Jesus in his hometown | Luke 4:14-30 | TJ Torgerson
People love stories. Stories educate, inform, entertain, and strike our imaginations; they provide an escape from life and help us make sense of it. A good story is one of the most powerful things on the planet. We ingest stories through books, movies, radio, Instagram reels and posts, or sitting around a table recounting the events of the day, taking others along for the ride with us.
Part of the appeal of a story is the journey it takes us on, which is why we can get irritated if someone ruins a story in which we are immersed. You are reading along, minding your own business, when someone says, “What a great book! Did you get to the part where so-and-so dies?”
Back in 2018, there was a story that hit the news about two Russian scientists doing research in Antarctica, Sergey and Oleg. Sergey would pass his time in the cold, barren Antarctic by reading various books. Oleg would pass his time by ruining the endings of the books Sergey was reading. Here is the first line of the LA Times article:
“A Russian scientist working in Antarctica is facing attempted murder charges after allegedly stabbing a colleague for telling him the endings of books he wanted to read.”
Some of you are thinking that was a perfectly reasonable response because it is universally agreed upon that if you are immersed in a story, you do not want to know what is about to happen before it happens. You want to enjoy the experience. Imagine trying to watch Star Wars and before each scene, it is paused to give a descriptive headline, “Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his father.” That would take something away from the story, right? And yet, this is exactly what Bible publishers have universally decided to do. For example, the passage we are going to look at today regarding the Life of Christ is in Luke chapter 4 and has been given the heading, “Jesus rejected at Nazareth.” Now, of course, there are “reader’s” Bibles you can purchase that are formatted for reading rather than reference. They do not include chapter and verse numbers or headings.
If you are reading along in Luke, everything is going well for Jesus and you are warned that there is going to be a hiccup. This warning does spoil something coming up. It might cause us to overlook some things or not ask all the right questions, and I think while Jesus certainly was “rejected at Nazareth,” I wonder if that headline misses the point. Go ahead, read Luke 4:14-30 yourself, and leave a comment below with what headline you would give this passage.
For me, the question of primary importance is, “What does Jesus do in this passage?” There are two things Jesus accomplishes in this passage. The first is he reveals his mission.
Jesus Reveals His Mission
Luke chapter 4 is the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Up until this point, it has been an origin story, and now we are really starting to get to the action, and things seem to be going well. Jesus comes out preaching and teaching. He is traveling to different synagogues and getting a positive response wherever he goes. Then Jesus goes home to Nazareth to the place where he was raised. It was the Sabbath, so Jesus did what Jesus does and goes to the Synagogue. He was handed the scroll to read, and he opens it up to what he wants to read.
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, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
What an important passage. This passage would have resonated with the crowd gathered that day. It was describing something their heart was longing for. When Jesus finished reading, he slowly rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and took a seat. Everyone in the room was watching him. They were whispering to their neighbor, “What does this mean?” Thoughts racing through their minds, “What will he say? What will he do?”
Tension is building in the room; the brief seconds it takes Jesus to sit down seem like an eternity. Then Jesus speaks, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
This has always felt like an incredible mic drop moment. It really would have been the perfect ending because the people were amazed. If Jesus wanted to be invited back, then stop here and leave them wanting more. Jesus could have even done them a solid and passed the offering plate while people were amazed, boosting giving for the day. In preaching school, he would have learned to give people some application ideas.
Jesus could have said, “If you want to be a part of this new era of God’s favor, then give to the youth ministry today and volunteer for the nursery.”
Jesus' message, his mission to bring salvation, left the people amazed; it likely resonated with them because they were the poor and the blind and the outcast in need of God’s favor. They were from Nazareth, a place other people looked down upon and scoffed, saying things like, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” They wanted some of this favor. This would have been a good place to land the message.
