Pastor Patty Ebner

January 27, 2019

Luke 4: 14 – 21

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“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.”

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus Sat

A preacher almost hates to follow such a wonderful, uplifting song such as that.  As a side note, I want to let those of you who don’t know that our lead Pastor, Rev. Lisa Horst Clark, is with other senior ministers from the West Coast today, so that is why I am leading worship and preaching.

Today’s Scripture, from the Gospel of Luke, is written in a time where the temple has been destroyed for the second time by the Romans.  Jesus’ ministry would have ended some forty years earlier.  Luke’s message speaks to a community that is comprised of Jews and Gentiles, Romans and non-Romans.  His theology was broad and inclusive, like the theology we enjoy in the United Church of Christ.  Today’s story begins with the return of Jesus to his hometown of Nazareth, in the area of Galilee.  Jesus is in his early thirties by this time, he has been baptized by John the Baptist and he has been travelling in the area, preaching and healing people he has chosen to go to, to be their minister.  And right before coming to Nazareth, he has spent forty days in the wilderness.  So this is often a Scripture we look at during the time of Lent, but today we visit this Scripture as a time when Jesus is re-introducing himself to the Jewish community.

We learn in today’s Scripture that it was Jesus’ custom to get up on the Sabbath day and go to Synagogue; imagine that.  In my research I learned that synagogues were placed in prominent high places because it was considered important for something to be at the highest elevation, closest to the location of God.  Outside each of these synagogues was a place where you could dip your hands in the water so that you would cleanse your soul before entering the place of worship.  When Sue and I visited Greece this last September we saw these fonts in front of places of worship.

On this particular day, when Jesus arrived to the synagogue, the service would have begun with the Shema, following by the reciting of the Ten Commandments and then the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy.  Much like our services today, the readers would have been chosen in advance, but since Jesus was returning to his hometown after several years of being away, he may have been invited to read the Scripture.  The Hassan, who is known as the assistant in a Jewish service, would have handed the scroll of Isaiah to Jesus.  So Jesus took that scroll and initially he began to read the words of Isaiah verbatim:  “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.”  But when Jesus gets to the second sentence, “He has sent me to bring the good news to the oppressed,” like any good preacher or teacher he deconstructs the word “oppressed.”  He renames the oppressed as people