The section headings that the translators gave these parts of Luke’s account are telling: “Jesus Begins His Work,” and “Jesus is Rejected.”  Here is an encapsulation of what we’ll be reading between now and the end of the year.  On the whole, Jesus is rejected.  I’m not sure that things are very different today.  Certainly, there are those who do not reject him—here we are.  Others claim they welcome him, but their welcome seems to be the equivalent of how we would welcome the Fed Ex person bringing a package to our door: “Oh, hi.  Thanks.  Have a great day.”  Then they close the door and go about their business.  They don’t remember what the delivery person looked like; they certainly didn’t bother to find out the person’s name.

When we were last with Jesus, he had been baptized, now we see him returning to Galilee.  Between these events, Jesus endured temptation in the wilderness, the lonely, abandoned place.  More about that in a few weeks.  What Luke says now is worth bearing in mind: Jesus comes back to his home region, “and the power of the Spirit was with him” (4:14).  Power—there’s that word again.  What is power?  What is this power, this Spirit power with which Jesus returns from his baptism, returns from that temptation in the lonely place?  Ability.  Jesus comes in the ability of the Spirit.  The Spirit is able.  When you say, “Lord, I don’t know how to believe this, or if I can,” when you say, “Lord, I don’t think I can do this,” “Lord, I don’t know how I can bear this,” Jesus answers the Spirit is able.  Jesus is saying, Look to me, trust in me, believe in me, and the Spirit’s ability will be with you and in you.

Luke tells us Jesus returns, and news about him spreads throughout the region.  It seems he has done some works of power in Capernaum, works Luke doesn’t tell us about.  He tells us that news about Jesus is spreading.  People are talking about him.  Can we talk about Jesus?  I mean, yes, of course we can, we are, here today, right now.  Can we talk about Jesus during the rest of the week, elsewhere, with others?  Luke doesn’t talk about the works of power in Capernaum.  What is most important for Luke to say here is that Jesus was teaching (4:15).  Maybe the news spreading throughout Galilee has as much to do with what Jesus is teaching as with any works of power he has performed.  Maybe.  Signs and wonders.  Most of the time God does not work among us by signs and wonders.  How, then?  Is God at work among us?  Always at work among us?  Then how?  Through His Word.  Through the teaching.  Jesus was teaching.  News is spreading.

Jesus comes to Nazareth, goes to the synagogue; he stands to read.  He doesn’t choose the scroll; the scroll is handed to him.  I hope you are sensing the Spirit at work, beloved.  Whenever we come to God’s Word, believe the Spirit is at work.  Jesus, seeing the book of Isaiah has been given to him, chooses what he will read.  Isaiah is a long book.  Jesus knows his Isaiah.  He “found the place where it is written” (4:17).  He chooses.  What is written?  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (4:18).  It is, isn’t it!  We saw it at his baptism, felt it as he weathered the storm of temptation in the lonely place, where he was not alone, because the Spirit was with him.  Beloved, we are never alone, even in the worst trials, the most fearsome temptations.  As we are in Jesus, the Spirit is with us, there!

Jesus reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has chosen me” (4:18).  God has chosen the Son and sent him: let’s consider to whom God sends the Son; in a moment, we will consider what the Son is sent to do.  God sends the Son, according to God’s Word spoken through His prophet Isaiah, “to the poor [. . . .] the captives [. . .] the blind [. . .] the oppressed”; that’s quite a list, and we should certainly keep the physical and material even the social and political dimensions in view when we consider this list.  God’s Word is the ointment for every wound, the healing for every hurt.  Jesus also means these words spiritually: those poor in spirit—feeble, lacking spiritual resources, lacking the courage, hope, peace, and joy that come with, that come from the Spirit of the Lord.  Jesus also means those who are spiritually captive.  Captive to what?  To sin, the trap of sin.  Sin makes such happy, pretty promises and delivers such grief and ugliness!  Jesus means those who are spiritually blind—oh, beloved, the spiritual blindness, and not just out in the world!  Jesus also means those who are oppressed spiritually: those who have spiritual resources but whose resources are stretched thin, those running on fumes: Jesus comes like rain upon parched fields; he comes like warm sunshine in the midst of cold snow; he comes like crocuses, speaking the promise of spring; he comes, God, when we most need Him, and least expect Him.

Jesus says he comes to such people, in their physical and spiritual hunger and thirst, “to bring good news”—other translations say to preach, to proclaim.  He comes to proclaim, to set free.  I might say Jesus came to die, and that’s true.  You might say Jesus came to heal and to bless, and that’s true.  Jesus is saying, here, that he comes to proclaim.  Dying and rising—there’s divine power!  We say, Hallelujah!  Healing—there’s divine power!  We say Hallelujah!  Proclaiming—there’s . . . well, what is that?  Just talking?  Words?  Do we say Hallelujah?

