“Are We Like Nazareth?”
February 2, 2025
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
This morning we get to spend some time hearing what happened after Jesus read the Isaiah scroll at his hometown synagogue. We know from the account in the gospel of Luke that Jesus’ ministry had started. He was traveling around the region surrounding Galilee, teaching and being praised by everyone. And initially, the people of Nazareth act in the same way.
After Jesus sat down and proclaimed that “The Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” there was universal acclaim. How well he speaks. What a great message he gave! Surely God has blessed him and through him we too will get a blessing.
There is some ambiguity about what the phrase “Is this not Joseph’s son?” means. Are his friends and neighbors wondering where Jesus got his education, his “words?” He grew up next to their children. He went to school like their kids. Yes, there was that one time when he stayed behind in Jerusalem at the temple—naughty Jesus, he scared his parents half to death! Are they astonished that one of their own could be so accomplished? Or are they proud of their hometown boy who done good? Maybe a bit of both. They knew him “back when.” He was one of their own—Joseph’s son. (How typical that Mary doesn’t come into the picture!)
We understand this community pride for a quasi-celebrity. We here in West Orange are planning to celebrate David Cassidy day (and for any younger people--he was a pop singer in the 1970s who starred along with Shirley Jones in the sitcom, “The Partridge Family”). Certainly East Orange celebrates Whitney Houston, just as New Jersey is touting famous New Jersians by naming rest stops on the Parkway after them! Yes, say those of Nazareth, Jesus is our guy. And maybe there were even expectations that he would “give something back” to the community.
He said the Scripture was fulfilled in their hearing? Was he bringing release to people here? Was Jubilee going to start right here in their own backyard?
Just a word about how this story is constructed. We notice that Jesus doesn’t say a lot. At least not in regards to the Scripture. I find it unusual that a sermon, a teaching, a discussion of the text of the morning would only be one sentence. My guess is that Luke has encapsulated what Jesus said. Otherwise, it seems like the people would be saying things like: “he doesn’t talk much, does he?” What “gracious words” did Jesus speak in that one sentence? What was so amazing about saying the scripture was fulfilled in their hearing?
We must remember this is not a diary entry of what Jesus did on the day he visited Nazareth. It is a gospel. And so, the writer of Luke takes a little bit of poetic license to tell the story to make his point. To tell events in such a way as to lift up certain things. Setting down the whole speech that Jesus probably would have made would have diluted the power of that final sentence. What was important to remember was that Jesus had declared that Isaiah’s vision of God’s breaking into our world had already been done.
And there is one more little tell-tale sign that Luke is crafting the telling of events to suit his own purpose. Luke wants us to have at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry a blueprint for what God intended. “the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me…” It’s the big picture. It’s the overarching theme. And this gospel writer doesn’t want anything to draw attention away from what is most important—The Spirit is loose upon the world. And God’s will will be done.
Now imagine if the first thing we were to hear about Jesus’ ministry was a miraculous healing, or better yet, an exorcism. You know what the tabloids would focus on. Not on the mission statement—no, on the spectacle.
Even we must admit that when there is a crash on the side of the road, we slow down a bit to take a look. Luke didn’t want to start the story of Jesus’ ministry with an event that would eclipse everything else. So, the healing of the man with an unclean spirit in Capernaum had to be told after this story of Nazareth. I mean, how does Scripture even compete with deep-throated spirits saying stuff like “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”
But seems that this healing did happen first. Otherwise why would Jesus say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ In Luke’s eyes, this was the proper sequence to tell the story. You set out the call, and then you tell about Jesus’ ministry, not the other way around. First things first. And so, we get the people of Nazareth who know about something that happened in Capernaum that we as first-time readers have not yet heard about.
And so, if Jesus was doing great things in Capernaum, why wouldn’t he also help out at home? You can imagine that was what the people of Nazareth might have thought. But Jesus pushes against that. He reminds them of two Biblical stories where God helps the outsider, not the home team. A story of Elijah going to a widow in Sidon, gentile territory, and making a promise to HER that her oil, and her flour, basically her food, will not run out during the famine that was over all the land. Jesus is explicit—there were lots of widows in Israel—but God sent Elijah to a widow in Sidon. Go figure.
And then there is the story of Naaman, again, not a Jew, a Syrian. There were Jewish lepers but God sent Elisha to cleanse Naaman not anyone else. The point is becoming very clear. God doesn’t necessarily favor the insiders. Just because Jesus came from Nazareth doesn’t mean he’s going to do great things for Nazareth. Nazareth is the insider and God’s favor might be given elsewhere.
No wonder they got mad and wanted to throw him off a cliff! But Jesus “passed through the midst of them and went his way.”
Which brings me to the question of the day: Are we like Nazareth? Because here is the good news. God’s mercy is wide open. Here is the bad news. That means it isn’t just for us, in fact, we might see it more elsewhere. We are Nazareth. We Christians are the hometown. And some Christians seem to believe that that gives us special privileges, special blessings from God. And if we hear the message that God might be bestowing blessings on other people, in other ways that we wouldn’t do, we might feel slighted. We might act like the older brother in the parable Luke will tell about a Lost Son.
Now we humans are capable of holding two ideas side by side at the same time. And this is what we are asked to do today. Luke has presented the good news for ALL people—God’s reign already fulfilled. Jubilee—release, recovery, freedom. And we will benefit from that—because jubilee brings shalom, peace and justice hand in hand. But on the other hand, we recognize that this good news is best for those who have the least. For the last to be first and the first last, someone, and it might be us, has to go to the end of the line—so others might go to the front.
You know I don’t often go political in my sermons. But this week, the current administration made a point of discontinuing any programs that had to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Those programs have tried to level the playing field that has been so screwed for so many years—for women, for people of color, for what we call minorities in general. And why do that? Because some in our society don’t want to let those who might have been disadvantaged get a leg up. They want to pretend that everyone starts from the same place, everyone has the same chance, and so there is no need to change the system—in fact, in their eyes, there is much damage being done by even talking about change, much less enacting change.
I think Jesus might have something to say about that. But let’s not just point out examples that feel good. I think this gospel lesson is meant to make us stop and consider how we might sometimes be like the people of Nazareth. Do we expect to have low grocery prices but not pay a fair wage to those who procure the food? Do we shy away from building low-income housing units in our town, or in our neighborhood? Do we groan about how difficult it is to be ecologically conscious? Do we have concerts and fundraisers like FireAid only for communities that have celebrities we know?
What is it that God asks of you, of me, that makes us mad? Or makes us feel it’s unfair? It’s at that point that we need to remember this story. Because Jesus doesn’t want us to be like Nazareth. Jesus doesn’t want us to be looking out for ourselves. I think the whole point of his words on that day were to get us to imagine a different world. A better world. But a world that might require something from us. The people of Nazareth aren’t bad people, they’re really normal people.
But they also miss out. They miss out on participating in the sea change that Jesus is proclaiming. Instead of rejoicing, they are out for blood. It is a cautionary tale. Because Jesus moves on. And they are welcome to follow. They are invited to be swept up in the rejoicing that can come from justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. They are privileged to have a close encounter with God in our midst. What do they choose? What do we choose? Are we like Nazareth?
May God open our ears and our eyes and our hearts and our lives to God’s Word become flesh, to God’s vision being fulfilled in our time, to the wideness of God’s mercy, to the priority of the poor, to all the blessings that we have been given, and all the responsibility that calls forth from us. With God’s help, may we not be like Nazareth. Alleluia, Amen.