He (Jesus) was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him (Luke 4:15)
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this (Luke 4:28)
Separated by a meager 13 verses, the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel details these polarized responses by the “people in the synagogue” in Galilee, Jesus’ hometown.
Which begs the question, what leads to the shift in posture? Why the change?
Picking up on some of the patterns embedded in this small section of text can help in parsing this out, beginning with 4:22:
All spoke well of him and were amazed
Directly preceding this we find Jesus stating “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (4:21) What scripture? Jesus cites, in the traditional posture of a rabbi, Isaiah 61:1-2. What is this passage about? It is about proclaiming the long awaited and long expected “year of the Lord’s favor.” The fullness of time. For any faithful Judean, the people occupying the synagogues, this would have been marked by the return from exile. Hence why stating that the time had come led to amazement.
But here’s the key to understand the shift: note what precedes the proclamation of the Lord’s favor
- Proclaim good news to the poor
- Proclaim freedom for the prisoners
- Proclaim recovery of sight for the blind
- Proclam liberation of the oppressed
Now look at how Jesus responds to the amazement. Sure, you’re amazed now, but I know how this story goes- the prophet is always rejected in their hometown. Remember Elijah (vs 25)? Instead of going to the widows in Israel he went to a widow in Zarapath. Remember Elisha? Instead of attending to leprosy in Israel he cleansed the Syrian.
Hence, your amazement is because you will want me to do here what I did in Capernaum, missing who I am and what it is I came to do- the scripture is fulfilled (Israel’s renewal) in the outflow of the spirit, not in its containment. This is the great paradox Jesus represents. It’s like Paul states in Romans 9-12. The outflow to the Gentiles is good news for Israel, and the salvation of Israel (the outcome of this outflow) is good news for the Gentiles. It is in the outflow that “all Israel shall be saved”, and it is in the salvation of Israel that we find this salvation (good news) flowing out into the whole of the world.
There’s a familiarity to the response we get from the people in the synagogue. They are furious. So angry in fact they want to throw him off a cliff. Any amazement they had is now gone. And where does Jesus go? To capernaum. Luke underscores the irony by contrasting the people of the synagogue (who is this, isn’t this the son of Joseph) with the demons (I know who you are). The synagogue- are you going to leave us languishing? The demons- have you come to destroy us?
Welcome to the life of the prophet.
Only here we come to perhaps the most important part. Jesus concludes this passage by stating,
I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent
The good news
The fulfillment of the promise made with Israel for the sake of the world.
Here’s the thing about the Gospels being situated within the prophetic Tradition. Prophecies were always about immennce. It was about the thing sitting directly upon the horizon (the judgment of the surrounding nations bearing down on faithless Israel) and always set in contrast with God’s continued faithfulness. In Jesus, the imminence shifts to fulfillment. It is about “today.” It is about the person standing in their midst.
This is the good news, even if it doesn’t sound like good news to the Galileans watching this person heading in the direction of Capernaum to bring good news to the poor, freedom to the prisoners, sight to the blind, liberation to the oppressed. For any Judean seeing themselves as the sole survivors of exile and sole representative of this idea called Israel, this was deemed a condemnation of their faithfulness to the Torah. Jesus looking outwards was, in their minds, like speaking to a dead idea. The hope of the world started with them. In a sense this is true. Jesus’ resurrection would begin in Jerusalem with the arrival of the kingdom of God. But it is in the outflow that this dead idea called Israel would turn into good news for Judea.
In his commentary on Luke Scot McKnight calls this an act of holistic redemption. Everything being turned inside out.
This is our faith, that God has interrupted history from its middle in Jesus Christ, and we know the end from the middle because God has known the end from the beginning
This is the persistent witness of God’s faithfulness. This is the good news. What was imminent has become today. Which is precisely why we continue to look to the outflow. If we want to know who Jesus is and what Jesus did we look to what He continues to do all around us in the world. Good news for the world becomes good news for our own lives. This was always the point, that God’s glory (presence) would fill the earth and that in so doing Sin and Death itself, that enslaving agent that has creation in its grip, would be defeated.
The Stories of my Life 