Christ For All, Third Sunday After EpiphanyLuke 4:14-22A Confrontation in the SynagogueIn our reading today from Luke’s Gospel we’ve got half a story. These readings are taken from the Church’s lectionary and so we have to preach on what we’re given, but the selection today I have to say is somewhat odd and could be quite misleading. In the translation that you just heard, the English Standard Version, Jesus stands up in a synagogue in Nazareth, which was his hometown. He reads from the scroll, quoting the prophet Isaiah, chapter 61. He sits down and then tells them the Scripture, which is about the Messiah – God’s anointed one who would come to deliver his people in some way – is in fact him, Jesus. ‘And all spoke well of him and marvelled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth’.In itself this comes across as a quaint tale of Jesus coming back to the place he grew up, reading a bit of Scripture, proclaiming himself to be the Messiah, and people accepting it.In my view, this is not what happened at all. And I think we are dealing with a poor translation choice. For, verse 22, which I just quoted, tells us that the people initially accepted Jesus’ claims and were happy about them. But then they turned on him just as quickly: “Is this not Joseph’s son?” And they took offence at him. The whole conversation climaxes with their driving him to the brow of a hill and attempting to throw him down the cliff. Why the sudden change of heart?The answer is that the people did not speak well of him and marvel at his gracious words. As I say, I think this is a bad translation, and I am not alone. Without going into linguistic details, a better translation would be something like, ‘And all witnessed against him and were amazed at the words of mercy that came out of his mouth.’ This would make far more sense of the context.Then the question becomes: Why did they witness against him? Why did the people of his hometown reject him and his teaching and try and kill him?The answer comes if we look at the Scripture he read and the way he read it. For, he chose a Scripture, Isaiah 61, that may very well have been a favourite in the Synagogue at Nazareth. Nazareth was a very small town and for historical reasons would have been highly nationalistic and anti-Gentile. They were expecting the Messiah to come and to deliver them from Roman occupation. Number one. But, even more than this, they were expecting the Gentile nations to be made into their servants. And they were expecting this partly because of what it says in Isaiah 61. For it says that the Messiah would come ‘to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God’. Slightly later on in Isaiah 61, it says, ‘Aliens shall feed your flocks, foreigners shall be your ploughmen and vinedressers…you shall eat the wealth of the nations (or the Gentiles) and in their riches you shall glory’.So, what’s the problem? Put quite simply, Jesus chose not to read those bits out. He intentionally left out the bits that spoke about judgment on the Gentile nations, and instead left in all the bits about God bringing liberty and healing. Now, this was not Jesus putting himself above the Scripture. It was in fact a common practice to read the Scriptures in a synagogue in a selective way, shortening texts or even bringing in other bits of Scripture to supplement the main passage that was being read. So here, Jesus specifically leaves out the words ‘the day of the vengeance of our God’ and cuts the passage short before the bit about the Gentile nations serving the Jews.The great Middle-Eastern scholar Kenneth Bailey imagines what the people in the synagogue must have been thinking:What is the matter with this boy? He has quoted one of our favorite texts, but he has omitted some of its most important verses. In the process he has turned a text of judgment into a text of mercy. This is outrageous! The messianic age is a golden age for us and a day of God’s vengeance upon them. How could this boy grow up here and not know this?Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, p.162This is why the witnessed against him and were amazed at the words of mercy that he spoke: they didn’t want mercy for the Gentiles. They wanted judgment.Add to this the fact that he claimed to actually be the Messiah.Add to this the fact that he would have learned the Scriptures in that very synagogue as a child.Add to that the fact that he goes on to tell two stories about God having mercy upon two Gentile figures – the widow at Zarephath and Namaan the Syrian (sadly omitted from today’s reading).And this explains why they were so infuriated with him.One further observation: it’s completely clear from the text that Jesus did all of this on purpose. He edited the text and spoke about God’s mercy to the Gentiles specifically to put his finger on the most controversial, most sensitive point possible. He was saying the unsayable. He was intentionally confronting and infuriating his audience. What