A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on January 23, 2022 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Luke 4:16-20. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Luke, the fourth chapter:
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and 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 proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious Words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘ “Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’ ” And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Do you notice today that our readings centered around the idea of the Word? Now, not necessarily the Epistle reading, although that’s going to come back a little bit here. But, the Old Testament and then the Gospel lesson, did you notice that this was centered around the Word of God? Let me put the Old Testament in context for you: the Israelites had been taken into captivity in Babylon, they're all in exile. And finally they were allowed to return and they started to rebuild the walls and they started to rebuild the temple. Those are the first things that were done in all of Jerusalem. What they discovered as they started rebuilding the temple was a copy of God’s Word. Now you might think, well, you know what, what's the big deal with that? The big deal was, when they were taken into exile, they couldn't take it with them. And it's not like people had copies of the Bible at home and they stuffed it in their bags and took it off into Babylon. They lost the Word of God. And the only way that they were taught the Word of God had been directly from the Levites, the priestly tribe who were teaching the people, which is good.
You should teach the people the Word of God. That's kind of what pastors do today. We not only read the Word of God to you, but then, just like they did here, they read it and then clearly gave the sense of that Word so that you can know what the Word of God is saying without question. Well, the Levites were forced to do that all the time that they were an exile, but they didn't have the Word of God written down in front of them. And as they were excavating the temple to rebuild it, they found the Scriptures.
That's pretty cool. No wonder then the people wept. That's really what that's all about. Not because they heard the law of God and it was convicting them, though, hopefully, and most certainly, it was doing that, but they wept because they had not heard the Word of God read in so long and there were people there living who had never once heard the Word. So you can imagine the people were overjoyed, not out of grief, where they weeping, but out of joy.
And then we have in our Gospel lesson Jesus reading the Word. Notice what had been set up in our Old Testament lesson in Nehemiah, they kind of showed the way that the synagogues worked, someone got up and read the lesson and everybody stood as they would read. And they would remain standing as the Word of God was taught. That's why Jesus would sit. That was actually a very common pose for teachers, as the teacher would sit down and all the students would stand up and around him. And so you can almost even imagine the little boy, Jesus, 12 years old, sitting in the temple, just sitting down, leaning his back against the columns while he's teaching all of these old rabbis the Word of God. And they're standing around him, listening to him. It's a sign of respect because that one teaches with authority.
And so Jesus having learned this, even at the tender age of 12, comes back into a synagogue in his own hometown, the one that he grew up in. He reads and sits down. Now, it was pretty common. Almost anybody could read. It didn't necessarily have to be the rabbi. It often was somebody who was given an honored place. Maybe somebody who was very wealthy, someone who had given huge gifts, someone who is taking care of the poor and all of a sudden, you've got this rabbi who's making news all through the land of Israel. He comes back and you go, he's gotta be our reader for today. And so Jesus was handed the scroll of Isaiah and it's very common. They would read probably not all of Isaiah because that's a very, very long book, but probably a big old section of it. And what does Jesus do? He unrolls the scroll to the very place that prophesies about the Messiah and the people think, Well, this Jesus is going to be teaching us about the coming Christ, this Messiah.
And so he reads, The Spirit of God is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. This is all about the Messiah and Jesus, you can almost hear, just as I did, is putting the emphasis on the Word me. He has sent me. He has given me, he has put it in my hands to do this. He rolls up the scroll and he sits back down. That's the equivalent today of the mic drop, right? I mean, you've kind of seen these, probably heard of these, maybe in these, you know, musical battles, usually some kind of rap battle. The guy dropped some lyrics that insults the other person that they're battling against and just holds the mic and drops it on the ground. It's a statement. It's something to say, beat that.
And so Jesus now rolls the scroll and sits back down and he says, Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Now there's no question: Jesus is claiming to be the Messiah. Jesus says, Today, as you heard me read this, this has been fulfilled. This is done. You don't need to look for someone who's going to do this. I just did it. It's pretty incredible statement. Jesus is saying this Word of God that you've had for generations was all about me, and everyone in that moment looked at this guy and all spoke well of him. They marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.
