Another hill far away...

Brow of the Hill Near Nazareth
by James Jacques Joseph Tissot

This past Sunday’s gospel lesson from The New Revised Common Lectionary (NRCL) is from Luke 4:21-30.  Verse 29 reads, 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.

That line has always been a peculiar one as I considered it.  Intellectually it is not puzzling at all.  Jesus’ words in the preceding verses border on blasphemy.  Although as the text progresses it is not Jesus' proclamation that he fulfills the words of Isaiah the Prophet that anger the crowd at the Nazareth synagogue.  When he speaks these words, folks seem to be impressed.  It is when Jesus as much as says that he will heal no illness or exorcise no demon in his home town that people get riled up.

It is as if they say, “We don’t mind a little borderline blasphemy, but we won’t be ignored or discounted.”  The reaction is human enough.  It is fraught with resentment and rage.  The mob mentality takes over and the people chivvy Jesus to the edge of town and to “the brow of the hill.”  Their intent is to toss him over the side.  However, with little fanfare apparently, Jesus halts their murderous progress and goes back the way he came.

In studying the passage, I came across this painting by Tissot.  I was somehow taken by it.  It is not particularly detailed.  In fact, it is difficult to single out Jesus in the picture at all.  But it has a kind of scope that draws me into it.  It depicts the commotion and chaos that must have been present in the moment.  There are other depictions of the story that seem to have Jesus in charge the entire time.  He stands heroically facing his fellow Nazarenes and appears to be facing them down.  Tissot puts Jesus in a bit of a defensive posture and places Jesus within the panoramic frame of all Nazareth.  It is as if, for a moment, we are not sure who is going to win here.

I still have a lot of questions about this passage.  But I find the picture has helped me focus a bit, and perhaps helps me to ask some of the correct questions.  

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Tissot, James Jacques Joseph, 1836-1902. Brow of the Hill Near Nazareth, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55366 [retrieved February 6, 2019]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_Brow_of_the_Hill_near_Nazareth_(L%27escarpement_de_Nazareth)_-_James_Tissot.jpg.