Redeemer Lutheran Church

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

We continue working our way through the season of Epiphany and the Epiphany theme continues in today’s Gospel. Jesus is still showing Himself to people. He is still beginning His ministry. Nevertheless, there is something very different in the Gospel chosen for today.

So far in Epiphany, everything has been very positive. The Wise Men have come to worship the newborn king. The people who gathered at the Jordan saw the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus in the form of a dove and heard the voice of the Father from heaven. The disciples went to a wedding in Cana and drank wine that had been water just a little bit earlier in the day. So far, people see Jesus as the authentic Messiah. They do not understand the full implications of Jesus’ authenticity, but they trust Jesus. They believe in Him.

That changes in today’s Gospel. Jesus has established Himself as a rabbi and has been teaching in the synagogues of Galilee. He came to His own home town, Nazareth. He revealed Himself in the synagogue on the Sabbath as He had been doing throughout Galilee. You would think that the city fathers in Nazareth would want to present the key to the city to Jesus, but they didn’t. Instead of welcoming Jesus, His own people rejected Him. Jesus presented His Epiphany in the synagogue in Nazareth and the people tried to kill Him.

The account begins as Jesus read the scripture of the day. The reading for the day was a prophecy from Isaiah concerning the signs and activities of someone who had been anointed for God’s special work. This is part of a longer reading that describes all the blessings that God’s people will receive through this Anointed One. In Hebrew, the word for Anointed One is Messiah, in Greek it is Christ. Thus, this passage in Isaiah tells of the coming Messiah, the future Christ. The person who fulfilled this prophecy would be the promised one of Israel.

The topic of the sermon that Jesus preached after He read from Isaiah was the fulfillment of the prophecy. Anyone who had been at the Jordan would have seen the Holy Spirit rest on Jesus. They would have heard the voice from heaven, [Luke 3:22] “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” At His baptism, Jesus took up our sins in order to carry them to the cross. It would make sense that He was the Lord’s Anointed One, the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus is now bringing this good news to the people in the synagogue in Nazareth. Jesus simply told them that He was the fulfillment of this prophecy.

The people reacted strongly to His words. After all, they remembered seeing Jesus grow up. They remembered that, when Jesus was old enough, He labored along with Joseph in the building trade. He hadn’t seemed like anything special then. He was exceptionally bright and precocious, but to say He was the Anointed One couldn’t possibly be right. Besides, if He was the Messiah, wouldn’t He at least perform the same signs in His hometown that He had performed elsewhere? In fact, shouldn’t the signs in His hometown be even better? Ultimately these people decided that Jesus preached beautifully and graciously, but His actual message was too bizarre. They just couldn’t take Him seriously.

Jesus perceived their thoughts. He diagnosed their problem:
“and he said to them, “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.” And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.

It wasn’t just that they wanted Jesus to do some miracles. They were guilty of wanting Jesus on their own terms. They wanted Jesus to proclaim that there was something special about them because they were from His hometown. They wanted Jesus to declare them especially worthy of His gifts because of who they were.

Then Jesus explained the truth of the situation. God’s acceptance does not depend on merit or worthiness, but on grace alone. Jesus demonstrated this using the example of a pagan widow and a pagan general. God miraculously supplied the Widow of Zarephath with oil and flour so that she could feed Elijah and her family during a famine. Naaman the Syrian was the commanding general of the Syrian army, an enemy of Israel. Never the less, God worked through His prophet Elisha to cure Naaman’s leprosy. Both of these events demonstrate the sheer grace of God’s care.

For some people, though, God’s grace is a very divisive topic. When God says that we already have all His gifts by grace that means that there is nothing we can do to earn those gifts. Some people don’t like it when someone tells them there is nothing they can do to earn God’s favor. Instead of rejoicing in the grace God freely gives to us, they complain. They feel insulted. Their own pride prohibits them from receiving the grace that God wants to give to them. They turn God’s grace inside out and see it as condemnation.
The crowds in the synagogue in Nazareth were such people. Instead of receiving the grace that Jesus offered to them, they became angry. They were so angry that they wanted to throw Jesus over a cliff and then rain stones down on Him until He was dead. Jesus finally gave them a sign. When they tried to throw Him from the cliff, He simply walked away and no one was able to stop Him. How sad that the only sign they received was the sign of God leaving their presence.

