What is Fulfilled?

Scriptures:Jeremiah 1:4-10,Luke 4:21-30

For those of you paying attention you’ll recognize that the first line in the passage from Luke’s gospel today is the last line that we read last Sunday.  Jesus says to all those in the synagogue with him, “’Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”  This overlap is, of course, intentional on the part of those who put the lectionary together.  When he read from the scroll of Isaiah he was quoting one of the central Israelite scriptures:  “’…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 let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’”  Now, Luke wants us to experience the response to these proclamations.  It’s at first encouraging…..and then disheartening.

But what exactly was it that had been fulfilled in their hearing?  Just by reading from Isaiah’s scroll nothing had actually changed, had it?  There were still oppressed and repressed people in sight, weren’t there?  The jail cells were still full, weren’t they?  Had anyone’s debt been reduced?  Were any in Jesus’ hearing less oppressed?  What had been fulfilled?

Perhaps it was simply that Jesus, by way of this synagogue appearance, has accepted the mission to which his parent-God had called him.  By pairing this passage in Luke with the call of God to Jeremiah as a young boy, it certainly seems as though the lectionary compilers feel that this is the case.  Remember I said last week that proclaiming “the year of the Lord’s favor” was to proclaim a Jubilee Year – one where debts were forgiven and land and property were restored.  Quite possibly such a Jubilee Year had never happened in the long history of Israel.  But nevertheless it was a great dream – a marvelous hope that had been passed on from generation to generation – perhaps something akin to Martin Luther King’s stirring “I Have a Dream” that called this country to a more satisfying vision of what it could be, even if some 47 years later evidences of racism still surround us.  Yet here was Jesus saying such a Jubilee Year is possible, and moreover it “has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

This story is about reception and response.  And the initial response is amazement, bordering on awe:  “All…were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”  As a subtext you also sense a little bit of condescension there, too:  “’Is not this Joseph’s son?’” – as if to say, “how could the son of a carpenter, a lowly peasant, speak this eloquently?”  As William Loader says about this question:

“The drive to fit people into categories has not evolved out of the human species.  It belongs to intelligence, but it can also be the opposite: laziness and resistance in relation to the new.  We lose ‘knowledge-control’ when the unfamiliar confronts us.  ‘Jesus is just the boy from down the road.’  So people have to leave home, leave their local communities often, before they will be allowed to spread their wings.”

The people are wanting Jesus to bring it home.  Previously, he had been preaching and doing miracles in Capernaum, but now he is back in Galilee, back in Nazareth, back in his home synagogue, and the people want to see if this home-town boy who had “done good” on the road could perform for the home crowd.  Like Peyton Manning coming back to the Louisiana Superdome (oh, no, wait…..that’s in Miami next week, isn’t it).

But Jesus doesn’t give in to all the adulation.  He’s smart enough to know how quickly it can turn, and in fact warns them, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” – a rather more direct stating of that familiar line, “No prophet is without honor except in his own country.”  He references two of the greatest prophets in Israel’s history, Elijah and Elisha, and talks about their seeming limitations.  There were many widows in need in Israel, but Elijah was sent to the widow in Zarephath in Sidon, foreign territory, and similarly Elisha brought a cure to none of the lepers except Naaman, the Syrian.  Do you hear an echo here of the story of how a hated Samaritan turns out to be the Good Samaritan?  Jesus is invoking how Elijah and Elisha went outside the box to assist the outcast, to give aid to those who were supposed to be enemies of Israel, to flaunt the boundaries of the respected in Israel and reach out to sinners.  And this is what Jesus himself is now doing.

Whoa!  Now look at the reaction:

“When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.  They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.”  Seems like a reaction out of all proportion to what Jesus was saying.  But you never can predict how a congregation is going to respond to prophetic preaching.  Here is a classic example of that old bromide about the fellow who said to the minister, “Pastor, now you’ve stopped preachin and started meddlin.”

William Loader, again, puts what is happening between Jesus and the people here in a broader context:

“…the principles of human behaviour (including religious behaviour) which Luke enunciates are as relevant today as they were in his.  People become possessive about truth and knowledge.  When their knowledge power is threatened, they often become aggressive.  This can include refusal to face new truth.  It can include vilification of the other.  Luke could have written similar things about Christian communities, had he known what we know about the history that followed.  A different race, a different culture, a different setting — to those obsessed with protecting their own and fearful of change these are dangers to be avoided, enemies to be attacked.”

