The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me

 Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and the news of Him went out through all the surrounding region.  And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up.  And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.  And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah.  And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:

"The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD."

Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down.  And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him.  And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."  So all bore witness to Him, and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.  And they said, "Is this not Joseph's son?"  He said to them, "You will surely say this proverb to Me, 'Physician, heal yourself!  Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in Your country.'  Then He said, "Assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country.  But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout the land; but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region to Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.  And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."  So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff.  Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way.

- Luke 4:14-30

 Yesterday, we read that Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit after His baptism, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil.  And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.  And the devil said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread."  But Jesus answered him, saying, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.'"  Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.  And the devil said to Him, "All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.  Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours."  And Jesus answered and said to him, "Get behind Me, Satan!  For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.'"  Then he brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.  For it is written: 'He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you,' and 'In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"  And Jesus answered and said to him, "It has been said, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'"  Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.

  Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and the news of Him went out through all the surrounding region.  And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.  It's interesting to note the reliance on the Spirit exemplified so far in Luke's Gospel.  First it was in the Spirit that Jesus was led into the wilderness and temptation, and now it is the Spirit that leads Him to His ministry in Galilee.

So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up.  And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.  And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah.  And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:  "The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD."  Jesus reads from Isaiah 61.  My study bible tells us:  "Being the eternal Son of God, Christ did not become the world's anointed Savior, but has always been our Savior from before the foundation of the world.  It was Christ speaking through Isaiah who said, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me' (Isaiah 61:1).  Note He does not say, 'The Spirit has come upon Me.'  When the Spirit of the LORD descended on Jesus at His baptism (see 3:22), this was a sign revealing an eternal, not temporal, truth to the people."  The "acceptable year" in the quotation from Isaiah is the time of the Incarnation, when the Kingdom of heaven has come to earth (see 2 Corinthians 6:2).

Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down.  And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him.  And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."  So all bore witness to Him, and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.  And they said, "Is this not Joseph's son?"  He said to them, "You will surely say this proverb to Me, 'Physician, heal yourself!  Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in Your country.'  Then He said, "Assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country.  But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout the land; but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region to Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.  And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."  So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff.  Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way.    My study bible says, "This double response of marveling (v. 22) and rejection (v. 29) occurs frequently in those who encounter Christ (see 11:14-16; John 9:16).  His being rejected in His own country fulfills the rejection of the Old Testament prophets such as Elijah (v. 26) and Elisha (v. 27), and foreshadows His rejection by the whole Jewish nation at His trial before Pilate (John 19:14-15).  Christ accepts death according to the Father's will, not at the will of the Jews.  Here, the hour of His Passion has not yet come (see John 8:20)."

The striking thing about today's reading is Jesus' very "proactive" sort of stance right at the beginning of His ministry.  We noted already that it is the Spirit that is "leading" this journey, into the wilderness for temptation first, and now in Galilee -- and in today's reading, His hometown of Nazareth.  But just as Jesus must have been aware that in the wilderness He would directly face challenges and temptations of the world, so I believe He's perfectly aware before He speaks that "no prophet is accepted in His own country."  In fact, this is such an important understanding of His ministry that this statement appears in one form or another in all four Gospels.  Yet Jesus understands it as well as fulfillment of prophecy. And He's prepared for this reaction, and very aggressively, we might say, goes after His audience here in His hometown of Nazareth.  He reminds them that in the times of Old Testament prophets those who truly benefited from faith and were saved, in some sense, were foreigners:  "But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout the land; but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region to Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.  And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."   How shocking it must have been for them to hear this -- to be reminded that when it comes to God, it may be only foreigners who are the beneficiaries of God's work in the world!  Just as Jesus so decisively confronts and rejects the devil in His first act before beginning His ministry (see yesterday's reading), He's also very decisively and assertively confronting the disbelief among those who are "familiar" -- here in His hometown, and in a broader sense, the culmination of His ministry in Israel.  Right from the beginning, the Gospel sets out for us what is what, unfolding the story of Jesus.   Right from the beginning, He acknowledges what us moderns might call failure!   Rejection, and struggle, He confronts from the beginning, head on.  He's not here to please people, He's not a politician, He's not out to win favor by hook or by crook.  Neither has He come to respond to demands for proofs.  He is in the world to reveal truth, and that is going to upset the order of things.  It's a deep challenge on spiritual levels, of course, to the "ruler of this world."  And it's a deep challenge to all the neighbors' accepted familiarity, what they think they know and understand, who they always though of Jesus as being -- a member of a particular family, the carpenter's son.  In other readings, they're very jealous of the authority with which He speaks, having had no particular formal education to speak of.  They "marvel" here, at His gracious words, and ask (rather incredulously, it seems to me), "Is not this Joseph's son?"  Jesus bursts into His ministry, in some sense, not with a soft touch, but with a great resounding crash, a revelation we are challenged to believe.  He's going to upset the order of things, shake up the world around Himself.  In Matthew (11:12) and later on in Luke's Gospel (16:16), we'll read about Jesus suggesting that from the time of the Baptist until "now" people are somehow entering the kingdom with violence (see quotations here).  Some ancient interpretations of this statement about violence imply that it is rather the Kingdom that is "crashing" violently into the world, appearing to us through Jesus' ministry in vivid and "violent" revelation, something that is bursting in upon our awareness and our earthly understanding.  So it would be implied by Jesus' ministry, and His preaching here to His former neighbors who've known Him all of His life.  Something new is crashing in here, and those who would grasp it must do so with a vigorous sort of seizing.  It's not a soft and easy entrance; it's one that begins with confrontation with the order of things -- both in the challenges of temptation by Satan to Jesus, and in the ways in which Jesus' neighbors' react to Him as He preaches to them for the first time in their synagogue in Nazareth.  He's not here to prove anything to them; rather, His presence is a challenge.  He boldly proclaims the reality He is here to reveal.  Once His mission of ministry has begun (as led by the Spirit), there is not only no turning back, but there is only a vigorous going forward.  Jesus is "all in" and He knows where He is headed.  Let us remember His whole-hearted faith and courage for the mission for which He's been sent into the world.  May it give us a full heart for what we are to do and face in our own lives of faith.