Luke 4:16-30 (Epiphany 3C)
St. John’s, Galveston (1/26/2025)
Rev. Alan Taylor
 
+ In Nomine Jesu +
 
Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
 
Jesus went to Nazareth, His hometown, the place where He was raised. And while He was there He entered the Synagogue. It was the Sabbath. Tradition dictated that someone of renown should read and comment on the Scriptures. Jesus was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and He read this passage. “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.” After He read from the scroll, He sat down in what was known as the seat of Moses. He rolled up the scroll and He handed it back to the attendant and said, “today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
 
It was a remarkable thing for Jesus to say that about what He had read. That would be true for any Old Testament prophecy, but this passage was about the coming of the Messiah, the Christ of God. And so, Jesus was saying, “He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives…to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” After He read the passage and commented on it, the people were impressed with Him. In fact, Luke tells us, “(they) all spoke well of Him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from His mouth.”
 
But then, everything changed. The change was based on two things. First, someone said, “‘Is this not Joseph’s son?’” It was just a question. It was a question though that changed everyone’s view of  Jesus. Whereas they had been impressed with Him, now they began to reject Him, at least in part, because “they knew Him,” or at least, “they knew of Him.” He was Joseph’s boy. Many of them knew Jesus as a little boy. They saw Him playing all those kids games in the streets with other kids. And now, here He was in the Synagogue making incredible claims about the coming of God’s Kingdom, even claiming that the Gospel of God’s grace was going out to the Gentiles, as it did in the days of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. With that last little bit about the Gentiles, the people in Nazareth had heard enough. They took Him up to the top of a high hill to throw Him down to His death. 
 
Perhaps you’re familiar with the phrase, “familiarity breeds contempt?” History buff that I am, I actually looked the phrase up online to see where it came from. It’s from a man named Publiuis Syrus. He was a slave of the Roman Empire in the first century. He left us a number of gems of wisdom, like “a rolling stone grows no moss,” and “there’s no honor among thieves,” and, of course, this one, which is of particular importance as we reflect on the Gospel reading for this morning, “familiarity breeds contempt.” 
”Is this not the son of Joseph?” There are a number of reasons, I think, that we sometimes tend to hold the familiar in contempt. On a very simple level, it often has to do with a disparity between what people say and what they do. Many years ago, there was a cartoon in the Lutheran Witness. It was a picture of a Pastor and his wife driving home from church. The Pastor looked over at his wife and said, “you know, my sermons would be much effective if you weren’t always saying, ‘hah,’ when I speak.”

In Jesus’ case though, there was no disparity between what He said and what He did. In His case, it seems that the people of His hometown held Him in contempt because He claimed things that were greater than they thought were possible. “Today (He said), this Scripture, is fulfilled in your hearing.” Simply put, Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, the Savior of the world. But, you see, there was no room in the people’s religious view for someone they knew to be ordinary to say such extraordinary things. In other words, it simply didn’t seem possible to them that Jesus, this man they had watched grow up in their little village, could, in fact, be the Messiah.
 
But God often does miraculous things in ordinary ways, doesn’t He? He delivered the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt by the hand of a reluctant prophet named Moses. He restored sight to the blind by making a mud cake in His hand and putting it on their eyes. He raised Lazarus from the dead, simply by saying, “Lazarus, come forth.” And, as He reminded the people of Nazareth in today’s Gospel reading, He healed Naaman, the Syrian, of His leprosy by having dip seven times in the Jordan river. Naaman himself said, “couldn’t the prophet (meaning ) lay his hands on me that I might be healed.” But God would heal Naaman, a Gentile, by him washing in the water of the Jordan river.   
 
God often does miraculous things in our lives in ordinary ways, through ordinary means. I suppose though, this is where we’re cautioned to be wary of contempt, that is, that we not expect God’s mighty works to measure up to our interpretation of what is fitting of God. Jesus Himself said, “we live beneath the cross.” “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”

The cross, or crosses we bear, are not a punishment, and they certainly aren’t a means, or a way, for us to earn our salvation. What they are is part of the way that God keeps us on the straight and narrow path of faith and trust in Him. Certainly, there are those instances in life where our experience contradicts what God tells us about Himself in His word. In fact, many are those who have held God in contempt because while He says He is good and merciful, loving and kind, their experience in life seems to suggest otherwise. Consequently, experience sometimes dictates what one believes about God rather than the solemn promises that He makes to the world and to each one of us individually in His word.
 
And so, today, Jesus calls us to repent of our tendency to hold those things that are nearest and dearest to us, including Him and His Word, in contempt. The fact is, in God’s way of doing things, the extraordinary often comes from that which is ordinary. The whole world, after all, was reconciled to God through the rejection and the seeming defeat of His own dear Son. The cross, that symbol of torture and shame, has become for us the very symbol of the redeemed of God, the mark of our baptisms and the symbol through which we come to know the grace and mercy of God. And so, as St. Paul says, “we preach Christ and Him crucified.” Even our Lord’s resurrection from the dead, brings us joy and hope in life, because we have been reconciled to God by the blood of Jesus.  
 
As the Scriptures assure us, “If God (the living God) is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me (Jesus said), 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.” He read those words in the Synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath, and then He rolled up the scroll and handed back to the attendant and said, “today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” And the people, before familiarity and contempt crept in, “spoke well of Him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from His mouth.”
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.
 
+ Soli Deo Gloria +