"Fulfilled in Our Hearing"

Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah

Gospel Reading: Luke 4:14-30

¹⁴Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. ¹⁵He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

¹⁶When 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, ¹⁷and 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 let the oppressed go free, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

²⁰And 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. ²¹Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

²²All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ ²³He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” ’ ²⁴And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. ²⁵But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; ²⁶yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. ²⁷There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ ²⁸When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. ²⁹They 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. ³⁰But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Sermon: “Fulfilled In Our Hearing”

Being a preacher in your hometown is a tricky business.  I once preached in my hometown what I thought was a deep and thought-provoking sermon.  One sweet woman, who might have been my Grandmother, said as she hugged me afterwards, “You looked like an angel up there! (I was wearing a white robe.)  I didn’t really listen to what you said, I just was remembering you as a little girl.”  You have to love her honesty.

Jesus had it much worse when preaching in his hometown.  They tried to run him off a cliff, after all!  The poem by Ann Weems best captures the criticism he received that Sabbath day in Galilee.

We were pleased, Jesus.

You read Isaiah’s poem quite well.

We were impressed;

in fact, we marveled.

We so enjoy hearing familiar passages

concerning our salvation.

We were pleased, Jesus until you told your stories…

as though God would ignore the true believers

and pay attention to those who don’t deserve it.

It was then we understood

that the poor and captive

and oppressed

of whom you spoke

were those who had no money, no freedom, no

power.

We are not pleased, Jesus,

for we have worked long and hard at righteousness

and expect to have exclusive rights

when it comes to salvation.

The Expected One is not the one we expected.

No one expects the son of Mary and Joe the carpenter to be the Messiah.  You see that’s the thing about this incarnation: Jesus looks, and is, every bit as ordinary as he is divine.  God’s son, sure.  But everyone in town knows Mary and Joe – that parentage is much easier to swallow. 

Jesus doesn’t let the fear of being underestimated stop him, though.  He walks into that synagogue like usual, but this time he doesn’t sit in the family pew with Mom and Dad.  This time he stands up to speak.  He is handed a scroll. 

We could just let that seemingly insignificant detail pass us by, but in that tiny sentence we see that I think is the key to this whole story.  You see, later in this text we’re told that Jesus, after reading, hands the scroll back to the attendant.  In the Greek, that word means servant, or the more demeaning, “underling.”  We see nothing to indicate that Jesus selected the scroll of Isaiah to read; the servant did that.  Maybe, though it looked like he was just doing what he always did, giving words to those important enough to utter them, this servant was curious. 

Perhaps he wondered if Jesus was the one to bring that good news to the poor Isaiah promised so long ago.  Perhaps he wondered if those were just words for the regular church-goers and the powerful, or whether Jesus meant them for him, too.

Out of all the passages Jesus could have chosen in the tome of Isaiah, he chose the one that would speak most to the invisible one who handed him the scroll.  It begins, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”  Jesus wasted no time in declaring his mission that was meant for the overlooked servants, the underlings of this world: the poor, prisoner, oppressed and captive. 

While the religious regulars heard familiar words and were amused, the servant heard mighty words of hope from this hometown prophet.  Then Jesus gave him back the scroll that contained those powerful words and said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  “Your” includes everyone: the curious servant, the families sitting together in worship, the person sitting alone wondering if anyone will make them feel welcome, the worker sweeping in the back of the temple.  The scripture is fulfilled when they all hear it.

But that’s not how we usually remember this story, is it?  I know I’ve typically thought that Jesus saying the prophetic words of Isaiah and identifying himself as the promised Messiah fulfilled those words.  Once he made clear his identity as God’s son, come to redeem the world, all was complete.  But he doesn’t say that those ancient words of scripture are fulfilled in his speaking.  He says they are fulfilled in your hearing. 

Unless those words fall on ears eager to embrace a mission that overturns the structures of powerful and powerless, of overlords and underlings, they are just words.  They are only made real when they are truly heard.  And they are only truly heard when they are put into transformative, sacrificial action. 

Maybe this is why Jesus’ hometown ultimately rejected his words of change and challenge in the next pages of our story.  I do not think they were rejecting the possibility that he could really be the Messiah; I think they were rejecting the idea that they had anything to do with it.  That they had a role in fulfilling those nice, familiar words of Isaiah with demanding action that was risky and entirely unfamiliar.  And so, they easily dismissed him as Mary and Joe’s son, and thus missed the life-changing opportunity to be a part of the Word-Made-Flesh. 

Jesus speaks those same words to us today, calling us to that same mission.  The same Spirit who was on Jesus, giving him the courage to preach to servant and powerful alike the good news that would turn the world upside down, is on us.  And in us.  That Spirit stirs us to take this Word and give it flesh: to become the hands and feet, the eyes and ears, the body of Christ in a world that is desperate for good news. 

It is a task both risky and unfamiliar: it will lead us to see our greed in the faces of those who never have enough, to build bridges where society is so intent on dividing us by economic status, political party, race, age, gender or other labels.  It will lead our church family beyond the comfort of this space into the challenging places where Christ is waiting for us to meet with him.

For some of us, this might look like joining the Mission and Outreach Committee and helping us better care for the those whom this world so often overlooks.  For others, this will look like helping with Member Care and helping us release those who are captive to loneliness or illness, who need not the perfect words, but an imperfect person sitting beside them.  Perhaps the Spirit is leading you to add energy and joy to the Fellowship that binds us together, or depth and curiosity to our Christian Education program, or creativity and freshness to our Worship life.

The Spirit is upon each of us, leading each of us to serve in different ways.  We have two options: we can, like the weekly worshipers in Nazareth, reject Jesus’ demand and place ourselves at the center of our faith, staying exactly the same as ever.  Or, like the unnamed servant grasping for good news in words ancient and new, we can follow Jesus together wherever he leads,

leaving our expectations and agendas behind, fulfilling his words of hope in our hearing and our acting, until all know that this good news is meant for them.  Amen.