he was saying was completely inflammatory. And he was trying to get a reaction. Jesus, you might say, was a controversialist.Saying the UnsayableHaving said this, it seems to me that we should be unflinching with the application of this text. The people in the synagogue, the townspeople of Nazareth had hardened their hearts against the Gentiles nations and closed their ears to the Scriptures that spoke to the fact that Israel, that is the Jewish people, were meant to be a light to the nations. They had rejected this idea: they, and only they, were God’s people. The Gentiles would suffer God’s judgment and not his mercy.I have been thinking long and hard about the application to our world. And I think that one of the points must be that Christ is the Messiah for everyone and not just for our people, for the folks we think are acceptable and worthy. So, ask yourself, who are “the Gentiles” for us? For you? The people we think are undeserving of a place in God’s good graces. I’m going to make some suggestions. And I do this knowing that they will be controversial.I believe that the institution of the Church of England has very little concern for the working-class people of this nation and for those who might be considered conservative or traditional in their mindset. Once Hilary Clinton described the kind of people who would vote Republican as “a basket of deplorables”, and I believe that this kind of attitude is absolutely prevalent in the higher echelons of the CofE. I believe that this is a sin that should be repented of. And I also think it is foolish because, in my experience, it is exactly these kinds of people who are most interested in what Christianity might have to offer to the world in these troubled times.But, there is another side to this. It may be that those who are more traditionally-minded, conservative in nature, lack the sort of compassion that they should have for other groups: immigrant communities, aggressors to our civilisational values, Muslims. I should add here that the Gentiles in Jesus’ day were oppressors. The Jews lived under the yoke of Rome. The Romans were pagan idolators who made the lives of the Jews miserable. And yet Christ still chose to be a Messiah to all and to any who would come to him.Many, perhaps most, will continue to reject Christ and continue in error and even wickedness, but the attitude of the Church must be that the Gospel is for all and even for those who we might think are far away. At the very least this calls us to an attitude of compassion and love rather than hatred or bitterness.I’d like to be very up to date and mention an exchange I had on X this week. Speaking about the child-murderer Axel Rudakabana, somebody said to me that this man who horrifically murdered three young girls and mutilated several others in a diabolically inspired knife-attack doesn’t deserve mercy and that hell is too good for him. Believe me, I understand those feelings, and I think it only natural and right to long for justice in this agonisingly broken and sinful world. But I replied, ‘None of us deserve God’s mercy. That is why Christ died for us.’None of this is to say that Rudakabana should not be punished justly for his appalling crimes and nor is it to minimise the life-shattering grief that he has brought to so many lives. But it is to say that the Gospel calls us to remember that we are all sinful and in need of a redemption which we cannot manufacture on our own. We need God’s help. We need Christ’s precious blood. We need his sacrifice on the cross to save us. None of us deserves this. But we are all offered it. And we are to recognise our sinfulness, our brokenness, our helplessness, and the precious gift that is given to us, so that we might be able to offer it again to the world that is similarly in need.I want to finish with one further observation. It seems that many, if not most or even all, of the people in the people in the synagogue felt that they belonged there, in the midst of God’s chosen people, and that it was the world out there that was undeserving. But were there a few folks within, perhaps, who weren’t so sure? Perhaps they didn’t have such a pure Jewish heritage as others or possessed some kind of other disqualifying factor. I mention this because this can be the case for us too.We can harden our hearts towards those outside, but we can also imagine that we belong there with them. We can think that we are not good enough to come to Christ. We can think that we ought to get ourselves together first. We can think that we are the wrong class, not educated enough, not Christian enough in our origin. We can think we are from the wrong background, or that for some reason we are too far from God.If you think that, let me encourage you that the only qualification necessary to come to Christ is that you want to come to him. The Gospel is a gift which is offered to each one of us. And like any other kind of gift, it can be received freely or rejected.
