Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 4:21-30
4th Sunday after Epiphany
St Barbara’s; 02.02.2025
Rev Jeremy Bevan
Picture this scene, if you will: Singapore. July 2005. The 117th session of the International Olympic Committee announces that London will host the 2012 Olympics. Wild scenes of jubilation in our capital. But in another city, just across the channel, despair, disbelief, outrage. Paris had been the favourite to win. This announcement was definitely not the outcome Parisians had been hoping for.
Similar emotions swirled around in the Nazareth synagogue as Jesus announced his kingdom manifesto. Tulo described last week how that proclamation would have sent the people’s expectations sky-high. But more or less immediately, the backlash begins, the murmuring starts, as it did among the French delegation in Singapore twenty years ago.
The people’s response to Jesus could well be something other than amazement that he spoke so well. Their tone may be much more equivocal: “We can’t believe what you just said, Jesus. We’re flabbergasted.” Hence the outrage, the disbelief, the attempts to cut Jesus down to size. Perhaps the full implications of Jesus’s words for the people’s lives are beginning to sink in. If we’re aiming to follow Jesus (and I hope we are), it’s good to weigh some of those implications for our lives, too.
First implication: the kingdom comes on God’s terms, not ours. Jesus quotes from the prophet Isaiah. But after those words about the year of the Lord’s favour that Jesus ends with, Isaiah goes on to speak of “the day of vengeance of our God.” The people in the synagogue would have been expecting that, so are perhaps angry because Jesus doesn’t include it. “What, Jesus? You mean God isn’t going to give that woman down the road who stole my husband her just desserts?” “Jesus, are you serious: our greedy landlords aren’t going to suffer for bleeding us dry?” “Jesus, what about the Romans?” And so on. But it’s no mistake on Jesus’s part. Elsewhere, he’s clear. God loves the world, he says: so I’m here not to condemn it, but to give it time, time to turn back to God.
For as long as that Spirit of Jesus continues to influence our world, all human judgment, perhaps all our fantasies about enemies getting their come-uppance, must remain on hold. Can we get behind that manifesto of God’s grace in a way the people of Nazareth clearly couldn’t? The kingdom coming on God’s terms, not ours?
There’s a second implication: we are God’s co-workers, collaborators with God in making those manifesto commitments reality. It’s “shoulders to the wheel” time. We need to engage our hands and feet. We can imagine, perhaps, the unwelcome implications of hard thinking, hard work dawning on Jesus’s hearers in the synagogue. “What, Jesus, you mean God’s not going to make things right, just like that?” The poor didn’t disappear from Palestine that day. The prisons weren’t broken open and emptied overnight, like the Bastille in the French Revolution. The work of the Messiah remained, and remains, unfinished.
I’ve been preparing for a meeting of the mission giving group this week that’s going to make recommendations about charities we’ll support over the next year. And I’ve been impressed by the number and depth of the connections St. Barbara’s has worldwide with organisations helping those who are ‘resource-poor’, whether that resource is companionship locally through Good Neighbours, skills, or something else. Connections with group helping free those bound by chains of addiction, debt, or unforgiveness. Connections with charities graciously guiding people blinded to the consequences of their self-destructive behaviour to a better place. We here are well-placed to go on enacting the Nazareth manifesto. And if you’d like to nominate a charity whose work fits with that manifesto, there’s still time – just speak to me.
Undeniably, all this can be hard work. As that reading from Jeremiah reminded us, it’s slow, patient work, too. The building and planting God anointed Jeremiah for took time and effort: the fruits of God’s grace weren’t seen ‘just like that’ in his time. It was then, and remains now, the work of God’s grace, but we have the immense privilege of being God’s partners in it.
A third and final implication of Jesus’s manifesto: our own shortcomings shouldn’t stand in God’s way. The people of Nazareth seem to want something flashy, miraculous. There’s a presumption that Jesus will save them the hard yards of growing more faithful to God. “Jesus, you’re a local boy, one of us: give us a free ticket into the kingdom. After all, we’re respectable; spiritually resourceful; kind parents; loyal citizens; honest businesspeople; regular worshippers. In other words, Jesus, we’re thoroughly deserving.”
If they were honest with themselves, though, they might have recalled times when they too had reached the end of their resourcefulness; were prisoners of their own worst appetites; blind to their shortcomings, oppressed by the guilt and shame of failure. They, too, needed more of God. Isaiah, and after him John the Baptist, were clear: if you want to see the blessings the Messiah brings, you have to, as it were, build an approach road for him, prepare the way.
It needs work, though, doesn’t it? Last weekend was the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch. But a squirrel had stolen our fat-ball holder. This much-repaired water bowl was, and still is, leaking badly: we were ill-prepared to attract the birds. A bit of work would have prepared the way.
It’s the same, I think, with the kingdom manifesto: the unconstrained, unlimited grace of God, pours into any and every heart and mind humble enough to receive it, just as it did with the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, as Jesus reminded those listening to him in the synagogue that day. May we be ready for God to work in us as we work with God to build the kingdom on God’s terms. Amen