So you’ve got to imagine there was probably more teaching than just this, but Jesus was doing really well. People were buying what he was selling, but Jesus, knowing the heart of man and perhaps even using his divinity in this moment to see into their hearts, to see into their minds, knew exactly what was going to happen next because this Messiah that they had been waiting for, well, they hoped he was going to set all things right. Right? I mean, if you were a Jewish person in the first century, living under Roman rule, your idea of the Messiah was well, pretty much like whatever political party says their candidate for president is going to be for the nation. If you don't elect this guy, then the whole nation is going to go to pot. I mean, we've heard it in the news even recently, right? If you don't pass this law, your rights are going to be completely trampled on, your vote is not going to count at all. Therefore, make sure your Senator knows not to filibuster or to filibuster or whatever it that either party is telling you to do.
Well, Jesus knows. He knows that they want him to be some kind of political Messiah, some savior of the nation. Now he is the savior of the nation. Kind of like what we sing in our advent hymn, Savior of the Nations Come. But he's not the savior of the nation like a president would save the nation by passing some good policies or even the destroyer of a nation passing bad policies. That's not what Jesus is about. He is literally coming to save the nation of Israel, to bring them back to their God that they had wandered so far from, to make up for everything that they had done, to do it right, and to take from them all the evil that was in their hearts and to give them all of the righteousness that God would give to them. That's what he was there for, but that's not what they wanted.
And so Jesus says, No doubt you're going to quote to me the proverb physician heal thyself, which not a bad proverb, right? But what he's going to point out is they see him as part of themselves. They want him to count himself as one of them, so that when he sees their problems, he’ll do what one does when they see a cut, feel sick, get injured. They want him to heal them. He’s Joseph’s son, he’s from Nazareth, we watched him grow up. So, look at us and show us that you do the deeds that match the beautiful words you preached.
Jesus looks at them and says, well, here's the deal. You're going to say that but the reality is, when you realize what I'm all about, you are going to reject me because no prophet has any honor in his own hometown. When I was training to be a pastor, people in my home congregation I think were more than half serious about calling me back there. And I can tell you that made me really uncomfortable, not because I didn't love the people there, I did, but because these people had seen me grow up. I mean, literally, in the narthex of our church, there's pictures of our history. And there's a picture of me with this really stupid bowl cut that I had in the nineties, parted right down the middle, of course this was when I had hair, and I've got another kid in a headlock. We're just goofing around in a youth group thing, but how do you think that would go, your pastor on the wall, putting another kid in a headlock? How long do you think it would be before somebody came up to me and said, Well, you can't say this kind of thing after all, I watched you, or, Well, you know, pastor, I know you're kind of saying this, but it's not going to work for me after all. I know kind of who you are.
Now, Jesus didn't have this where he did stupid things as a kid because he didn't do that. But you can imagine that people are going to look at him and think, well, what kind of authority does he have? I mean, after all I saw him, when he was a baby, I saw him when he was a kid, I know more than him. I'm older than him. Certainly, I've gotta be wiser than him. And so, Jesus says no prophet has any honor in his own hometown. He's right. In fact, they're going to prove that he's right, because all he's doing is preaching the Word and what happens because of their hardness of heart? There was nothing that he could or even would do for these people who had gathered. They heard the Word of God and they didn't rejoice over the hearing of it. They heard the Word of God and thought, all right, what can we get out of him? And because of that, there was nothing he could do.
Now, that doesn't mean that God didn't want to save them. Certainly he did. He was going to forgive their sins. He died for these people. However, it was true that out of their hardness of heart, because of the lack of faith, there was no sign, there was no miracle that he could do other than to preach the Word. And they became enraged, and so much so that they took this man that they had watched grow up as a boy to a cliff to stone him. That's what stoning was back then; you take a person to a cliff, you throw them off the cliff so that their body is broken and then you find the biggest rocks you can find and see who can hit the mark the best. That was stoning. Most people didn't survive that.
And this is what they were going to do to Joseph's son. This is what they were going to do to Mary's son. You better believe that as he's in this synagogue, his mom is there with beaming with pride. They're going to do this to her. Of course, they're going to do it to her, right? Didn't they do it to Jesus in Jerusalem? As he set his face toward the cross, didn't they, in front of Mary, take her son, strip him naked, pierce him onto some wood, lift him up and watch him die, mocking him as he did? Of course, but it wasn't yet his time. And so, Jesus, using the power of his divinity, did not let them kill him then. He let them wait to kill him later.
So what does this have to do with us? Well, I've already mentioned one aspect of this, where we look at this political stuff that's out there. And we think if only we could get a Republican in office, if only we can get a Democrat in office, if only we can get everybody vaccinated, if only everybody would fight against the vaccines, if only if only if only if only, then everything would be fine. How stupid are we? How stupid are we? It's even worse, I think, though, when we look at God and we think, All right, what can I get out of you?
