I grew up in the small town of Aledo, Illinois in the 1980s. It was a very sheltered and protected environment. In elementary school our principal Melvin Larson read announcements over the intercom every morning. On a typical Friday he would say something like “lunch for today is fish sticks, coleslaw, fruit cocktail, wacky cake, and milk. Have a nice weekend and feel free to attend the church of your choice.” Today no public-school principal would encourage people to attend church in their school announcements and he probably should not have been doing it then but the reality is that in the 1980s in my hometown the churches were really active. In a town with a population that was slightly less than four thousand the number of churches was in the double digits and if you count the country churches the count probably was close to twenty. My family was active in the Lutheran Church and of course there was Sunday School and worship which we attended regularly, and the church was a big part of our social life as well. There were the potlucks and the church picnic each year and the friends and family that you would talk to after worship. But our social life was not just limited to our church. I took a couple of years of piano lessons and gave two rather inept piano recitals at the Methodist Church. The Baptists had the most active youth group in town and I watched Super Bowl XXII with them. I am not sure if the House of the Risen Son was part of any denomination but I do know that their gym was frequently open and it was a place to hang out and play full court basketball. The churches played a really important role in the town’s social life. If one would have been excluded from the churches in town at that time it would have been like being exiled as it would have essentially meant being excluded from the life of the community and having a life that was isolated and diminished. What really strikes me in today’s text is that Jesus is not worried about his popularity or his approval rating as he provokes anger in his hometown synagogue. Jesus is so devoted to his ministry and his message that he is willing to be rejected by those who know him and to be excluded from the life of the community in Nazareth.
The lectionary actually splits the narrative of Jesus’ preaching at the synagogue in Nazareth into two parts. Last week’s Gospel reading included the first part where Jesus neatly summarized his ministry in a short sermon as he quoted the prophet Isaiah. Jesus declares that he is here to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and the oppressed, and to bring recovery of sight to the blind. This brief but powerful message was initially well regarded as those who heard him received his message with joy and wanted to understand more about it. Jesus does go on speaking the truth of God but as he pushes his hometown audience beyond their comfort zone their mood changes. In bringing up these stories of Elijah and Elisha he is still proclaiming the good news but those assembled become much less receptive to Jesus’ message.
Each Gospel is written through a different theological lens and while all of the Gospels tell the story of the life and ministry of Jesus each have a slightly different emphasis. Matthew and Mark also describe Jesus being rejected at Nazareth but their accounts are shorter and much less dramatic as they do not include Jesus reading from the scroll of Isaiah or the people threatening to hurl Jesus off the cliff. By beginning the narrative of Jesus’ public ministry in Galilee with this story Luke characterizes Jesus as a prophet. To identify Jesus as a prophet means that he speaks for God and suffers rejection from those to whom God sends him. Prophets are willing to suffer rejection and ridicule because they have a passion for justice that is deep in their hearts. In the opening pages of his classic book The Prophets Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that “To us a single act of injustice – cheating in business, exploitation of the poor – is slight; to the prophets, a disaster.” Heschel goes on to write that “we rarely grow indignant or overly excited” over acts of injustice but “[t]o the prophets even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions.” By presenting Jesus as a prophet at the start of his public ministry Luke is making it clear that Jesus has come into the world to bring salvation to the poor and to the oppressed.
In our popular culture prophets are often presented inaccurately. We have this image of prophets as those who tell us about the future. Looking ahead is an important part of prophecy as prophets are called to inspire us with idealized visions of how things will look in the future. However, the main purpose of prophecy is not about making predictions. Prophets tell the truth about the present and give us assurance of God’s presence. Prophets are the people who deliver the message about what is really happening on the ground because they are connected to the realities of daily life. Prophecy often occurs in isolated and neglected places like the village of Nazareth so we often do not hear these voices which are speaking truth. I recently heard a podcast which featured stories from West Virginia. There was a thirty-something married mother of three who was describing her family’s perilous economic situation. Her husband was a miner who was making $31 per hour. He became addicted to opioids and needed help. He enrolled in a two-week inpatient treatment program but his job did not provide him with any medical leave so he was terminated from his employment. After he completed his treatment, he found another job but it only paid $12 per hour. The woman said that they were barely able to survive and that they made it solely through charity and help from family. After three years her husband was finally able to find another job which paid him close to what he previously made. This is just one of many prophetic voices which talk about the need for paid family and medical leave, living wages, and affordable healthcare but as a society we are not listening. As Rabbi Heschel pointed out we may feel bad about injustice but we don’t get overly excited and we continue on with business as usual as our society does not recognize the disaster of these acts of injustice.
In this text Jesus takes on the role of a prophet to bring people out of complacency and to reset their expectations. The audience seeks salvation for the people of Nazareth and they want Jesus to act with power and authority in their hometown. Jesus pushes his audience hard when he introduces the idea that salvation is available to all people. Jesus recounts two episodes involving the great prophets Elijah and Elisha who were instrumental in bringing God’s deliverance from death and sickness to the Gentiles. Jesus lifts up the message from his own Jewish tradition that God’s salvation is available not just to those who were born into the nation of Israel. His listeners would have been well aware of both Elijah and Elisha and these miracles that were done far away from their hometowns and for the benefit of those who were considered to be outsiders. The people fail to acknowledge that Jesus has come to serve all of God’s children especially those who are marginalized in our communities. As we continue our journey through Luke’s Gospel in this lectionary year Jesus will make it clear that he has come to serve the poor and the oppressed as he will frequently encounter them throughout his ministry and on his journey to the cross.
I really wish that the audience would have reacted differently in this story. I very much loved growing up in a small town, but I do admit that one of the dangers is that it is easy in a small town to become insular and to not recognize other people’s experiences. The reference to Capernaum in this story makes me think of the town of Monmouth which is twenty-five miles away from my hometown. Monmouth is a bigger town and it has more businesses and a college. When I was growing up, they beat us in high school football eleven times in a row and during that time it would not have been popular for someone to go to any of the churches in Aledo and to proclaim to the people of Aledo that they were going to do a bunch of miracles in Monmouth. It is easy for us in a large metropolitan area which hosts major events, which is home to the state capital, and which is the headquarters of many large companies to think that we are immune from the pettiness of a rivalry between small towns. However, we are just as guilty of failing to realize that Jesus came to save everyone in the world as we ignore the voices on the margins of our community. Those who are poor, those who are trapped in addiction, and those who are oppressed are crying out with prophetic voices and Jesus has come to lift them up.
It is not easy to see the good news in a story where Jesus is nearly thrown off a cliff, however it is definitely there. The story ends with Jesus passing through the people and going on his way. He will go to Capernaum next and then all through Galilee before journeying to Jerusalem and then to the cross. Throughout his journey Jesus continues to proclaim his message that salvation is available for all humankind. Jesus is a man who is willing to be ridiculed, to be kicked out of the sheltered environment of his hometown, and to put himself in danger in order to save each and every one of us. It is not easy to risk the loss of comfortable surroundings and the familiar patterns of life but Jesus is willing to do this because his love for us is so deep. That indeed is good news. Thanks be to God.
- Vicar Kyle Anderson