On the third Sunday after the Epiphany, the New Revised
Common Lectionary (NRCL) offers as the gospel reading for the day Luke 4:14-21. This is a narrative in which Jesus returns to
his hometown and attends the synagogue service on the sabbath day. While there, he receives the scroll that
contains the writings of Isaiah. He turns
to what we know as chapter 61 and reads:
The spirit of the Lord
God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to
bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to
the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year
of the Lord’s favor. --NRSV
He then rolls the scroll up, returns it to the caretaker and
sits down. He then declares, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in
your hearing."
The reading ends here, and in some ways that is too
bad. Next week the lectionary continues
with the responses to Jesus’ proclamation, including the attempt by some to
toss him over the cliff on which the town rests.
There is a lot of stuff here: Jesus' return to Nazareth and
the dynamic that is present in a unique fashion between him and these
particular villagers; the observation
that Jesus chooses to make such an extraordinary announcement in the synagogue
(as opposed to open air or even in the Jerusalem Temple); or that he makes his
announcement by first taking a text and then assuming the posture of teaching
in proclaiming this news. All of these
are meditation-worthy, and I may come back to some of them in the coming days.
But what strikes me the most is not so much what Jesus says,
as what he chooes not to say. Because
he cuts off the reading from the prophet in mid-sentence. The concluding words to this section of
Trito-Isaiah are: and the day of
vengeance of our God. The Messianic
prophesy includes – in addition to words of good news and healing and liberation
– words of vengeance. In Advent we
frequently make the point that the Israelites anticipated a great political leader,
or a mighty king or a military commander who would deliver them from the burden
of their oppressors. And, part of the role
of any one of these figures was that of an avenging presence. The Messiah would be an instrument of wrath
who would rain down punishment on those who had abused the people of God. Everyone in the synagogue at Nazareth would
have known that passage in full. Part of
the shock and anger that the people eventually direct toward Jesus must be, at
least in part, because in proclaiming Messiahship he left out the vengeance. Some people must have asked, “Well,
if he’s not going to take names and kick can, what’s a Messiah for?”
Jesus doesn’t merely announce his Messiahship in this
passage, he defines it. His steadfast
refusal to be an agent of violence and retribution should help everyone
understand his nature. If we read Isaiah
a little more carefully, we find Jesus’ understanding of his mission even more
compelling.
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