It is a message we can even relate to now and be grateful for, the mission of Jesus to bring good news to the poor and outcast, the disregarded, disgraced, and overlooked. We hear that message, and we think of our stories of where we were when Christ found us. This was his mission to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). And we are grateful, and this would be a great point to end a blog post on, but the problem is we can’t stop here because Jesus isn’t finished speaking yet. He revealed his mission and now there was something else he was going to reveal…
Jesus Reveals Our Hearts
Jesus continues with his message, and as he does, the amazement they had very quickly turns into anger — murderous anger.
Jesus says, “Let me give you a couple of biblical examples of just how God’s favor is coming,” and goes on to tell two stories. The first about a prophet bringing good news to a poor widow trying to survive a famine. The second about a prophet bringing freedom to a man oppressed by leprosy. That's why Jesus came — to bring freedom and good news and salvation like that!
These seem like great examples, but when they heard this, the amazement vanished quickly, and anger took its place. Why? Why would these stories be so upsetting to them?
Jesus picked the worst possible examples for that crowd. A preacher needs illustrations that the locals can get on board with. These were not that. The widow should have been a Jewish lady that God showed favor to, not an outsider, not a foreigner. Jesus just reminded them of a time when God seemed to overlook Israel and help an outsider! Then he adds on to that story an even more difficult illustration because that guy with leprosy, that God healed, was not only an outsider but the commander of an enemy army! Jesus is telling them, and us, that his mission to bring good news included outsiders and enemies as well.
Those respectable Jews in the synagogue were appalled at the idea that foreigners, Gentiles, enemies of Israel would be included in the good news of God’s saving grace.
Of course, it is Luke that gives us the details of this story because Luke was one of those outsiders. Luke was a Gentile. The same story that made the Nazarenes in the synagogue angry brought tears of joy to Luke’s eyes. Jesus revealed his mission to seek and save the lost, and then he revealed the defect of their heart — hatred. The unfortunate truth is that particular heart defect is not rare.
Just visit Facebook and find any post that has to do with immigration, refugees, or asylum seekers and read the comments. Or find a page where various Christians or Christian groups discuss things and read the comments. That heart defect is not that rare. The us vs. them attitude. The territorial attitude. The self-preservation attitude, whatever you want to call it. It is not that rare.
The Mission of God through Christ is exciting. Two thousand years ago, God became a human. His life shows us who God is and shows us how we are to be. He lived a perfect life, and we killed him for it, but on the third day, he was resurrected so that we can have new life. He then ascended into heaven and sits at God’s right hand, interceding on our behalf, and will one day come again, and he did all of this to renew and restore all the cosmos, including but not limited to you and me.
We get excited about this, and we sing songs about this amazing grace. The mission of Jesus looks really good on paper — but it becomes very difficult in reality as we walk with him and listen to him and discover what seems impossible: Jesus loves the people you hate.
Now I know as good Christians we do not hate anyone. We would never admit to that. So let's say it another way:
Jesus loves the people that annoy you.
Jesus loves the people you cannot stand to be around.
Jesus loves the people whom you leave the room when they show up.
Jesus loves the people that drive you up the wall.
Jesus loves the people you roll your eyes at.
Jesus loves the people who make you cringe when their name comes up.
Jesus loves the people on the other side of the political aisle.
Jesus loves the people that anger us enough to want to push Jesus off a cliff.
And if you think that’s hard to believe, Jesus even loves you and me.
The good news proclaimed by Christ is only good news if it includes the people you would rather exclude — if it includes the people we hate.
When Jesus shared this mission in his hometown, they wanted to kill Jesus, and because of that, the NIV says “Jesus rejected at Nazareth.” But who was it they were really rejecting? Weren’t they rejecting the outsiders, the foreigners, their enemies, the Gentiles? Weren’t they rejecting Luke who wrote this gospel?
And when we hold attitudes of animosity, hatred, and judgment towards those whom Christ loves, towards those whom Christ died, who are we rejecting — “those people” or are we trying to push Jesus off a cliff?
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