[Propertalk] Sermon tips for Luke 4:21-30 - January 31 - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

In his book Look Homeward Angel, Thomas Wolfe wrote, "You can't go home again." Robert Frost wrote, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

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If you are a friend to our enemies, then you're no friend of ours. This sounds like the motto of government officials in our own time. We tend to get mad when somebody suggests that God loves the people we don't want to get near. We may want God to see it our way, to support our neat categories. (We're the good guys; they're the bad guys. God loves us, not them.) But God keeps knocking down our prejudices and barriers. 



http://dcommon.bu.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2144/357/Accepting%20People%20As%20They%20Are.doc?sequence=1



Mel Williams, 2004

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[Jesus'] claims were clearly offensive to his fellow townspeople. Indeed, he might have had less trouble with them if he announced, like several other populist leaders of his era, that he was proclaiming a holy war against the Romans and would lead a march on Jerusalem. 



http://www.agreeley.com/hom10/jan24.htm



Andrew M. Greeley, 2004

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Using social-scientific criticism, I imagine that Jesus' family and village eiders labeled him a "rebellious son" because his kingdom of God agenda threatened their domestic economy and the patriarchal power relations that sustained it. 



http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0LAL/is_3_38/ai_n28094629/?tag=content;col1



Rick F. Talbott, 2008

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This is an event recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, Mark 6:1-6, Matthew 13:54-58, Luke 4:16-30, where Jesus is strongly rejected by the people of his hometown, which Luke specifies as Nazareth. The core saying is also mentioned in John 4:44

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The historicity of Luke's version is easily questionable, since there is no "cliff face" in Nazareth*, indicating the author of Luke was unfamiliar with Nazareth, and had never been there.

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*The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller editor, 1992, page 126, translation note to Luke 4:29: "Nazareth is not built on or near a cliff face. Luke generally seems poorly informed about Palestinian geography. Aspects of his geography may therefore be fictive." 



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_of_Jesus#cite_note-1



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Ancient Nazareth may have built on the hillside, as indicated in the Gospel of Luke: [And they led Jesus] to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong. [Lk 4:29]. However, the hill in question (the Nebi Sa'in) is far too steep for ancient dwellings and averages a 14% grade in the venerated area. (B. Bagatti, Excavations in Nazareth, Plate XI, top right. )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth
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He is not the son of Joseph, but the Son of God. That is what Jesus needs to correct in the minds of the congregation and the reader. But this is not an acceptable thought to the congregation of his birth. Though he has proclaimed the acceptable year of the Lord, he will find no such acceptance himself. Notions of deliverance in general, we will discover, are more acceptable to the people than the person of the deliverer. 
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The pattern of rejection has been set early in Luke's Gospel for the truth always exposes its opponents. Preachers who try to preach only messages of conciliation are merely preaching half a gospel. The other half is an attack on all fronts against human presumption. 

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching_print.aspx?commentary_id=503

Roy Harrisville
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The people are "filled with rage" (v. 28) because they begin to realize that Jesus is for others as well as for them. Nazareth, being on a hillside, has steep slopes down which a person might fall to his death. Jesus escapes the lynch mob: they let him go because they think he might just be the messiah. 

http://montreal.anglican.org/comments/archive/cpr04m.shtml

Chris Haslam, 2007 
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The parallels are Matthew 13:53-58 and Mark 6:1-6.

http://montreal.anglican.org/comments/archive/cpr04l.shtml

Chris Haslam, 2007 
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