The local lad goes home!

 St Mary’s Wheatley 26th January 2025

 

Today’s gospel reading from Luke, gives us the story of Jesus returning home to Nazareth. The narrative gives us the story of Jesus’ first act of public ministry. Following his baptism in the River Jordan and his time in the desert wilderness fast and temptation, Jesus returns to his home country, Galilee and the city of Nazareth, there were probably about 12000 people so a small town. Reports about him have been spreading through the population, probably the result of his healing miracles and his synagogue teaching.

When Jesus returns to Nazareth it is quite an occasion!  A sort of local boy returns home to adulation, fascination and a little bit of ‘just who does he think he is’.  A little further on from today’s reading we have these verses ‘all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is this not 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 hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown”.

 

Imagine if you will something that sets tongues wagging and a sort of local boy makes good vibe.  Most but not quite everybody are proud of the local lad. Jesus tacitly acknowledges this when he says, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown”.  Going back to where you grew up is not always perhaps rarely easy, someone will always remember the little boy you were, the mess you once made, and they may well be happy to remind you of it.  Perhaps Jesus was no different.

 

Now back to what Jesus says!  As Jesus enters the synagogue on that Sabbath morning, he picks up the scroll from Isaiah and reads God has anointed me “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”  And then says ‘’Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  This is a bold claim!  Jesus identifies himself as the one spoken of by the prophets.  These words should be seen as a manifesto.

 

It has been a week of inaugural speeches, perhaps the less said the better!  Commentators sometimes refer to this as Jesus’ inaugural sermon’.  The contents of both speeches are of course starkly different, but I want to concentrate on Jesus not Trump.  Unlike Bishop Budde in Washington Cathedral this week I don’t have the newly elected President squirming in a seat and staring at me.  What courage to speak out.

 

This is what Jesus has come to proclaim.

Good news to the poor

Freedom to captives

Recovery of sight to the blind

To let the oppressed go free

And to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour (A jubilee year)

 

If we want to know if something is of God perhaps, we, can we turn this into a check list we will be known by our fruits and these will bring.

Good news to the poor

Freedom to the captives (not the same as presidential pardons or a denying of the judicial systems we can be imprisoned by many different things.

Healing in the broadest sense

And good news to those who need to hear it most!

 

Jesus takes all this as his Manifesto his mission statement, the power of these words is that for Jesus they are not just words.  We are hearing them in the season of Epiphany because they reveal who Jesus is and what he will bring. unlike many political manifestos they are not just words put together to garner votes and then easily forgotten.  They are words of prophecy; everything that Jesus will live out and proclaim shows to us that he will live out this prophecy in words and in deeds.

 

 

In a sermon on this passage The Revd. Charles Hoffacker  puts it poetically when he says, “We will know it when we see it because the poor gain hope, whether it’s their souls or their bodies that are starved. The captives experience freedom, whether they are prisoners in a jail or prisoners in a mansion. The blind receive sight, whether it’s cataract surgery at the church hospital or the scales of prejudice falling off the eyes of a bigot. The oppressed are set free, whether oppression is a political regime or a chemical dependence”.

 

When Jesus picks up that scroll in Nazareth on a Sabbath morning, he sets in train a life and ministry that will truly reshape the world. Jesus still does these things, because his church does them.  He does this by announcing a manifesto for the ages, in the words of the hymn, this is what we have to do’.  Through the gift of the Holy Spirit the baton has been passed to us.

In the words of Teresa of Avila

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

 

 

 


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