What Jesus is seeking to do here is correct his home town people’s perception of him:  he is not the son of Joseph but the Son of God.  His purpose is to fulfill the kingdom of God, not the expectations or aspirations of his neighbors.  As Roy Harrisville puts it:

“Incidents like this belie the portrayal of Jesus as meek and mild.  On the contrary, he was a man of bold courage who did not mince words or worry himself about offending others. In fact, he went out of his way to offend many….. This is no therapeutic Jesus who pats little children on the head.  This is a bold antagonist who makes preemptive strikes against the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Roman rulers, the priests and scribes, Democrats and Republicans, Socialists and Capitalists, and any other creature who presumes upon the Divine.”

And so this violent, angry reaction.  It looks like Jesus’ ministry is going to end before it ever gets started.  Yet Luke pulls a subtle little dramatic rabbit out of the hat:  “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”  Sorta like Harry Potter putting on his invisibility cloak or Sherlock Holmes miraculously escaping a fiery explosion in the new Robert Downey, Jr. movie.  Just a bit too pat from a satisfactory dramatic standpoint, dontcha think?  None of the commentators that I read seemed to want to deal with this last line, so I guess we just have to leave Luke his dramatic license and let Jesus move on to his next encounters as he goes back to Capernaum.

You know, the more I read and thought about this passage, the more it seemed to me like it was being directed at preachers – at those who out of all humility seek to present a prophetic gospel in Jesus’ name.  This is what’s going to happen – that is, the crowd is going to try to throw you over the cliff – seems to be the not-so-subtle message when you start getting too concrete about releasing captives, letting the oppressed rise up, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.  William Willimon, minister to Duke University and one of my favorite authors tells this story about a seminar for preachers he led with his colleague Stanley Hauerwas.  Willimon reports:

“one pastor said, in a plaintive voice, ‘The bishop sent me to a little town in South Carolina.  I preached one Sunday on the challenge of racial justice.  In two months my people were so angry that the bishop moved me.  At the next church, I was determined for things to go better. Didn’t preach about race.  But we had an incident in town, and I felt forced to speak.  The board met that week and voted unanimously for us to be moved.  My wife was insulted at the supermarket.  My children were beaten upon the school ground.’

“My pastoral heart went out to this dear, suffering brother.  But Hauerwas replied, ‘And your point is what?  We work for the living God, not a false, dead god!  Did somebody tell you it would be easy?’  Not one drop of sympathy for this brother, not a bit of collegial concern.  Jesus moves right on from Nazareth to Capernaum, another Sabbath, another sermon, where the congregational demons cry out to him, ‘Let us alone!’ (Luke 4:34).  But he won’t, thank God.  He is free to administer his peculiar sort of grace, whether we hear or refuse to hear. This is our good news.”

So, yes, this passage is a word to those of us who would fashion ourselves to be preachers.  But as I continued to reflect upon it, I decided it was a word for all of us as well.  You’ve all heard the term, I presume, coming out of the Protestant Reformation “the priesthood of all believers” – Martin Luther’s brief way of saying that all of us are called upon to be priests – to be ministers and pastors – to one another and thus to interpret scripture and provide comfort.  But Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams would like us to claim another title:  “the prophethood of all believers” as a way of empowering a “radical laicism” (which is a fancy way of saying that lay members of congregations can and should claim their own prophethood).  Of course, to do so also means accepting the reality that there are crowds ready and waiting to throw you off of a cliff.

This is why God’s call to Jeremiah is initially so terrifying:  “I appointed you a prophet to the nations…to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and overthrow…..”  No wonder Jeremiah cowers before God and tries to use his youth as an excuse.  But God will have none of it.  In place of fear God gives Jeremiah God’s promise:  “…for I am with you to deliver you…..”  Jeremiah, of course, goes on to become one of the most bombastic yet also far-seeing of the prophets God has called.  For he also heard, after that “pull down, destroy, overthrow” language, God adding the word of hope to a prophet:  “to build and to plant”.  The seeds of the Spirit are planted through our prophetic actions, even when it seems we are about to be thrown off of a cliff.

I want to give the final word to Madeline McClenney-Sadler, who writes in The African American Lectionary a paean to what it means to accept the “prophethood of all believers”.  She says:  “Praise be to God that we have an opportunity to be the hands, feet, and mouths that offer liberation to the captive, friendship to the friendless, and a hand-up to those who are down.  God chose us for such work at such a time as this; how marvelous to have been chosen.  We give thanks and praise that the one who delivered us has given us a chance to show our appreciation by working to deliver someone else.  This is our response to the hymn that asks, ‘How Can I Say thank you, for all the things you’ve done for me?’”

Amen.

Dave Pomeroy

What is Fulfilled? (Jeremiah 1:4-10, Luke 4:21-30)

Jeremiah 1:4-10

4 Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” 7 But the Lord said to me,

“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
8 Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”

9 Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
10 See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.” (ESV)

Luke 4:21-30

21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?” 23 And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.” 24 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. 25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away. (ESV)

Powered by Sermon Browser