4th Sunday in Epiphany, 1-30-25

  Jesus… deliberately chooses the most powerful, most political bombshell he could have dropped in the middle of Roman domination: the very people that you have used your governmental power to exploit now have the assistance of a higher authority! “The Spirit of God is upon me,” and that Spirit chooses people to be dissenters, to bring good news to the poor over against the bad news of domination. Moral dissent, my friends, is not just… the stance of Jesus 2,000 years ago…  It is still our calling today.     –Rev. William J. Barber II, 2013

  Jesus’ introduces his public ministry in synagogues on the Sabbath (Lk 4:14-16), in order to  engage the spiritual heart of his place and people. Preaching matters!
This inaugural sermon stretches out over two Sundays in Epiphany. Last week set the scene in another Lukan chiasm, carefully choreographed through dramatic gestures that communicate high drama:

A: Jesus stands to read.
B: The scroll is given to him.
C: Jesus opens and finds the text. (4:16–17)
D: Jesus’ drash. (4:18–19)
C΄: Jesus closes the scroll.
B’: gives it back.
A’: and sits down. (4:20)

embodiment and recontextualization in his own context (4:21). His “coming out performance” in Nazareth proclaims that this vision is being resuscitated here and now—but not in ways his audience expects.
In this week’s gospel reading (4:21-30), Jesus’ elaboration elicit a dialectic of delight and rage—which indeed characterizes responses to his ministry through the rest of Luke’s story. The initial audience reaction to his initial Word is ambiguous, judging by the three verbs Luke employs:

• On one hand, the community appears to approve of his words (4:22a; emarturoun consistently connotes a positive response in the New Testament.).
• However, they are also “amazed” (4:22b; ethaumazon can connote delight, but also skepticism in Luke, as in 11:38, Acts 2:7).
• And they voice incredulity over such eloquence coming from a humble construction worker’s son, further indicating ambivalence (4:22c).

Picking up on this, Jesus proceeds to raise the stakes by citing the famous “hometown prophet is not honored” proverb (4:23–24, significantly recorded in all four Gospels: Matt 13:57 // Mark 6:4 // John 4:44).
Jesus moves from a defensive to an offensive posture with his emphatic and cautionary phrase “But I tell you in truth: no prophet is honored in his own place” (Lk 4:24). By way of illustration, he invokes two great paragons of the prophetic tradition (4:25-27): Elijah (1 Kg 17:8–16) and his successor Elisha (2 Kg 5). The tales to which he alludes centers divine compassion on social and ethnic outsiders—which quickly turns his neighbors against him. He means to critique their assumptions of exclusive entitlement to God’s care. This sermon thus models the art of homiletics that also guides my reading of Luke: Jesus identifies a text, reads it, and then offers an interpretation recontextualized for the listener’s world.
The second “audience reaction” is decidedly hostile (4:28–30). The riled group’s intent to throw Jesus off a cliff implies a punishment for false prophecy. However, Jesus “passes through them”—suggesting he was already practiced in the art of evasive maneuvering!
In a modern U.S. context, it is hard not to draw an analogy to Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence” speech at Riverside Church in 1967. Americans who praised the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s “quality of character, not color of skin” eloquence bristled when he turned a searing critique on the Indochina war, prophetically questioning the nation’s integrity. King’s meddling in foreign policy matters was perceived by most as “going too far,” and his affront to national innocence similarly provoked a conspiracy to silence him.
Luke reports that, undeterred by this near fatal skirmish in Nazareth, Jesus immediately reemerges, teaching at a Capernaum synagogue thirty miles east (4:31), a village he alluded to in his sermon (4:23). The audience there is similarly astonished, remarking about his authority (or power; exousia, 4:32). He then performs his inaugural exorcism and healing (4:33–39). Notably, the next time Jesus shows up in Capernaum he will “enact” his Nazareth sermon (7:1–16). That sequence consists of two unique healing episodes and a discourse about “good news to the poor,” which mirror the themes of his inaugural drash in reverse order. Such literary parallelism functions to persuade us that Jesus’s Nazareth sermon is indeed “being fulfilled” (4:21). He has already apprenticed to the tradition of wilderness prophecy with the Elijah-figure John (1:17); will replicate a food-sharing miracle of Elisha (9:10–17); and will carry on the healing work of both prophets. Jesus has told his people that the old Jubilee vision is being revived; Luke now proceeds to show it through three demonstration projects concerning food justice—beginning with the text for the 5^th Sunday of Epiphany.
Jesus’ Nazareth “inauguration speech” cites the dissident Tishbite and his won’t-be-bought protege, signaling at the outset of his mission that he will be, as they were, embattled because of his solidarity with outsiders and opposition to elites. Our churches, meanwhile, will read this text on the heels of Trump’s immediate “fulfillment” of his threat to deport immigrants.  Swarms of ICE agents have descended on communities around the country

Note: The above is an edited condensation of Chapter 4A of Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics, as part of our weekly comments on the Year C Lectionary. The book has been

We’ve postponed our book party in Pasadena to April 5^th, but Ched will talk about Healing Affluenza on Mon, Feb 17, 4:30-6 pm PST, when BCM will offer a “detox on President’s Day” webinar. He will interview Chuck Collins of inequality.org, the foremost critic of plutocracy, who wrote the Foreword to HARP (Chuck will talk about his new book too!) Register here.

Also upcoming: On Fri, Feb 28, ecotheologian Rev. Ragan Sutterfield will post his interview with Ched about HARP, Sabbath Economics and a life of radical discipleship (check it out then here). And on Wed, April 23, 4-5:30