Luke 4: 22-30--Extreme Sermon Response

22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ 23 He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” ’ 24 And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 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. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

A Homecoming Reception

We really are not prepared for this passage. Indeed, all indications from the previous several verses were that Jesus would take his home town by storm. He had received a God-approved baptism, had emerged victoriously from the wilderness testing, and had just finished a whirlwind preaching and teaching tour that brought commendation from all. When he unrolled the Scriptures and read from Isaiah, you could almost hear the contented sighs of the congregation. Thus, from the perspective of the congregation, it is hard to believe that we are headed for conflict in the next several verses.

And then, it is hard to believe from what we know of Jesus that a confrontation was brewing. Indeed, as we saw in the previous essay, Jesus dropped the section from Isaiah's text which talked about the "day of vengeance" of God. He was going to bring release to captives of all kinds. What could be more irenic? But confrontation flared up, to such a degree that people wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff. This exposition shows why that confrontation developed and what it might mean for our understanding of Jesus. Three points capture the flow of the passage: (1) The people's favorable response (22); (2) Jesus's negative reading of their response (23-27); (3) The people's angry reply (28-30).

I. The Initial Response (22)

There is both an irony and an interpretive difficulty in the response of the people to Jesus' words. Let's get to the difficulty first. In a nutshell it is whether the two reactions attributed to the people are consistent or in tension with each other. All spoke well of him. Then they asked, "Isn't this Joseph's son?" What is the "tone of voice" of the latter? Is it said in incredulity, like 'How could someone from our rinky-dink town, the son of a carpenter, say these things?' Is it said in a tone of anticipation, 'Well, he is one of us; therefore, we can expect to reap some of the benefits of his words'? Is the latter question asked with some scorn, 'He really can't be anyone anyway, can he?' My approach is to try to read these statements consistently. Just as it is a principle in legal interpretation that you read statutes consistently with constitutional provisions unless there is a direct contradiction, I tend to try to read biblical statements consistently unless there is clear evidence that it is wrong. So, I read the crowd's question, "Isn't this Joseph's son?" to mean that people were trying to "explain" Jesus by pointing to his origin and, as a result, to try to "make him their own." He would be "their boy" in Nazareth, Jerusalem or wherever he would do his work.

Then there is the irony, but it is an irony shared by the author and reader, rather than by Jesus and the townspeople. That irony is that Jesus is in fact the son of Joseph (the geneaology says the same--3:23) but, in truth, he is more than that. "You are my (i.e., God's) Son" comes just before the mention of Jesus as Joseph's son (3:22). So, it is as if the author is "winking" at the reader, showing that the congregation understands Jesus but only imperfectly. He is Joseph's son, but he is much more than that. But the premise of the people is that Jesus is only Josephs' son.

What is at stake here is succinctly stated by Joel Green in his commentary on Luke: "It is as though at this juncture they (the townspeople) have filtered his message through their restrictive presumptions about him" (The Gospel of Luke, 216). And, of course, this begs the theological question for us today. To what extent are our views of Jesus "filtered" to "match our presumptions" about him? To what extent do we feel we know Jesus already, that his words and deeds are so familiar to us that Jesus himself loses his capacity to surprise and instruct us? To what extent is that the reality of our congregation, our denomination, or Christianity in our day? Well, Jesus is about to challenge those presumptions head on.

II. Jesus Challenges the People (23-28)

Jesus responds by challenging the people's basic assumption through the use of two aphorisms or proverbial statements and by telling two brief biblical stories. In this connection Jesus is so unlike the management and personnel guides we have in our culture today. Their approach is to "work with people," to try to "build bridges of understanding," in order to establish a "win-win" situation where you are. That may be good advice for establishing a profitable corporate culture, but it isn't the advice that Jesus pursues.

The next essay describes Jesus' controversial reaction.

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