Horizons Bible Study 2016-2017
Who is Jesus? What a Difference a Lens Makes
Lesson 3: Luke 4:14-30
The Gospel of Luke uniquely has some of the most well-known stories in the Bible. Jesus is born and laid in a manger. Angels appear to shepherds. The parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are found only in Luke. Luke includes more about the Holy Spirit and about women being among Jesus’ followers than the other Gospels.
Though parts of the Gospel of Luke are beloved, as a whole we tend to water it down, diluting its electricity and shock. Jesus in Luke upends common standards of economics. The poor are mentioned again and again. The song of Mary (Luke 1:46-55) describes the poor being filled and the rich being turned away empty. Luke’s beatitudes do not say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” as in the Gospel of Matthew, but rather, “Blessed are the poor and woe to the rich.” Luke includes the story of Lazarus, the beggar who sits, covered with sores, at the rich man’s door starving to death. The rich man doesn’t see or care. After the beggar and the rich man die, Lazarus is taken into the bosom of Abraham, while the rich man is in fiery torment (Luke 16:19-31). In a major election year, no candidate is talking about God’s concern for the poor.
From the beginning of Jesus’ preaching about the kingdom of God, Jesus pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable. When he comes to preach in his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah, and his choice of Scripture reveals his agenda for his ministry.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release
to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
—Luke 4:18-19
To whom would these words from Isaiah be good news? Take each line of the Scripture and think about to whom these words from Isaiah would be bad news.
To the crowd listening, initially this sounds great. Living under Roman occupation, most of the population is poor, scratching out a subsistent living from the soil. They are oppressed by heavy taxation. Everyone wants “the year of the Lord’s favor,” which refers to the year of Jubilee. According to Leviticus 25:10, people return to their ancestral property and reclaim it, even if they had sold it. Slaves are freed. The conditions that trap people in poverty are not to be permanent.
While some are amazed because Jesus is just Joe’s boy, others are thinking that Jesus should take care of his own people first — right here in downtown Nazareth. Jesus sees their anticipation, so he clarifies his teaching about the kingdom of God. God’s mercy and care will not just be for Jews. Jesus reminds them that during a time of severe drought and famine, Elijah went to a non-Jewish widow with whom he stayed and for whom he provided daily food. Jesus also points out that Naaman, a foreign military commander, an enemy and a leper, was healed by Elisha.
The crowd is enraged! The mob drives Jesus out of town seeking to throw him off a hill. It is inconceivable that these other nasty, undeserving people will get God’s care and healing while other more commendable people get left out.
Who would be the counterparts to the widow and Naaman today? What strangers and foreigners would you substitute to make Jesus’ remarks in Luke 4:16-30 more contemporary and equally offensive?
God will bless those that we believe to be outside the pale. An interrogator at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba contributed an account in “This I Believe II” edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman. Her role was to get information from detainees that would keep American soldiers safe. The interrogator’s name was withheld for security reasons, so I will call her Sandra. Sandra was plagued by nightmares of what she had experienced in Iraq.
Sandra played dominoes, brought chocolate and generally talked a lot with the prisoners. One detainee, Mustafa, joked that Sandra was his favorite interrogator, and she joked back that he was her favorite terrorist, which he was. Mustafa had done things that they both wished he could take back.
Mustafa asked Sandra one day, “You know everything about me, but still you do not hate me. Why?” She was stopped cold. Then she replied, “Everyone has done things in their past that they’re not proud of. I know I have, but I also know God still expects me to love him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. That means you.” Mustafa started to cry, “That’s what my God says, too.”
Rosalind Banbury is associate pastor for adult ministries at First Church in Richmond, Virginia.
