FINDINGS VII By Harry T. Cook
 
Epiphany III - C - January 24, 2016
Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10; I Corinthians 12: 12-31a; Luke 4: 14-21
 
       
Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook
1/18/16

The Revised Common Lectionary returns us to Luke after a brief sojourn in John, and so we catch up with Luke's narrative. Whilst we were traveling with John up to Cana (Khirbet Qana), Luke took Jesus from baptism (3:21) to divine visitation (3:22), following which Luke sets forth a version of the genealogy (3:22-38) first and differently proposed by Matthew (1:1-16). Matthew traces his Jesus back to Abraham, Luke his to Adam. There, of course, is a clue to an underlying strategy of each gospel: Matthew's effort (sometimes strained) to connect the Jesus story with the Judean and Israelite pasts, Luke's to give Jesus and his story universal appeal.
 
Then Luke sends Jesus into the wilderness to deal with
διαβολος (diabolos) from διαβαλλω (to throw across) -- the one who intersects your path as a frustrating obstacle. (We will revisit this part of the narrative in about a month on the first Sunday in Lent.) Having resisted the wiles of διαβολος, Jesus said to be "filled with powers of the Spirit" returns to home base, Galilee, where word gets around about him (4:14-15) What word about him? Perhaps what he was teaching in the assemblies (synagogues). We are given some hint about what that teaching might have been when he finally comes home to Nazareth and to the assembly (whether an actual building in such a small settlement as Nazareth was in the early first century, or merely among Shabbat worshippers gathered) of his childhood where he is asked to be a guest lector. - In any event, this is the point at which we pick up the narrative that will be the gospel lection for this coming Sunday.

Did Luke, ever the dramatist, expect his readers to believe it was coincidental that a "hazzan" (factotum) should have presented Jesus with this certain passage, Isaiah 61:1ff, -- with an allusion to Isaiah 58 thrown in -- to read aloud to the assembly on Shabbat. The reading, which could well be the accompanying Hebrew scripture appointed for this proper in current liturgical practice, concerns the spirit of Yahweh taking hold of an anointed one enabling him to bring good news, free captives, give sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free and proclaim a year of favor.
 
Whether or not the reading was appointed for that particular Shabbat, Luke probably wouldn't have had the faintest idea. The hazzan, Luke says, handed Jesus the Isaiah scroll, which may have been one of several considering the length of the document, and, Luke says further, Jesus "found the place" where 61:1ff appeared, suggesting perhaps that Luke imagined that Jesus chose the text himself from among many he might have read.
To be noted also is that it is not known that Nazareth even had a synagogue (assembly) in the early first century and whether, if it did, it would have possessed an Isaiah scroll as such things were expensive
 
Either way, Luke depicted Jesus as saying in effect, "C'est moi." Luke actually has him put it obliquely: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Not "will be," but "has been," "is done." Or as Joseph A. Fitzmyer suggests: "This passage of scripture sees its fulfillment as you sit listening." The literal translation is something like: "This writing has been brought to its fullness in your ears." So there are both eyes (those "fixed on him" -- v.20) and ears v. 21). If seeing is believing, how about hearing?
 
The fulfillment idea may be Luke saying that the "kingdom" (or rule) of God, i.e. how things would be if the ethical sayings attributed to Jesus were taken seriously by the majority of people. It is therefore "realized" in Jesus who embodies the good news to and for the poor, who can and will release prisoners (perhaps meaning those imprisoned because they could not pay usurious debt), who can and will restore sight to the sightless, who can and will lift the burden of oppression from the economically and socially marginalized (this promise is actually made more clearly in Isaiah 58.) All of this is to be a proclamation of "the acceptable year" -- a jubilee, perhaps, in which economic justice is realized. That for which Israel has hoped -- even more and differently than Israel has hoped -- is no longer coming, but is here.
 
That is quite a limb out on which to go at a 60- to 90- year remove from the time in which the events the gospel depicts might have transpired. On no significant scale were any of those promises fulfilled. Luke would have known that. So what is the purpose of 4: 14-21?
 
As in all eras, just so at the end of the First Century, there have been competing ideas about the messianic nature and mission, which is another way of saying that there are and have been significant differences in how human beings conceive of the idea of "god." With this passage, Luke files a brief in the case.
 
For Luke, "god," and therefore any messiah, has as will and intention the relief and empowering of the poor, the effecting of those marginalized by economic and social injustice and the restoration of human wholeness however it has been diminished. Luke illustrates this magnificent dispensation in such passages as 7: 36-50 (the party-crasher at the Pharisee's house), 8: 49-56 (Jairus' daughter), 10: 29-37 (the Good Samaritan), 15:11-32 (the prodigal son, et.al.).
 
The editors of the RCL chose to accompany the Lukan portion with the Nehemiah lection in which we are given a glimpse of Ezra reading from "the book of the law" under circumstances not unlike the ones in which Luke depicted Jesus reading from the prophets. The coupling illustrates, among other things, that the tradition underlying the movement of Jesus Judaism was both a didactic and literary one. We are all "people of the book."
 
The Corinthian reading is part of a course of readings that tracks through the Sundays of Epiphany, Year C.
 
Luke 4: 14-21 has been called Jesus' "maiden speech," his "inaugural address" and even his "manifesto." Its text is prima facie evidence of how Luke wanted Jesus' mission to be perceived. It portrays a Jesus figure that resonates well with the social gospel, liberation theology and secular humanism. Salvation is seen as having to do not with just deserts or retributive justice in a then-and-there but with pure grace and distributive justice in the here-and-now -- and, we might add, as a corrective to abuses inflicted by the principalities and powers on ordinary people.
 
And such salvation, if we must call it that, seems not to be dependent upon any quid pro quo -- a point made tellingly in Luke 15: 11-32 wherein we meet the prodigal son. His story is that of steadfast and unconditional love lavished upon him after his return from the fleshpots. He had earned disgrace and opprobrium many times over. Any jury, save, perhaps, one composed of other rehabilitated and redeemed prodigals, would have found him guilty and imposed the stiffest penalty.
 
Withal, the gospel passage at hand puts a compassionate face on the Jesus movement and, in so doing, connects that movement with the prophetic strain as far back as Amos ("let justice flow down . . .) and Micah ("do justice, love mercy . . .") and, of course the Third Isaiah from whose words Luke depicted Jesus reading that day in the presence of his fellow Nazarenes.


Copyright 2016 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

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