This Week: Epiphany 3C
Gospel: Luke 4:14-21
When Jesus goes into the synagogue, is he preparing to teach? Do we know that’s the plan? Or does it simply . . . happen?
The text doesn’t say or highlight the machinations of the moment, but it does guide us to a point of connection with it, with the good news itself, with the scroll of Isaiah, to his place in the community, and most especially with his relationship to the good news itself.
I find it important to name both how captivating the people find him and how well it is received — until the part that comes after the passage. We need to see the depth of the contrast — how much people really loved what he said until they thought about who was saying it. And then suddenly, it was meaningless. Imagine hiding the origin of a popular statement and then revealing the partisan who said it and watch the people scramble to agree or disaggree!
There is a deep physicality to this passage, too — and relational. People are there, physically existing and hearing and believing — until they don’t. There is joy and satisfaction and no doubt sweat and odors and human bodies sitting and standing in places and occupying common space with other bodies and they are there and making choices and then going home when it is all over.
The central issue for preachers, however, is whether to engage with the reading from Isaiah as depiction of the gospel or to focus primarily on Jesus’s preaching after it — when he sits down and says that it is fulfilled in the hearing it. I don’t think we are to necessarily separate the two (I don’t), but I think there is a challenge of where to center authority here: on Isaiah or Jesus.
Splitting the difference with a “why not both” works, obviously, but it also isn’t obvious. Especially when you’re taught to “stick to one theme, preacher.” The theme, then, can easily be attuned to the year of the lord’s favor, perhaps, or to Jesus in that room with the people.
I go against the grain and try to ground the whole myself, which is more ambitious than most preachers are encouraged to be. But in this case, I think it helps center us in in our hearing. That, we, too, are hearing this message and are influenced by it, not just those bodies in the room. And our hearing must lead us to something.
Comparing our hearing to the people in the room, who are astounded…for a time…until they turn on him is always an invaluable option. Because, let’s be honest: we aren’t keen to think about the year of the Lord’s favor including setting free violent criminals, perhaps. Nor are we keen to see the year of the Lord’s favor being defined by giving sight to blind people — that seems like too specific an ask in the most literal sense.
There is energy there — in the stuff we don’t want to deal with — which makes it the place we most often need to go.