Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 26, 2025
United Church of Santa Fe; Santa Fe, NM
Luke 4.14-18
14 Καὶ ὑπέστρεψεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῇ δυνάμει τοῦ πνεύματος εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν. καὶ φήμη ἐξῆλθεν καθ’ ὅλης τῆς περιχώρου περὶ αὐτοῦ.15 καὶ αὐτὸς ἐδίδασκεν ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς αὐτῶν, δοξαζόμενος ὑπὸ πάντων.16 Καὶ ἦλθεν εἰς Ναζαρά, οὗ ἦν τεθραμμένος, καὶ εἰσῆλθεν κατὰ τὸ εἰωθὸς αὐτῷ ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν σαββάτων εἰς τὴν συναγωγήν, καὶ ἀνέστη ἀναγνῶναι.17 καὶ ἐπεδόθη αὐτῷ βιβλίον τοῦ προφήτου Ἠσαΐου, καὶ ἀναπτύξας τὸ βιβλίον εὗρεν τὸν τόπον οὗ ἦν γεγραμμένον,18 Πνεῦμα κυρίου ἐπ’ ἐμέ, οὗ εἵνεκεν ἔχρισέν με εὐαγγελίσασθαι πτωχοῖς, ἀπέσταλκέν με κηρύξαι αἰχμαλώτοις ἄφεσιν καὶ τυφλοῖς ἀνάβλεψιν, ἀποστεῖλαι τεθραυσμένους ἐν ἀφέσει, [following are verses included in the Common Lectionary] 19 κηρύξαι ἐνιαυτὸν κυρίου δεκτόν.20 καὶ πτύξας τὸ βιβλίον ἀποδοὺς τῷ ὑπηρέτῃ ἐκάθισεν· καὶ πάντων οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ ἐν τῇ συναγωγῇ ἦσαν ἀτενίζοντες αὐτῷ.21 ἤρξατο δὲ λέγειν πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὅτι Σήμερον πεπλήρωται ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη ἐν τοῖς ὠσὶν ὑμῶν
14 Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
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,
[following are verses included in the Common Lectionary] 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
+ In nomine Domini. Amen.
One of the difficulties about the Common Lectionary we use in the Church each week is that you always have before you just a portion, a snippet of Scripture. The cure for this, of course, is for each person in worship to grab a Bible which is located somewhere in the shelf of the chair in front of you, and follow along — perusing what comes before and what follows the Reading. This way you have an idea of where things are in the Story — that is, you have things in context.
For example, this morning, our Gospel Reading comes from the 4th Chapter of Luke. Why Luke? Because we are in the 3rd Year of the Three Year Lectionary. Year A is devoted to the Gospel of Matthew, Year B to Mark, and Year C to Luke.
To complicate matters we normally think because our Bibles are arranged with the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in that order, that Matthew is first in history, Mark second and so forth. No, Mark is the earliest Gospel, composed sometime around the year 70 CE at the end of the Roman-Jewish War, when Rome won, and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. In other words, Mark is a war-time Gospel if you will.
Luke comes at least a decade later. Much of the Gospel of Luke is based on the earlier Mark, with other portions added from other sources. Put it all together and we have the Gospel we are reading for much of this year.
So, where are we this morning in the Gospel? We are in the 4th Chapter. It begins with the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness. Next comes our Reading this morning, Jesus in the local synagogue in Nazareth. After this Jesus leaves Nazareth and goes to Capernaum (at the very north shore of the Sea of Galilee) where he teaches and performs acts of healing including the mother-in-law of Simon. So many people find out about what he is doing that they come in crowds to beg him for his compassion, which he gives. But it is too much, and in spite of Jesus’ attempt to hide from the people, they find him anyway. And then Jesus explains that his mission is to continue on, to go to many other cities and proclaim the “good news” — which he does.
All this is in the 4th Chapter of Luke. It is the beginning of Jesus’ Ministry.
Back to today’s reading: Jesus is in Nazareth, his home town, where he has already built up a reputation for himself as a Teacher, maybe a Prophet.
So, in the Story, Jesus is in the Synagogue and here is how it goes: according to custom and tradition someone brings a scroll to a raised platform near the front of the synagogue which is called the Bimah. Jesus stands behind the Bimah while a scroll is placed upon it and unrolled. Now the scroll could have been a Torah Scroll (containing the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), or a Scroll of one of the Prophets, or a Scroll of other Writings.
In this case it is a Scroll of the words of the Prophet Isaiah. The Scroll is unrolled, Jesus reads from it:
רוּחַ אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה, עָלָי–יַעַן מָשַׁח יְהוָה אֹתִי לְבַשֵּׂר עֲנָוִים
ru·ach a·do·nai ha·shem1 a·lai; ya·’an ma·shach ha·shem o·ti le·vas·ser a·na·vim
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”
This is the first verse of the 61st chapter of Isaiah — easy for us to find in our Bibles because we have everything divided into chapters and verses, and we just look things up quickly that way.