Jesus comes to say “the time has come” (4:19): now, it’s here, it’s happening, “when the Lord will save His people” (4:19).  The Spirit is upon this one, this Jesus, this Yeshua, whose very name means God saves.

Then he sits down.  He’s about to speak, to interpret, to help the people understand something about what he just read to them.  They are leaning in, attentive: “yes?” they are thinking, “Yes, and?”  “This passage of Scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read” (4:20).  They wonder what that could mean.  We might, also.  Other translations put that last part as the Scripture “has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  I prefer that rendering.  Jesus isn’t quite saying that, in some mysterious, passive way, what he read to them was fulfilled while he was reading, while they heard it being read.  Jesus says the Scripture is fulfilled as they are hearing, in their hearing.  It’s the hearing that Jesus is emphasizing, hearing the Word.  It is for those who hear the Word that the Word is fulfilled.

Scripture becomes effective for us, within and upon us, when we hear it, hear it in such a way that we respond to it in the affirmative, when we hear and welcome what we hear.  All of that happens through the Spirit.  We hear many things.  As Devon will readily affirm, I apparently hear many things that go in one ear and right out the other.  I hope I’m not the only one.  This isn’t the hearing that Jesus means when he says God’s Word is now fulfilled in our hearing.  There are things people have said that have stayed with me: I pull them out every so often and look at the words, feel them; some of those words were like revelations to me, and blessings.  This is closer to what Jesus means: what we hear that stays with us, stays in us, that has an effect upon us.

Then there is God’s Word—I can’t say I have the Bible memorized, and I can’t say that I will quote word for word even what I remember best, but I will affirm that I can tell you what the Bible is saying.  I can affirm that because I spend time with God’s Word, and, over the years, it has had an effect upon me: it’s the Word of Life, the Saving Word, the Healing Word.  Beloved, that is power!  It’s not like earthquakes or volcanoes, or whirlwinds—why do we imagine God works in those ways, is present only in those things?  Power is ability, and the ability God gives us in Jesus Christ, through the Spirit, is to hear Him.  Seeing Him does not save.  We are not saved by sight.  Many saw Jesus on that cross, on the way to the cross, and pitied the poor, condemned man.  We are saved by faith, and faith comes, sisters and brothers, through hearing, through receiving and welcoming.  When we truly hear what God is truly saying, we are truly saved.

That is Good News.  The conclusion I’ve reached is that most people do not see their problems as spiritual problems.  Theirs are physical problems, material problems, maybe emotional problems, or mental problems, the problems are social, political, “systemic” problems.  Without dismissing such perceptions, I want to suggest that the answer to all problems of life is a spiritual answer, the answer Jesus gives us, the answer of God’s Word.  The Good News is that we have a friend in God.  In this life, we can, maybe we often do, feel overwhelmed, but God isn’t overwhelmed.  We feel tired, but God isn’t tired.  We can feel like life is hopeless, our lives are hopeless, hopeless messes—God has now come to change that!  This is what Jesus is saying, this is who Jesus is: God who changes all that; God with the ability to change all that.  He doesn’t change it by giving us as much money as we need or want!  As if that was really the problem.  He doesn’t change it by making our immune systems impervious to everything and by making our bodies untouched by aging!  Despite the billions spent annually on drugs, cosmetics, and cosmetic surgery, sickness and aging are not the problem.  God doesn’t change our lives by making our children and spouse perfect angels for us!  But wouldn’t that be pretty?  He doesn’t change it by making all our legal troubles disappear!  God gives us lawyers for a reason.  He doesn’t change it by tidying up our room (our life) for us and then so kindly going away, like a house cleaner: strictly a business arrangement—“Gracias, Lupe.  Same time next week, okay?”

God takes the hopeless mess of our lives and changes it by forgiving our sin: not just the harmful choices we’ve made, the mean words we’ve said!  Our living without God, our focusing our plans and goals and passions elsewhere, our deepest commitment elsewhere.  Sin is making God an afterthought, preferring our will to God’s will, our way to God’s way, our desires, our appetites, our self-justifying rationalizations.  If it makes me happy, it can’t be that bad.  It is that bad!  Find your truest, deepest, best happiness in me, God is saying, God sends Jesus to say, God gives us the Spirit to hear, to receive, and to live.

God changes us.  It’s not our external, physical, material, social, or political circumstances that change but we who are changed—God changes us by taking hold of us in Christ and pulling us to Himself in the Spirit, blessing us with strength, light, purity, peace, joy, love, life.

God fulfills His Word, His promise, in our hearing.  Hear.  Help others to hear.  Jesus came to die, yes.  He came to heal, yes.  Jesus came to proclaim.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.