14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim 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, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.
23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ ”
24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 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. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 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.”
28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
The word “returned” reminds us that Luke has told us that, although he was born in Bethlehem of Judea in fulfillment of prophecy that the Messiah would be born there, his parents eventually returned to their home in Nazareth of Galilee, where Jesus grew up. When the time arrived for him to begin his public offer of the kingdom of God and himself as God’s promised Savior, he first associated himself with the ministry of his cousin John the Baptizer, and then—after his own baptism and temptation—spent some time preaching and healing in Judea before returning northward to continue his ministry in Galilee. This Judean ministry is suppressed by the first three gospels, because they wish to reserve their picture of Jesus’ Judean ministry for the final Passion Week. But events in this early southern ministry are preserved in the Gospel of John.
Luke tells us immediately how quickly Jesus’ fame spread in Galilee. Part of this rapid success and notoriety could have come from reports of Jesus’ successes in Judea and of the testimony to him by John the Baptizer, who already was a hero because of his fearless rebuke of Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, the man that the Romans had appointed to rule Galilee after his father’s death. Herod and his new wife Herodias had imprisoned John for accusing them of violating God’s laws against a man taking his brother’s ex-wife in marriage while the ex-husband was still living. John, whom they would eventually execute, must have influenced many Galileans to hold Jesus in extremely high regard.
But the rapid fame of Jesus was mostly due to his own words and actions. Jesus did not immediately directly attack Herod or the Roman occupiers. In fact, Luke and the other gospels unanimously portray him as very receptive to individuals associated with the Roman occupiers of Palestine, if they came to him sincerely, asking his advice or help. He helped Roman officers. He welcomed into the circle of the Twelve a man named Matthew (or as he is also called, Levi), who was a tax farmer, paid by the Romans to collect their taxes on his fellow Jews—in other words, a traitor and turncoat, a paid lackey of the occupying foreigners. But Jesus was an equally friendly and helpful to members of Jewish terrorist groups, who planned assassinations of Romans and their Jewish sympathizers. At least one of his twelve apostles was a member of the Zealots. But by accepting these individuals who came to him with a sincere desire to let him remake their lives, Jesus did not put his stamp of approval on their previous associations. He himself did not advocate perpetuating Roman domination of Palestine, nor did he cooperate with those using violence against the Romans.
Verses 14-15 are Luke’s way of offering a historical setting in which to place the story of Jesus’ rejection by the opinion leaders in his hometown of Nazareth. When we read that story carefully, we see that it was not Jesus’ original teachings or claims that aroused their opposition. At first they were pleased by the fame this “home boy” brought to their town. His popularity all over Galilee reflected well upon the town where he had grown up. And when at the Sabbath service he was honored by the invitation to do the public reading of the assigned passage of scripture, which happened to be from the Book of Isaiah, his careful reading (verses 18-19) and dramatic claim that this prophecy was fulfilled during those very days in his own ministry in Galilee (verse 20-21) would have made banner headlines in the local newspaper, if they had had a newspaper. Everyone was favorably impressed with his performance (verse 22). Some commentators have claimed that the question “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” was a criticism: either implying that the Messiah could not be born into the home of a humble laborer, or in order to resurrect the rumors that must have circulated thirty years earlier about the true source of Mary’s pregnancy and the consequent labeling of Jesus as a bastard. But I think it equally possible, coming as this comment of Luke’s does immediately after the report of virtually unanimous praise for the speech, that it should be taken as a boastful rhetorical question: “Isn’t this Joseph’s son? (Yes, indeed! He’s a local boy!)”
The first sign of the negative turn comes in their response (verses 28-30) to what Jesus says next (verses 23-27). Jesus, being a prophet, can read their minds, even if to this point they have not expressed their inner thoughts. The proverb “Physician, heal yourself!” seems to imply a criticism of Jesus for paying too much attention to the needs of other communities (and even non-Jews) and too little to his own kinfolk, which they obviously were. This would be like criticizing a United States Senator for not bringing enough government contracts to his home state. Don’t be so concerned with the general welfare! Look after us who elected you and are your base of support! Jesus loved his own human family and also the extended family members—his cousins, aunts, uncles, and nephews—who still lived in Nazareth. But he had come as God’s Savior for all humanity. Luke has stressed that aspect constantly: remember how his genealogy led back not just to Abraham, but to Adam? So in verses 24-27 Jesus taught them an important lesson from the Old Testament history of God’s people. In the days of the prophet Elijah there was a terrible famine throughout not only Israel and Judah, but in Sidon and Syria to the north of Israel. The famine was God’s punishment on Israel because of the wickedness of her king Ahab. And although Ahab urged Elijah to use his prophetic power to end the famine on Israel, the Bible tells us that God sent Elijah out of Israel to Sidon, a pagan city on the Mediterranean coast north of Israel, where he didn’t end the famine there either, but instead provided relief for a single widow who welcomed the prophet and shared her last morsel of bread with him, even though he was not a Sidonian, but an Israelite. The second example is the prophet Elisha (not Elijah!), whom God allowed to cure from leprosy a powerful general over the army of Israel’s mortal enemy, Damascus in Syria. Naaman too, had a pagan background, but he accepted the testimony of an Israelite girl who had been captured in a victory over Israel and made a servant of Naaman’s wife, and he went humbly, with hat in hand, to the Israelite prophet, asking for healing from Israel’s God. These two examples mirrored some of the religious outcasts who had come humbly to Jesus, admitting their sins and confessing their need for his healing.
These words to his relatives and neighbors in Nazareth were felt as a slap in the face. He was using their own Bible to justify putting the needs of others ahead of their own! The very audacity of this man! The change in the mood of the crowd was instantaneous. In an instant, they went from hailing him as “mayor for the day” to expelling him and even trying to kill him (verses 28-29). But God protected him (verse 30), so that he was able to escape by simply walking undetected right through the midst of the crown! Hidden in plain sight!
Now what are we to make of this? What is God saying to us through Luke’s account? Here are some thoughts:
(1) If you are a believer in Jesus and are trying to follow him, don’t be concerned if other people do not understand you; instead, be concerned with what God thinks of you, based on how your life measures up to the teachings of scripture. Jesus didn’t say to the people of Nazareth, “I don’t care what you think of me!” He didn’t set out to be offensive for the sake of being offensive. But he merely spoke the truth. And he did not allow them to bully or intimidate him. His eyes were on his Father’s will for him and his mission.
(2) It is good to be loyal to your own family, to your church, and to your community. But God has sent us to look after the ultimate needs of all people. “God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him might not be lost, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus wants you to help everyone you meet in your daily life to come to know him as Lord and Savior. We do this through both our words and our actions: the two must not contradict each other. Loving words must be matched to loving deeds. Otherwise, they ring false.
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