Hebrew Scrolls have no “chapters and verses” and are written in Hebrew of course which is a language with only consonants and no vowels.2 [see below]
רוח אדני יהוה עלי יען משח יהוה אתי לבשר ענוים
Jesus reads those words, then rolls the Scroll backward to Isaiah 58.6 and continues:
“to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.”
But he begins with the words “[God] has sent me” before the text.
All along as Jesus reads, we can hear him emphasize that word, me.
“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.”
In the next several verses, which you can read if you are following along in your Bible what Jesus does is to roll the scroll back together, hand it over to the attendant and then he sits down. Sitting down means that he is now about to offer a midrash, an interpretation, sort of a small sermon if you will.
Which he does. He says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
It’s a nice story, sweet and lovable. Here is Jesus reading from the Prophet, talking about all these good things, and he concludes by announcing that everything he has read to this point is happening here in the midst of the people in himself. Who could argue about that? But you see, we look at this Story from our place in time 2,000 years removed. We know the Good News, we know the stories of healing and comfort. We know how things happen in the Gospel. Let me read to you what happened next, and this from the excellent translation/interpretation by Eugene Peterson (of blessed memory):3
All who were there, watching and listening, were surprised at how well he spoke. But they also said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son, the one we’ve known since he was just a kid?”
He answered, “I suppose you’re going to quote the proverb, ‘Doctor, go heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.’ Well, let me tell you something: No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn’t it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian.”
That set everyone in the meeting place seething with anger. They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way.
When Talitha and I talked about this Sunday and this Reading, I said, “You know this is a very dangerous text!” And she wrote in the email to the congregation, “please don’t throw Pastor Larzelere off a cliff this Sunday!”
Thank you, I appreciate that.
What makes the people angry? How can Jesus possibly offend them?
He opens their eyes!
Right at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus announces clearly what his mission is. Boldly, he claims to fulfill the words of Isaiah, anointed by the Spirit to bring good news to everyone of God’s children who are bound up, pressed down, broken, impoverished, imprisoned, and hungry for good news.4
He says in essence “thank you very much congregation for your praise of the hometown boy made good” — but remember he says, prophets are rejected in their hometowns. He gives two examples: the Widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, whom Elijah and Elisha healed while not healing everyone else.
In other words, the Good News comes to those who need it the most — not the wealthy and possessive, but to the poor and dispossessed — not to those in the center of things, but to those in the margins, the easily forgotten and overlooked.
We hear it in the words of Mary in the Magnificat: God scatters the proud, brings down the mighty from their pretended thrones, lifts up the lowly, sends rich away with emptiness, but fills up the hungry with good things.
This Nazareth Synagogue midrash isJesus’ Inaugural Address, if you will. You may, if you wish, compare and contrast the theme and content of his words with those of a more recent Inaugural Address you might have heard.
If we are followers of Jesus, then we know the One we follow was born of immigrant parents, and that Joseph, Mary and her baby became political refugees under the horrible, self-centered and oppressive King Herod as they fled to Egypt, returning only when Herod died, and thena they made their home in the undeveloped region of Galilee.
If we are followers of Jesus, then we know that the One we follow lived among those who were nowhere near the center of power.
If we are followers of Jesus, then we know that the One we follow was never about retribution, but always about freedom and compassion.
If we are followers of Jesus, then we know that the One we follow welcomed the stranger, the outsider, the resident alien in our midst (as we read in Deuteronomy) and demanded that we love and respect those aliens. [Remember, love God, love neighbor‽]
If we are followers of Jesus, then we know that the One we follow spoke truth not lies, spoke promise not denial, spoke love not hate.
When we read the Story (as we do this morning) then the Story comes to life, the Gospel lives — and it lives in us! We are the living words of the Story. We are the living voices of Jesus in the world — speaking not hate and fear, but love and hope. We are the heart and soul and bodies of God in the world — bringing not violence and aggression, but justice and peace.
To the rich we say, share your abundance. To the powerful we say, step down and embrace the weak.
To the mighty we say, become unimportant and learn humility.
To the well-fed we say, learn hunger and then begin to feed the hungry.
The Gospel is the message which calls us to open our eyes and move beyond ourselves into the lives of those around us who are most in need. There, with them, we stand and work, with the very gifts we breathed at the beginning of worship this morning: peace, hope, and love.
May it be so among us, and let us say: Amen.
Deo Gratias (+)
The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III
Retired
1Hashem means “The Name” and is used here because the Sacred Name of God (Yod He Vav He) [יְהוִה] is not pronounced aloud.
2The vowel pointing in the selection above is from the Masoretic Text.
3The Message Luke 4.22-30
4 My thanks to Eliseo Pérez Alvarez from his book: We Be Jammin.
Nota(ble) Be(n)e 