When the Light is Unwelcome: A Meditation on Luke 4, for the third Sunday after Epiphany

Verily I say unto you,

No prophet is accepted in his own country.

One might think that Jesus' return to His home town of Nazareth would be a welcome and joyous event.  While it must be true that Jesus cloaked His divinity in His humanity as a child, it must also be true that growing up along side Jesus in the same community would be a remarkable thing.  We are reminded by the Apostles that Jesus was human in every way we are, except without sin-- and can you imagine what it would be like to grow up alongside a child that never sinned?  Not the kind of false piety or saccharin sweetness that might mark a very self righteous family, nor the blatant disregard for the holy found in self absorbed families, but an honest integrity that never erred in thought, word, or deed.  This is hard for us to imagine, because we've never experienced anything like it.  The people of Nazareth, however, did.

Now that Jesus was grown (roughly 30 years old) and entered into the ministry for which the Father sent Him, news of His teachings and works throughout the countryside were trickling back into Nazareth.  When Jesus Himself returned, He went to the synagogue as would be expected, and starting from the Word of God began teaching the people why He had come.  From the prophet Isaiah, He read:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

Because He hah anointed me

To preach the Gospel to the poor;

He hath sent me to heal the broken hearted,

To preach deliverance to the captives,

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To set at liberty them that are bruised,

To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

When Jesus told them that in that very day, this scripture was fulfilled in their hearing, He was opening their eyes to the reality of who He was, and why He had come.  Unwilling to receive Him and His message, the people however demanded that He do parlor tricks for them-- they wanted to see signs and wonders, even though Jesus knew it would not help them in their unbelief and rejection of His Word.  When Jesus refused, they tried to throw Him off a cliff.

The world really isn't so different today than it was then.  Jesus is still at work in the world through His Word and Spirit, raising up dead sinners to everlasting life by grace through faith in Him.  He is still healing the broken hearted and setting the captives free through His gift of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation He won for the world through His cross.  He is still searching out the poor, the bruised, and the oppressed, preaching to them the acceptable year of the Lord.  Jesus is still at work in the world through His holy church, where His Word is clung to in faith, and His sacraments are administered according to His own institution; where His Law drives people to repentance in godly sorrow over their sins, and where His Gospel grants joyful eternal life by His grace; where His Baptism washes and unites lost sinners to His life, death, and resurrection; where His Supper feeds them on His own Body and Blood, given for the forgiveness of their sins; where His Absolution is declared by His pastors to His people, that those who have fallen into sin might rise forgiven yet again, restored in faith and repentance.

Of course, the places where Jesus is at work according to His own established means of Word and Sacrament, are often the most ridiculed, harassed, or ignored of communities.  Endless are the scoffers both inside and outside the visible church-- those who establish their own words in place of Christ's Word, and their own rites in place of Christ's Sacraments.  Some of these self righteous communities even strike out in anger against the humble fellowships of Bible believing Christians, demanding of them signs and wonders that they might also believe.  And like it was back in Jesus' time, the self righteous and willfully unbelieving will not be brought to faith, even if they were to see a man rise from the dead.  Such is not a failure of the power of the Gospel or the love of God in Christ Jesus, but rather the awful consequence of a free will bent on despising the only saving Lord.

For the faithful today, we should not be surprised when the light of Jesus' Word is rejected, even in the most violent of ways, from inside and outside the church.  The faith which clings to Christ in and by His Word is a gift of the Holy Spirit, which no man can take for himself, but which every man is free to reject.  Since saving faith is a gift offered to all by Jesus through His Word, we abide in the hope that everyone may repent, believe, and live... even as we know that not everyone will, by their own willful rejection of the light.  For some unfathomable reason, there will always be people who prefer the darkness of their sins, even with the death which creeps so inexorably toward them, to the saving light and life of Jesus.  There will always be those who love their titles and their bureaucracies, their power and their prestige, their pride and avarice and covetousness, more than they love God.  Our task is not to condemn such poor creatures, but rather in pity and love to pray for them-- for such were we, before the light of Christ enlivened us.

If today finds you outside the light of Christ, hear His Spirit calling you through His Word to eternal life, to repentance and the forgiveness of sins which He alone can offer by His grace.  If today finds you alive in the light of Christ, give thanks for the salvation He has won for you, and the faith which clings to His life giving Word-- and pray for those who would rather cast you off a cliff than hear the saving Word of Christ which you bear.  For as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, salvation is only and always the free gift of grace through faith in Christ alone... a gift no one is worthy to receive nor able seize by his own power, but the only gift so freely given which every person in every place so desperately needs.

Thanks be to God, for the inextinguishable Light of His saving Word!  Amen.