We still come to God with our agendas. We still come to God with our preconceived notions of how He should deal with us. Everyone does this. After all, we are all conceived in sin. We are all enemies of God until He rescues us from sin. So we all think we know the “who, what, when, where, and why” of our relationship with God. We have it all figured out until Jesus comes to us and explains how things really are.

Jesus wants to give us the gifts that He purchased for us with His holy life, His suffering, and His death. He wants to give the gifts that He secured with His resurrection from the dead. He wants to tell us how His death on the cross has freed us from our captivity, opened our eyes to His salvation, and liberated us from sin’s oppression.

He comes to us as He came to the people of Nazareth in their synagogue. He has given us His teachings in the words of the Bible. He has promised that when we hear His words, the Holy Spirit will work in us to establish and strengthen our belief in Him. The gifts that Jesus offered to the people in Nazareth will be ours.

Sadly, Jesus’ offer is still divisive. There are some who reject His gifts and label them oppressive. There are some whose pride will not allow them to admit that they are sinners who need God’s grace. There are some who reject the Anointed One’s agenda rather than change the sinful agenda with which they were born. Such people would rather go to hell than surrender the plans they have for themselves. They follow the example of the people of Nazareth.

Those who have the Holy Spirit’s gift of faith are like the people in today’s Old Testament reading. They had returned from exile in Babylon. They had re-built Jerusalem. Now, they heard the Word of the Lord from the Law of Moses, the Torah. It was a special day when scribes once again proclaimed and explained the Torah in the city of Jerusalem.

But as the people heard the Word of the Lord, they began to realize the magnitude of the sins they had committed against God. They understood how wrong their plans had been. Their sin brought them to tears. As the people repented in tears, those who were doing the reading and explaining were able to proclaim the Gospel, “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep. Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” It was not too long after this day that the priests once again began the sacrifices that pointed forward to the Messiah who would save His people from their sins. It was not long after this day, that Jerusalem was once again the living object lesson that pointed forward to the Messiah, the Anointed One.

These people had not only been captive in Babylon, but they had also been captives of sin. The Persians had given them the freedom to return home, but, more importantly, these people experienced the tears of repentance followed by the joy of the forgiveness of sins. Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah for them just as much as He did for the people of Nazareth. He has also fulfilled that prophecy for you and for me. The people in Nazareth rejected the fulfillment and the only sign they received was Jesus walking away. The people who heard the words of the Torah from the mouth of Ezra wept over their sin and received the joy of forgiveness for that sin.

What is it that Jesus continues to do through His pastors that He has given and continues to give to His Church? The answer is this: nothing more and nothing less than what He began to do Himself and has continued to do ever since that day in Nazareth. The pastor is called to preach the Good News to the poor by telling them of this Gospel of God – called to proclaim release to the captives by absolving the penitent of their sins – called to give sight to the blind by showing them Christ crucified for the sins of the world – called to set at liberty those who are oppressed by taking them to the empty Easter tomb – and called to read the Word to the people of God. What Word? Well, today, on this day, it is this Word of God …

“The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
because He has anointed Me to preach Good News to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”

The eyes of all in the sanctuary were fixed on Him, and because the Word made flesh was present with His people by His Word that day, He continued to forgive, to release, to give sight, to set at liberty, and to proclaim Jubilee to them, right there. And thus faithful pastors in Christendom joyfully state what has continued since the Word began: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus truly is the fulfillment of God’s promises. He is the Anointed One, the Christ, the Messiah. He has preached the Good News of the Kingdom of God. He has shown us the light of His salvation. With His life, suffering, and death on the cross, He has freed those oppressed by sin. With His resurrection, He offers the Lord’s favor to us. He gives these things to us through the Holy Spirit’s gift of faith. God has promised all these things to us and today they are fulfilled in our hearing. Let us not respond not like the people of Nazareth, but rather, like the people of Jerusalem, who wept over their sins and then received with joy God’s gift of forgiveness, life and salvation. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.