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Luke 4:14-30

It’s not just me right?  Please don’t read any disrespect into what I am about to say. My Jesus is amazing, kind and wonderful. I just want to be more like him. But in this passage, it looks to me like he picked a fight no one asked for.

He is visiting his home town.  He goes to the synagogue he would have so frequently attended as a child and young man,  and he reads a passage of scripture. Then he makes a pretty provocative claim, and the people are listening.  They’re fascinated.  They are looking at each other saying, “Wow. This kid is impressive.  Remember him? This is Joseph’s son. Look how good he turned out!” It says they were speaking well of him. And then Jesus picks a fight. 

I notice once again that the passage opens by stating that Jesus was full of the power of the Holy Spirit.  Perhaps in that moment his heart was broken as the Spirit showed him the way his own people would turn on him.  Maybe when they said, “Isn’t he Joseph’s son?” what they meant was, “This man is reading a passage about the Messiah.  We know the Messiah will be a son of David, not the son of a carpenter from our home town.”  (Don’t forget though that Luke has traced Jesus’ ancestry back to David and beyond.)

I don’t know why Jesus decided to turn their admiration to anger. But, seemingly unprovoked, he says, “You like your hometown boy today, but you’re gonna hate me soon” and then he stirs them up by pointing out how previous prophets had been sent to help Gentiles rather than their own people.  Clearly that was a touchy subject, but it lands very differently for me, because Jesus is foreshadowing the way his salvation will be offered to people outside the nation of Israel.  And that’s me, so I am just grateful to see that it was his clear purpose even then to reach across borders with his love and grace.  

I’m not sure why Jesus picks some fights and then completely overlooks others. Maybe he picked this one to fulfill scripture? Perhaps he knows he doesn’t have a long time to get his work done, so he’s stirring the pot to keep things moving. I wish I always understood this Jesus.  But the Jesus I read about in scripture is very much like the Jesus I walk with every day. He’s incredible, admirable and the more I am with him, the more I want to be. But I rarely know what he’s up to.  How he decides where to draw up battle lines and where to offer peace frequently confuses me.  It makes me realize how cautious I need to be about making assumptions about him or about how he is going to deal with someone.  

I guess that’s one of the reasons he is trying to teach me not to run ahead.  I can get an idea in my head of something he MUST want to do, and I will start making it happen for him.  And then I find out I’m madly bushwhacking a trail on which he has no intention of walking, and on which he never wanted me to waste my energy.  I find in this passage a reminder to be a follower of Jesus.  A follower.  Ya, I’m going to have to keep marinating in that thought for a while. 

Moving on! I love how he stirs them up, they drive him to the edge of a cliff, and then he’s like, “Ok, catch you later,” and just walks away.  For whatever reason, Jesus determined it was time to rile up the home crowd and get them pushing against him.  But it wasn’t time for him to come to harm.  So he walks through the angry mob as though they didn’t even see him. 

This is something we are going to see over and over and over in the gospels, so let’s notice it right now.  Jesus is running the show.  He is always in control of the situation.  It frequently looks like people are going to prevail against him in one way or another, but Jesus is always in control, of himself, and of the situation.

Ya know the expression, “Not my circus, not my monkeys”? It was ALWAYS Jesus’ circus. Every single monkey is his. He is never not in control.  I find comfort in that because, for every time I have NO CLUE what God is doing in my life, I can look to Jesus and remember that, even in human flesh, God has never once failed to be in control.