Confrontation In Nazareth (1)

 

I’ve been pondering Luke 4:14 – 30 for a few weeks. It comes and it goes in my mind; I visit it throughout the week, thinking about it, wondering about it. I see Jesus in the passage, I see myself, and I see us. It seems to me that this is an ongoing confrontation for us, confronting Scripture, confronting the status quo, confronting our own sense of calling in our Father. It almost seems that being thrown off the cliff…or at least coming close to the cliff…is a rite of passage, perhaps a way of life.

 

Do you see yourself in this passage? What role are you playing?

 

I have often played roles that surprised me, roles that I did not think I wanted to play, roles that later disgusted me. This is to say that I need to be careful lest I fall back into those roles; better to follow Jesus, better to emulate His role, His calling, His love…even should it lead to the edge of the cliff.

 

This is a challenge of sonship in our Father, we are called to live in and through and “as” the Firstborn Son, Jesus Christ. We follow Jesus in His baptism (Luke 3:21 – 22), we follow Him in His temptation (4:1 – 13), and we follow Him in His return to Nazareth (4:14 – 30). We also follow Him in His genealogy back to Adam in that we share humanity with Him and with those around us (3:23 – 38).

 

There is also a sense in which John the Baptist precedes us as he precedes Jesus. John cries, “After me is coming one mightier than I,” as he prepares the way of the Messiah.

 

How can this be? How can John the Baptist precede us as he preceded Jesus Christ?

 

To precede Christ is to precede the Body of Christ, it is to proclaim both the Head and the Body, for how can one have a head without a body or a body without a head?

 

When we read the promise of the New Covenant in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, when we read of a New People in the Messiah, of a New and Living Temple, are we not reading the proclamation of John the Baptist, since he embodies what we term the Old Testament? When John the Baptist speaks, the Old Testament speaks; when the Old Testament speaks, John the Baptist speaks.

 

Perhaps if we will “see” the unfolding Word of God as it points to Christ and His Body throughout the Old and New Testaments, we will have faith and confidence to fulfill our calling, that we will be People with the Living Word, the life-giving Word in Christ, a Stone cut without hands filling all the earth.

 

As I hope we will see, one of the challenges in Luke 4:14 - 30 is that the passage that Jesus reads in Luke 4:18 – 19 (from Isaiah 61:1 - 2) becomes our own passage in Him, our calling in Him, our proclamation in Him…after all, the Incarnation continues within us. That is, we are to also stand and read Isaiah 61:1 – 2, and not only are we to read it, in Jesus Christ we are to live it as His Body.

 

How are we, how am I and how are you, identified with Jesus in His baptism, His genealogy, His temptation, and His return to Nazareth?

 

What do you think?

 

What do you see? What can you see?

 

How are you challenged?