Slip-sliding away: Jesus at Nazareth

 Slip-sliding away: Jesus at Nazareth  

We often go to church early, because it’s good to get one’s religious obligations out of the way – early in the week and early in the day.

     We thought we were going to hear the narrow man. (See here . . . and here.) But it was someone considerably wider (both of body and mind) with an interesting take on Luke 4, at least I thought so. (Meaning: what follows is my take on his, if I understood it correctly.)

You know the story.

     Some time after being tempted in the wilderness, Jesus finds himself back in Galilee, teaching in synagogues – he’s a rabbi now – and it’s going pretty well. Then, he comes to Nazareth, his home town, the synagogue there. He reads from Isaiah, about the year of the Jubilee, which was to come every 49 years but never came at all. And he says, “Today! Today this scripture is being fulfilled.”

     He speaks well, and people are thinking well of him, when someone prods someone else and asks, “Joseph’s son, right?”

     “Yes, but did you hear what he did at Capurnaum?

And as if he’s overheard them, Jesus says, “I know you’ve heard what I did at Capurnaum, but I won’t be doing that here – no prophet could in his own country.” And he cites the cases of Elijah and Elisha, how Elijah took care of a widow from Sidon not any of the widows of Israel and how Elisha didn’t cleanse any local lepers but a Syrian.

     I’ve never been quite sure what Jesus’ point was, but the wider man with a bit of a smile asked it couldn’t describe the way we tend to see God’s grace, which falls on the unjust and the just alike, sometimes here and sometimes there and not necessarily where you want it to – on you! That’s why the people get riled up – the other guy is getting their grace. Of course, this is “just the first time of many,” the wide man chuckled and shook his head. It will turn out that “People will always getting riled up at Jesus, because he’s always saying stuff that riles people up. ‘Turn the other cheek. Go the second mile. Pull out your eye, if you’re looking at the wrong man or woman. Sell all you have.’”

     Actually, if we’re paying attention to what Jesus is saying, we’ll find that the Nazarenes is us, when they rise up to put Jesus out of the city. Thank God that unlike us they didn’t have guns and the right to use them; they could only push him down a hill.

     But they can’t even do that. Somehow he passes “through the midst of them” and goes on his way. Thank God for that, too, the wider man said, smiling again – at the Nazarenes and at us and at good old Jesus - even when we’re ready to push him down the hill, or even take a shot at the crazy bastard*, he’s passing through the midst of us.

That's what the preacher said, or something like that.

At any rate, he’s with us and not seeking to be above us. He isn’t running for governor. Thank God for that, as well. (Saw this on the way home.)

01.31.16

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* He didn’t say “bastard”; I did. But I’m not the first by a long shot: see the same story in Mark’s gospel, chapter 6, verse 3.