Which one of us haven't bargained with God? God, if you'll only do this, then I will do this. If you only heal this person then I will dedicate myself to you. If you only show me a sign, then I will dedicate myself to you. If you only provide for me in this circumstance, then I will dedicate myself to you. And even if you bargained with God, and he gave you what you were asking for, how's your end of that bargain holding up? I mean, the thing is, we look at God still today, just as they looked at the Messiah back then, as a God who’s going to bring us out of all of our troubles, the guy who's going to give us the desires of our hearts, the guy who's going to take care of our needs.
I mean, it's true. God is going to give you exactly what you need. But what you think you need is very different than what you need. And so, we look at God and we say, All right, you're going to give me this stuff, without realizing that God does what he wants to do. You see, we don't get to boss God around. That's what these people of Nazareth didn't realize. They don't get to tell Jesus what to do. They don't get to say, heal us. They don't get to say, make us well. They don't get to say, restore our reputation. They don't get to say, you're going to do this or else. They don't even get to say when it is that Jesus dies. Jesus takes all of that away from them, all of it.
And so it is that Jesus does what he wants. He leaves them. And he goes on in the rest of his ministry until finally it becomes time for him to lay his life down. No one takes my life from me, He says, unless first I lay it down. His time. His means. His way.
We so often think that it's on us. It's our time. The means we want. The way we want. That's not how God works. God gives us what he wants and what he wants is to give us what we need. He takes care of us in so many ways. I mean, the fact that our hearts are still beating, the fact that we still have air to breathe, the fact that most of us have food on our tables, I’m guessing all of us have food on our tables, the fact that all of us have the home to go to, the fact that all of us had some kind of transportation to get here to hear the Word of God, the fact that we have friends, the fact that we have family, I mean, all of these things, God gives these to us. They're all gifts from him.
With all his goodness given to us, with all of it in our laps, we can now hear this Word from Jesus: you are forgiven for all these horrible expectations you have of God, for all these weird expectations you have of Jesus. He died to forgive that sin of yours. He died to turn your heart from what you can get into what he is giving you. And he gives you a lot.
Last week, we talked very much about the Supper, how he comes to us in his body and blood and how he puts his Word of promise with this Supper. But he puts it ,not just in the supper, He's put it in the waters of baptism and he's put it in the Word itself, where when the Word is preached or the Word is read, when the Word is taught, the Word actually does something to you, which is to give faith, to convict you of your sins, and ultimately to forgive you of those sins, to show you that you are beloved of God and that you indeed have been saved through the cross of Christ.
The Word does something to you. It's not just something that happens around you, but something that happens to you, something that happens in you, that Jesus is working on you, that he is passing through you to point you to himself. That's what the Word of God does. It takes your hard heart, it takes your selfish thoughts, and it turns you to thoughts of God and of others.
And so now it is that we approach God, not in all of these things that he can do that we want him to do, but we look to God first and we recognize what it is that he has done for us to us and in us and with us. And in this, we find that the Word of God has done exactly what he has promised to do.
Hear again the words from Isaiah and think of where you sit in this: the spirit of the Lord is upon Jesus because he has anointed Jesus to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent Jesus to proclaim liberty to the captives and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now I'll show you where you find yourself. The spirit of the Lord is upon Christ and his Word because he has anointed this Word to proclaim the good news to you who are poor. He has sent Jesus to proclaim liberty to you who are captive to sin, to recover the sight of you who are blinded by sin and unbelief, to set at liberty you who are oppressed by sin, death, and the devil, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor upon you who struggle, you who doubt, you who sin.
If I can be so bold, I'll say in the Words of Jesus today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, your hearing, for indeed Christ has done these things to you. He has freed you by his Word through that yoke of oppression, those chains of slavery that bind us down into sin and death and the devil. And he has given us life. He has given us the favor of God. He has given us liberty and freedom and the recovery of sight. We will look to him who died upon the cross and be brought back out of our selfish ambition into a life of service and thankfulness. This Word of God is fulfilled in your hearing today. Hear it, believe it, let your hearts be turned. Look to God and repent, and find today and every day, the forgiveness of sins from Christ upon that cross, the one who laid his life down for you, that you might be with him forever. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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