It is said that you can never go home again once you leave. There is a lot of truth to this adage, especially if you leave small towns and cities like the ones I grew up in and head to the big city. Most of my hometown friends who headed off to college didn’t return. While we enjoyed growing up in our hometown, college seemed to change us. Now, I don’t know if Jesus went off to college, but it appears something similar happened to him after he reached adulthood.
According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus began his ministry at the age of thirty (Luke 3:21-23). We don’t know what happened to Jesus between the age of twelve when the family returned to Nazareth after a visit to Jerusalem and the age of thirty when he began his ministry in Galilee except that he “increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine favor” (Luke 2:52). People have tried to fill in the blanks with trips to India and England, or time spent with a Jewish monastic group called the Essenes. It’s also possible that he left Nazareth to join up with John the Baptist and his disciples. He could have also gone to work as a laborer in the nearby metropolis of Sepphoris. Ultimately, no one knows for sure.
Since today’s Gospel reading is part two of a two-part story and because I wasn’t here last Sunday, I decided to share the entire story. Luke tells us that after Jesus began his preaching ministry in Galilee he paid a visit to his hometown of Nazareth on the Sabbath. He went to the synagogue he grew up in, as this was his custom. When he arrived at the synagogue, the home folks were excited to see him because word was spreading throughout the region about his ministry (Luke 4:14-15). Naturally, they wanted to hear him speak. So, they invited him to read the scripture for the day and offer a few words of interpretation.
The text for that day came from Isaiah 61. He read these words:
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 set free those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Lk 4:18-19).
After he finished reading, he sat down and began to preach. He told the congregation the promise of Isaiah had been fulfilled that very day. This was a rather bold statement since he was applying that promise to himself.
Everyone was amazed at his words and spoke well of him. After all, he was one of their own. But, even though he was a good preacher, they were a bit puzzled by his message.
Wasn’t this Joseph’s son? While they knew the family and watched Jesus grow up, they didn’t remember anything special about him. He just grew up to be a common laborer like his father. So how did he learn to be such a wise preacher?
Sometimes the hometown folks don’t leave a person much room for growth. Besides it’s hard to overcome a reputation once you’ve developed it. So if you leave town, going home is difficult. This is true for me and maybe it has been true for you.
As the story progresses, we get the sense that the mood is beginning to swing against him. Maybe Jesus also sensed that a mood change was taking place because he began to question their motives in welcoming him home. He told them they would soon demand that he perform miracles like the ones he did in other towns. After all, don’t the home folks deserve special treatment? He ended his message by telling the people: “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”
While Jesus may seem a bit belligerent here, perhaps he had reasons to be concerned. After all, God’s prophets rarely receive a hero’s welcome. That was true back then and it’s true today. More often than not the people either run the prophets off or kill them. Modern prophets like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were silenced because they didn’t bend the knee to the powers and principalities of our day. One of the reasons prophets receive a less-than-stellar welcome is they often deliver bad news, and no one likes getting bad news even if it supposedly comes from God.
Jesus told two stories to illustrate his point. First, he pointed to Elijah, who fled to a foreign country because the king got mad when Elijah told him God was going to withhold the rain until the king repented of his sins. While Israel suffered, God blessed the foreign town where Elijah took refuge. Then there’s Elisha who cleansed the Syrian general Naaman of his leprosy even though there were plenty of lepers in Israel who needed relief. These stories suggest that God isn’t bound by our borders and that God shares blessings however God chooses.
Unfortunately, these stories didn’t sit well with the people in Nazareth. They were probably thinking: “Who does Jesus think he is, coming here to lecture us?” Besides, how could Jesus be God’s anointed so he could fulfill Isaiah’s promise and proclaim good news to the poor and the year of God’s favor? How could he claim to be a prophet like Elijah or Elisha? So, whatever goodwill existed at the beginning of the day quickly dissipated.
The people of Nazareth became so angry at Jesus’ words that they drove him out of town and tried to throw him off a cliff. Fortunately, he passed through their midst and moved on to the next town, but Jesus learned the hard way that you can’t go home again!
The message Jesus delivered to the people of Nazareth let the people know that not only was he God’s anointed, but God had given him a Spirit-led ministry that would bring good news to the poor and the marginalized of this world. Even though the home folks probably fit that description, they didn’t think of themselves in that way. They didn’t appreciate Jesus’ tone and his suggestion that God might be the God of all the nations.
It is good to remember that while God gave Abraham and his descendants a special calling to be a blessing to the nations, God doesn’t belong to any particular nation, including the United States. Neither does God belong to the Presbyterians, Disciples, or any other denomination. There simply are no boundaries or borders that constrain God’s love and mercy.
When it comes to interpreting this story, I appreciate this word from Walter Brueggemann.
From the outset of the Bible, certainly in God’s command of Sinai and surely in the ministry of Jesus, signals of neighborliness are endlessly enacted. That finally is what is odd and true and demanding and glorious about the Gospel, that God wills and acts toward a neighborliness that curbs greed, vetoes fear, and removes the causes of violence. We baptized people are the ones who have signed on for this vision and act toward it. [Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, vol. 1, p. 143].
Later in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus spoke of God’s command that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. When his conversation partner asked him to define who this neighbor was, Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan. According to Jesus, it was the Samaritan, a despised foreigner, who proved to be the true neighbor when he stopped to care for the person who had been mugged and left to die by the side of the road. Jesus contrasted the Samaritan with the religious leaders who passed by the man in need (Luke 10:25-37). As we ponder Jesus’ word about neighborliness, we must face the same question. Who are the neighbors God would have us love?
When it comes to defining neighborliness, Jesus offers us a rather broad vision. The question is, how do we get on board? How do we live out Jesus’ vision that includes good news for the poor, release for the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the proclamation of the year of God’s favor? In other words, how might we embrace Jesus’ message about God’s kingdom that has already begun to take root, but which we too often resist?
When Jesus arrived in Nazareth, he was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. So, it’s not surprising his sermon caused quite a stir. That’s what happens when a prophet comes to town, especially when the prophet hails from the hometown! When Jesus comes to us and invites us to share in God’s Jubilee, what will our answer be? Are we ready to transgress boundaries and borders so that all humanity might flourish?
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
Troy, Michigan
Epiphany 4C
February 2, 2004
Image attribution: Tissot, James, 1836-1902. Brow of the Hill Near Nazareth, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55366 [retrieved February 1, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_Brow_of_the_Hill_near_Nazareth_(L%27escarpement_de_Nazareth)_-_James_Tissot.jpg.
Comments