s about to say. He chose this text, and He stopped where He did for a reason, and everyone is waiting with bated breath to hear the reason why. Instead, Jesus opens His mouth and says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

I think there must have been a pause amongst His hearers. They initially spoke well of Him, marveling at His Word … and then they started thinking about what He said. You can almost see and hear the double-take, as they initially fawn over their boy … and then, as His statement starts to sink in, they respond with confusion and ridicule.

Here’s the reason why. For these first century Jews, “the day of vengeance of our God” was intrinsically tied to the year of the Lord’s favor! The expectation was that, not only would YHWH comfort all who mourn in Zion, but He would also pour out His wrath upon the Gentiles the faithless, sinful heathens who blasphemed the one true God at every turn! In their minds, one cannot divorce the two! Yet here, Jesus simply proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor … and that’s it. No nationalistic fervor, no scathing condemnation of Rome, no talk of destroying the pagan temples and slaughtering the heathen priests. Just … the year of the Lord’s favor for all people. Hence, we see them start to turn against Him as they ask the sarcastic question, “Is not this Joseph's son?”

Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Instead, He calls them out. “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well. … Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”

The confusion is gone, replaced now with anger, animosity, wrath. How DARE He suggest that they were like the faithless Israelites who hadn’t recognized Elijah or Elisha as prophets! How DARE He suggest that the year of the Lord’s favor would be extended to not only the children of Israel, but also the pagans and heathen Gentiles! To suggest that the epiphany of the Lord would be manifested to others in foreign lands, and that they would receive that message of comfort and good news instead of the full wrath of God, was beyond the pale! Homeboy or not, they conclude that this Jesus has got to go, and in the worst way! They drive Him out of the synagogue, out of town, and up a hill in order to thrown Him off a cliff and kill Him. 

Well, if they had wanted a miracle out of Jesus, they got one. Somehow, in a way that we can’t quite understand, Luke tells us that He simply passed through their midst and went away, going on to other places to do miracles and teach about God’s kingdom. Despite their rage, Jesus’s time simply hadn’t yet come … but eventually, it would. 

The rejection of His hometown friends and neighbors portends a greater rejection that would occur a few years later – not merely from those He grew up with, but from those who had hailed Him as a conquering King, only to call for His execution days later as they cried out, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” They may not have led Him up a hill in order to throw Him over a cliff, but they would lead Him up an oddly skullish hill, upon which He would be nailed to a cross, suspended between heaven and earth. There, Jesus wouldn’t slip inexplicably away. He would endure their mocking and ridicule, the pain and the torture. He would endure the full weight of human sin … and die. On that day, “the day of vengeance of our God,” Jesus would atone, pay the penalty, for the sins of Jew and Gentile alike. On that day, as God’s wrath is poured out upon His only-begotten Son, suspended between heaven and earth as the ultimate sin offering, the year of the Lord’s favor was proclaimed to all creation. As He drew His last breath and yielded up His Spirit, He declared to the cosmos that there was peace between God and man.

That’s why Jesus didn’t include the portion about God’s vengeance in the Isaiah text, because He knew that He Himself would bear the full wrath of God against sin. Make no mistake, both Jew and Gentile fully deserve that wrath, but there is none but Christ who could endure it. Instead, for all who trust in Christ, both Jew and Gentile, there is only comfort, for our sins are fully atoned for in His self-sacrifice on the cross! “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The time for the God of Israel to comfort those who mourn in Zion has come, to proclaim to the nations that their sins are atoned for. The year of jubilee, of the Lord’s favor, has been revealed in His Son, crucified and resurrected.

+ In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. + Amen.