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<DIV><B>Subject:</B> PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part
2A</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT color=black size=4
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><BR><FONT size=4><FONT size=5>PREACHING
RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 </FONT><FONT size=4>(7 of the 70 plus preaching
resources available at GoodPreacher.com for this Sunday)</FONT><FONT
size=5>:<BR><BR></FONT><FONT size=4><STRONG>THEOLOGICAL THEMES: Luke
4:21-30<BR><BR></STRONG>If the previous verses (vv. 16-21) recount a fulfillment
of messianic expectations, these verses are an account of the fulfillment being
nevertheless rejected by the primary bearers of messianic hope.</FONT><FONT
size=1>1</FONT><FONT size=4> Jesus has been charismatically teaching in the
synagogues of Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and, having come to Nazareth,
has read from the scroll of Isaiah and proclaimed that its promise of good news
to the poor and oppressed is being fulfilled. After achieving seemingly
immediate acclaim from this message, Jesus is subject to questioning about his
origins in Nazareth, and this prompts him to launch into a diatribe against
those who appear “closest to the action” with respect to God’s redemptive
activityfrom the “hometown” folk of the prophets to the people of Israel in
general. As a result, the furor of “all in the synagogue” (v. 28) is incited,
and Jesus narrowly escapes an impromptu execution at the hands of an angry
mob.<BR><BR>Joseph Fitzmyer argues that the accounts of Jesus’ teaching in the
synagogue, along with its positive reception, and the cutting dialogue which
immediately ensues are in fact drawn from two different stories and are placed
alongside each other by Luke in order to make the theological point that the
fate of Jesus’ charismatic, Spirit-inspired ministry and teaching is severe
oppositionindeed, rejectionon the part of some who appear most likely
to be prepared to receive it.</FONT><FONT size=1>2</FONT><FONT size=4> But what
is especially interesting about this fate is the theological standing of those
who do the rejecting. It is not as if Jesus announces the coming of the kingdom
and then the responses fall out just like one would expect them to: those on the
fringes scoffing and the chosen remnant embracing it. Rather, Jesus’ twin
examples from the ministries of Elijah and Elisha line up disconcertingly with
the story that unfolds in real time here. Expectations are invertedthose
who have theological standing as participants in the covenant find themselves
outside of its graces.<BR><BR>The text gives no explanation for why this should
be the case. A tempting theological rejoinder to the story is to say that the
Nazarenes, like the implied Israelites in Jesus’ two examples, didn’t have the
requisite faith for sustaining the covenant relationship, so that its benefits
have had to be distributed elsewhere. Other episodes from the gospels seem to
imply a warning about the fragility of faithfulness, which may support this
response. But of course there are some difficulties. Doesn’t this view make the
human response of faith the prerequisite for God’s gracious intervention in our
lives? That is, does it not make the presence or absence of faith the
determining difference between grace and judgment, acting as a kind of sorting
device to separate the “condemned” from the “saved?”<BR><BR>American theologian
H. Richard Niebuhr once noted that, in the Christian view, God’s judgment is
never free-standing. Rather, it always operates in the service a wider “order of
graciousness.”</FONT><FONT size=1>3</FONT><FONT size=4> To view a person’s or a
people’s lack of faithfulness either as a sign or as a means of their complete
rejection by God verges on the Manichaean, and implies that God’s grace is
constrained both by human choices and by an inner compulsion to, as it were, end
the story. Could it not be that the faithlessness of the Nazarenes (and, by
extension, of the “Israel” of Luke’s polemic here) is exposed in this text as
provisional (i.e., as not the end of the story)? They reject him, as hometown
folk have always rejected their prophets, but he does not thereby reject them.
Rather, when they take him to the cliff, there is no final confrontation, but
simply an escape.<BR><BR>If this is so, then another possible rejoinder
surfaces. Perhaps those with theological standing are pushed aside simply so
that those without standing may be brought near. Faithlessness is not a
constraint on God’s grace or a wedge between God’s grace and God’s justice, but
a tool by which Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom may resonate more widely. In
a gospel irony, the near are pushed afar so that those who are far away may be
brought near. If we read the story this way, we may find parallels in Paul’s
treatment of the problem of Jewish unbelief in Romans chapter eleven. There,
Paul’s complex argument concludes with an affirmation that God “has imprisoned
all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Rom 11:32, NRSV). The
point here is not to insinuate a creeping universalism, but it is to insist that
rejection is never the end of the story of God’s dealings with people whom God
has brought into the sphere of grace. The chosen people, whether they be Jews or
members of Christian churches, never quite succeed in hurling Jesus off the
cliff, but instead live to quarrel with him another day. Meanwhile, the good
news spreads, taking forms the chosen people would not have allowed, and
choosing new people along the way.<BR><BR>Thomas A. James<BR><BR>Notes<BR>1.
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, <I>The Gospel According to Luke I-IX</I> (New York:
Doubleday, 1970), 528.<BR>2. Ibid. <BR>3. H. Richard Niebuhr, “War as
Crucifixion,” in <I>War in the Twentieth Century: Sources in Theological
Ethics</I>, ed. Richard B. Miller (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press,
1992), 68.<BR><BR><BR></FONT></FONT>
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