Anticipation was high that morning. The hometown hero had
returned. Today he was scheduled to speak after a long, celebrated tour of the
surrounding country side.
No one knew what he might do,
but they were eager to hear what he had to say and to see him with their own
eyes.
Sure, he had grown up there.
Most remembered him playing with their children when he was a young boy, or
seeing him and his brothers and sisters at the market. But this was different.
When he left he was a nobody.
Today, he was a genuine sensation.
Everyone in the synagogue held
their breath when he stood up to take the scroll. It was time to read the
scheduled passage in Isaiah on this particular Sabbath, but what might Jesus
have to say about it? What new miracle might he do in their presence? Most were
aware that he had a habit of healing on the Sabbath, even though many Jewish
leaders felt it was controversial.
Jesus took the heavy scroll
and unrolled it. There was no other sound in the room as Jesus read aloud these
words:
“The spirit of the sovereign
Lord is upon me to preach 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…”
Suddenly
he stopped reading. The following section of that verse dealt with “the day of
vengeance of our God”. Why had he left that part out?
Just
as quietly, Jesus rolled the scroll back up and handed it to the attendant.
Then, he turned and he sat back down.
Every
eye was fastened on him now.
“Today,” Jesus said, “this
scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
They gasped. It was true! He
was the promised Messiah who was to come. Many began to whisper to one another,
“Can it be?”, “Isn’t that Joseph’s son?” But then Jesus continued, adding,
“Surely, you will all say to me, ‘Physician heal yourself!’ and you will demand
of me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.’ But no
prophet is ever honored in his hometown.”
The murmuring stopped, but
everyone’s gears were churning in their heads. What did he mean by this? What
did this have to do with the year of the Lord’s favor? Did this mean he wasn’t
going to do any miracles after all?
Jesus looked over the crowd
and added something that sent them over the edge in a frenzy of anger and
bloodthirsty wrath. Something so simple, and yet so infuriating that they
rushed the stage and dragged him bodily by force out to the edge of a high
cliff so they could throw him down onto the sharp rocks below. He said, “I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in
Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a
severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow
in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them
was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
What
happened here? Why was this statement so insulting to these people? How could
this simple statement of fact so enrage those who were gathered to cheer on
their hometown hero?
The
very idea that the Messiah was about to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
to the Samaritans, and to the Gentiles, was intolerable to them. They were the
chosen people. They were the ones who were oppressed. They were the captives
that needed to be set free. Yet this Jesus was suggesting that the Messiah was
about to set everyone free, and to show the Lord’s favor to all nations on
Earth.
Simply
put, they wanted the blessing for themselves and they weren’t about to share it
with “those people” who weren’t like themselves.
But what about the part where Jesus said they would call on him to heal himself? The
prophecy that Jesus made to them that day was fulfilled a few years later. As
he hung from the cross the religious leaders, the roman guards, and even the
thief next to him on the cross all mocked him and dared him to save himself if
he was truly the Christ. "He saved others, let him save himself," they would say.
On
this particular day, Jesus did save himself from death and disappeared from
their midst as they were about to throw him off the cliff. But, later, he would
hang on that cross and call out “Father, forgive them. They know not what they
do.”
What
can you and I take away from this?
First,
the idea that Jesus is for everyone, not only for us.
Second,
that we must admit our spiritual poverty, our blindness, our bondage to sin if
we are to receive the blessing of the Messiah that was promised in the scroll
of Isaiah.
Remember, Jesus said that he was "anointed" to “preach good news to the poor...to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free..."
We must humble ourselves and admit that we are the sick, and the blind, and the prisoner. If we do, Jesus will heal us and set us free.
As
Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not
come to call the righteous but the sinners to repentance.”
-kg
1 comment:
Nicely done, Keith. You've really helped me envisage the situation that day.
Of course the people then were just like us. We, too, tend to let traditions and expectations rule in our hearts. I wonder how often the Spirit of Christ says to us, 'This is the way. Walk in it', and we are reluctant because it's not a way we have walked before.
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