Third Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Luke 4:21-30

[The first pass, along with an explanation of what this is about, is here. The second pass is here.]

Verse-by-Verse Comments (continued):
25But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.
(1) Here, Jesus explains why the people of Nazareth aren't seeing the signs for which the hometown hero was so celebrated in Capernaum and in other parts of Galilee. He says that it's in line with the history of God's people to reject God's Messiah, just as in Old Testament days, God's people rejected God's prophets.

More than that, Jesus points out that God only makes Himself known to those with faith in Him, that includes those who may be deemed to be outsiders. To Jesus' fellow Jews, Jesus was saying that even Gentiles--those who were not ethnically Jewish--could have a relationship with God and discern the signs of Jesus. This offended their sense of historic entitlement and the notion that they had exclusive claim on God and on righteousness.

This latter notion is one that God had tried to erase from His people's mindset. Among the points of the Old Testament books of Jonah and Ruth, for example, is that God cares about all people and that all who believe in the God we meet in Jesus Christ can be saved.

The incidents from the lives of two Old Testament prophets cited by Jesus here make the same point. This offends the citizens of Nazareth who want a hometown hero, a Messiah, and a God who will do their bidding and count them righteous while damning everybody else, faith in God or not.

(2) The first incident cited by Jesus is that of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath in Sidon. Sidon was considered a particularly evil place by Jesus' fellow Jews and not without good reason. But it was in Sidon that God found a woman with faith in God, willing to give the last thing she had to one of God's prophets. "There were lots of widows in Israel," Jesus is saying. "But it was in a foreign widow that faith enough to depend on God for everything was found." You can find the narrative of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath in First Kings, chapters 17 and 18.

(3) For the Nazareth worshipers, it was probably as infuriating to have Jesus use God's Word--the Bible--against them as it was for Jesus to say that foreigners had access to the grace of God.

27There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”
(1) This second incident cited by Jesus, one of my favorite Bible stories, is found in Second Kings 5:1-14. Naaman, a commander of a foreign army, suffers from leprosy. (Actually, in Biblical times, the term for leprosy was used for more than Hansen's Disease, the disease we refer today when we speak of lepropsy. So, it's not precisely certain what skin affliction Naaman had.)

In the story, this foreigner wrestled with doubts about whether to do what Elisha told him to do--dunk himself in the Jordan seven times. After all, there were mightier rivers than the Jordan, which in most places is little more than a creek. But Naaman trusted. Here's another instance of a foreigner trusting in the Word of God, mediated through a prophet.

28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.
(1) The implications of Jesus' statements are clear. The people of Nazareth and the Jewish people generally, didn't have exclusive claims on Him or God. A relationship with God and the blessings of such a relationship come to those with faith in God, irrespective of ethnicity. And those in the lineage of Abraham, the Jewish people, couldn't claim to have such a relationship, Jesus was saying.

As with Abraham himself, a relationship with God is solely a matter of faith in God, not about our ethnic heritage or our good works:

And he [Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)

(2) This is a theme which, in the incidents he recounts, the evangelist Luke will hammer home constantly in his two New Testament books, Luke and Acts. Luke, for example, Luke quotes John the Baptizer:

"...Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." (Luke 3:8)

After Jesus' death and resurrection, Luke says that in the early years of the Church, the apostle Peter was called by God to go to the home of Cornelius, a Roman, a Gentile. There, Peter called Cornelius, his family and his friends, to turn from sin (repent) and believe in Jesus Christ. In earlier years, it would have been scandalous and unthinkable for Peter to even enter the home of a Gentile, let alone welcome him and other Gentiles into the family of God. But here, he says:

...“I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all." (Acts 10:34-36)

The most famous of Jesus' parables, told only in Luke, gets at this theme as well. The parable of the Good Samaritan, condemns the religion of the Jewish priest and levite, intent on fulfilling religious duties while ignoring the call to love God and love neighbor, while the foreign Samaritan subjects himself to danger to bring healing to the man dying on the road.

But nowhere do we see this theme more clearly in Luke and Acts than in Jesus second most famous parable, that of the prodigal son. The original hearers of this story would have cast the younger son as a Gentile and the older son as a fellow Jew. When the younger son returns to the father--representing God, the older son refuses to enter the celebration, in spite of the father begging him to do so.

The kingdom is open to all. All we need to do is believe in God's Son. This offends those for whom religion is more a matter of heritage or form or ritual. But it's new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ!

29They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.
(1) Jesus' words hit the psyches and religious sensibilities of the people of Nazareth with the force of an IED. Their anger is volcanic.

(2) What the intention of the Nazareth synagogue crowd might have been is seen differently by different interpreters. Some cite Old Testament passages to buttress their notion that the Nazarenes were out to kill Jesus. Others cite still other passages to support the idea that they were casting Jesus out (excommunicating Him) from the religious life of the Jews. I guess that it isn't important to know what they wanted to do--it may be difficult to discern a single intention when dealing with a riled mob anyway. What is clear is their rage at Jesus.

30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
(1) Commentators differ on this as well. Some say that Jesus miraculously disappeared. Others say that such an interpretation of the passage isn't necessary and I'm inclined to agree. Of more importance is the fact that Jesus left them, in control of His own destiny, intent on fulfilling the mission He enunciated in last weekend's lesson. He would decide when He died for the sins of the world.

But in this simple incident at Nazareth, we see foreshadowed the response of all the world--Jewish and Gentile--to the revelation of the Messiah. We see too, the call to faith in Him that Christ issues to all people.