Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
2nd of February, 2025
Out of the sheer goodness of my heart, I allowed Alastair Pritchard to take the service last week when the lectionary readings included one of my favourite Bible passages: Jesus’ Nazareth manifesto. Last week we saw Jesus go to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom, and read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah: ‘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 favour.’ Jesus then tells the people ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ That is where last week’s reading from the gospel according to Luke ended and where today’s reading begins, with the very Lukan announcement that the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled today.
At first the people of Nazareth seem to be filled with wonder and praise. They say: ‘Is this not Joseph’s son?’ In Matthew and Mark’s telling of this story that question is an attack, the people say, ‘“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offence at him.’ (Mark 6:3) But in Luke’s telling it seems to mean something like, ‘Goodness, we watched this young man grow up and look at how well he’s doing!’
It is Jesus who turns the event sour. Does Jesus know something about the people that they do not know about themselves? He accuses them of seeing him as someone who belongs to them, someone who should do the same miracles in his hometown of Nazareth that he did in Capernaum. If this is what the people are thinking, Jesus quickly disabuses them of the notion that either Jesus or the Lord’s favour belongs to them. Jesus has not come to reassure the insiders who believe that God is with them; he has come to welcome the outsiders into God’s family. And so he tells the people of Nazareth this, using examples from the Hebrew Scriptures of God reaching out to those beyond Israel, to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon and Naaman the Syrian. The God Jesus has come to reveal is a God who cares about the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed, but not just the Jewish poor, captive, blind and oppressed. Jesus’ God is a God who cares about everyone, whatever their race or religion, a God who welcomes outsiders. And so after welcoming Jesus as one of their own made good the people of Nazareth, insiders, become enraged and seek to kill him.
Being threatened with death by an enraged mob was normal for prophets. Because Amos prophesied against the kingdom of Israel Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, convinced King Jeroboam to exile him to Judah. (Amos 7:10-13) The Jewish Talmud says that King Manasseh of Judah had Isaiah murdered by being cut in two. Elijah fled from Queen Jezebel of Israel into the wilderness after she threatened to kill him. (1 Kings 19:1-4) And Jeremiah faced numerous attacks. The people of his birthplace wanted to murder him, saying, ‘You shall not prophesy in the name of the Lord, or you will die by our hand’. (Jeremiah 11:21) Then the priest Pashhur struck him and put him in the stocks for a day. (Jeremiah 20:1-2) Finally, officials of King Zedekiah of Judah threw him into a dry cistern in the hope that he would starve to death. (Jeremiah 38:5-6) No wonder Jeremiah’s first response to God’s call was to try to refuse it. True prophets speak words that the powerful do not want to hear. If those in power are doing what God wants, then there is no need for God to send a prophet. It is when the powerful are to be criticised and condemned that God calls prophets, so of course the powerful do not want to hear from them.
Jeremiah does not just prophesy in Judah. God appoints him as a prophet to the nations, those countries that are not Israel and Judah, whose people are not the people of God. Jeremiah is being called to speak to the enemies of Israel. The words that the Lord puts into Jeremiah’s mouth for the nations are words of judgement. Jeremiah tells Egypt ‘In vain you have used many medicines; there is no healing for you.’ (Jeremiah 46:11) He prophesies ‘of the day that is coming to destroy all the Philistines, to cut off from Tyre and Sidon every helper that remains.’ (Jeremiah 47:4) There are many other such prophecies, against Moab and Babylon and Edom and the Ammonites; when the Lord said that he was appointing Jeremiah ‘over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow’ the Lord meant it. But there is hope; the Lord has also anointed Jeremiah ‘to build and to plant’. Whether prophecies are seen as destructive or as hopeful depends on where one stands. The prophecy of ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’ was heard as good news by the men in the Nazareth synagogue, until Jesus pointed out that it was not just good news for them.
None of us has been called to be a prophet in the mould of Jeremiah, thank goodness. We do not need to speak to kings and risk being thrown into cisterns to starve. But we have all been called. In the words of the Basis of Union,
The Uniting Church affirms that every member of the Church is engaged to confess the faith of Christ crucified and to be his faithful servant. It acknowledges with thanksgiving that the one Spirit has endowed the members of Christ’s Church with a diversity of gifts, and that there is no gift without its corresponding service: all ministries have a part in the ministry of Christ.
So while none of us need to be Jeremiah, we do need to be the people God has created us to be, using the individual gifts that God has given us in different forms of service. Jeremiah tried to refuse God’s call on the basis that he did not know how to speak, because he was only a boy. God did not accept his refusal. If we try to refuse God’s call on the basis that we are not Jeremiah, we will get equally short shrift.
All candidates for ministry in the Uniting Church must see a psychologist as part of the process of the Church testing our call, and there was a line in my assessment that I still remember. The psychologist said that I was ‘within the normal range for seminary students’. Seminary students are allowed to think that God is speaking to us without it being a sign that we are mentally disturbed. But the very fact that the Uniting Church sends applicants to psychologists is a reminder that whether a call is from God is a matter of discernment. Those who believe too strongly that God has a special message for them can be deadly; we have seen that recently in Queensland. How can we be sure that the gifts we have come from the Spirit and that the ministries to which we are called are part of the ministry of Christ?
The Nazareth Manifesto provides us with some of the criteria we can use in our discernment. God’s actions are good news to the poor. Jesus came to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favour. Jesus came to bring life, to the most marginalized and disadvantaged in society. The reason that the men in the Nazareth synagogue turn on Jesus is because he wants to carry this good news of God beyond his own society and religion. One way we can discern whether a message comes from God is whether it is good news for everyone, not just for people like us. Is the news good for the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the refugee, the imprisoned, or is it just good news for the rich, the housed, the fed, the citizen, and the free? If the latter, then it is not the good news that Jesus came to bring.
In that synagogue in Nazareth Jesus told his hearers that the scripture was being fulfilled today. Not in the past, in the days of the great prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. Not in the future, in the time to come, when the Romans have been kicked out of Israel and the Davidic monarchy has been restored. The good news of God is being made manifest today, here among unimportant people in this unimportant synagogue in an unimportant town in a country under occupation. Today the scripture has been fulfilled. That ‘today’ is still ours. How are we going to respond to the God who comes today, who calls us today, who brings liberation today? To borrow some words from Rabbie Burns, ‘Now’s the day, an’ now’s the hour’. How are we going to answer God’s call?
Rev Doc Geek 