Epiphany +3, January 24, 2016, thoughts going in

Luke4:14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. 16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

            Although we are now past the opening innings of Epiphany with its main themes (the star/Magi, baptism of Jesus, and first miracle)... epiphanies... or aha moments continue to happen concerning Jesus. The news of him spread...(v14)...literally in the Greek his "phāmā" (fame) spread. One of the things that stands out to me about what Luke is telling us, though, is that while Jesus returns to Galilee in the "power" of the Spirit--power...taken from the Greek "dunamis"...which is where we get our word dynamite from--he also makes sure that the reader understands that "the power of the Spirit" isn't all pyrotechnics and special effects; the power of the Spirit in v14 is directly linked to his programmatic practice of teaching in vs 15. The imperfect tense denotes that teaching was a continual/ongoing thing that Jesus was all about. Taking this a step further, the teaching/didasko of the faith is always catechetical.  In other words, Jesus wasn't teaching ESL classes; he wasn't running good-parenting classes, he was teaching The Faith; he was teaching about the Kingdom of God.

            More than one commentator also draws our attention to vs16b on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. The picture being painted is that even though Jesus is the son of God and enjoys perfect relationship with the heavenly Father on that basis alone... and even though the 1st century Jewish religious expression and its institutions are often critiqued by Jesus, he nonetheless has the regular custom of attending weekly worship at the synagogue. How often we Christians grab any excuse we can to avoid going to church. The time is inconvenient; Sundays are the only "family day" we have; I don't like the pastor; I don't agree with everything the church is doing, etc. etc. These and all of our other excuses should crumble when we are confronted with the fact that the Son of God regularly attended the weekly worship of his day. The desire to follow the example of the Savior, if nothing else, should motivate us to be in God's house.

            Luke apparently does not give us all of the details of what follows. He stood up to read... could mean that he volunteered to take a turn reading the scroll, or it could mean that as a rabbi developing some fame and now returned home, the leadership of the synagogue had invited him to read (Acts 13:15-16 gives a hint of how this may have played out). We're also equally unclear as to whether the passage from Isaiah was chosen due to a 'lectionary system' in place, was chosen at random, or if Jesus purposely chose that particular passage.

            As to the passage from Isaiah itself, it's something of a conflation of verses. Perhaps Luke whittled it down on purpose to get only the nuggets he wanted. Perhaps Jesus omitted certain parts of the text on purpose. These are just guesses. Regardless, the story behind the story is that the prophet is trying to encourage the exiles who have come back to Jerusalem. However, they haven't returned to a flourishing city/religious center; they've returned to burned-out ruins. Images of bombed out Berlin from WWII should come to our minds. Originally the prophet Isaiah was delivering God's word of encouragement that the ruins around them would be rebuilt; that God was not done with them as a people; that future salvation was assured. Of course all of Isaiah’s promises are given in temporal/physical/economic terminology. He was encouraging the physical restoration of a physical people. But all such promises from God also have an ultimate meaning... a meaning that goes beyond the temporal/physical to include the spiritual, and ultimately, the eternal (everlasting spiritual-physical). And this ultimate meaning is ALWAYS wrapped up in the person of Jesus.

            In Jesus, God is saying to ALL people that he is not done with them. In Jesus, God is saying to all people that a future salvation has been secured. In Jesus God is saying to all people that the ultimate resurrection future has broken-in *now.

Cheers,

T.M.