Luke 4:20-32 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
“It Isn’t Enough to Be Impressed with Jesus”
Epiphany 4 February 3, 2019
There were many people in the Galilean countryside who were impressed with Jesus. And they had good reason to be impressed. He did miracles. He turned water into wine. He healed people. He gathered crowds all around him and had many important things to teach them. In fact, people were so impressed that the word spread all around the region about Jesus and what he was doing. Maybe that is what makes today’s account from Luke’s Gospel seem rather surprising. In it, we hear about people who were impressed by Jesus, very impressed, but then their attitude changed. They became angry and resentful. And their reaction to what Jesus did and said reminds us that it is not enough to be impressed with Jesus. The lesson that is the basis for our sermon this morning picks up right where things left off last week. In fact, we actually repeat a couple verses of Luke 4 to remind us all of the context. Last week we heard how Jesus would preach in the Jewish synagogues in Galilee on the Sabbath day. We heard about one particular Sabbath day that found him in his hometown of Nazareth. As a visiting teacher, he stood up to read from the Scriptures, and he read a promise from God through the prophet Isaiah, a promise that referred to the coming of and the work of the Messiah. Then he sat down to teach the people and began by saying, “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” What happened next, the reaction of the people, is the focus of our service and our sermon this week. From the start, things sound good. We read, “They all spoke well of him and were impressed by the words of grace that came from his mouth.” The people went on to mention how surprised they were at this. They said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” They knew this man, Jesus. They knew his family. His father was a carpenter there in the town. They were surprised to see him there in the synagogue preaching and teaching and making this sort of claim about himself, that he was fulfilling the words of Scripture. This speaking well of Jesus was good. These people had every right to be impressed. They must have been proud of their hometown hero. That’s often how it works still today. When the hometown man or woman has success or finds fame, the hometown celebrates, too. We’re glad for that person. But we’ve already said that being impressed with Jesus not enough. And so, in our verses we find that the positive reaction from the synagogue congregation is short-lived. In fact, what happens next is that Jesus issues a warning. He explains to the people how no prophet is accepted in his hometown. He cites examples from Scripture, like the account we read as our First Lesson, (1 Kings 17:7-16) of God providing for the needs of Elijah the prophet not by sending him to an Israelite, but by sending him to a widow from Sidon. Elisha the prophet also did not heal lepers, and there were plenty of them, in Israel. He healed the one who travelled to see him from Syria. While the people were impressed with Jesus’ words, he knew that what they really wanted was to be impressed by his actions. They had heard about the work he had done in Capernaum, about the miracles he had performed there. But Jesus wanted them to be impressed by what he had come to accomplish for them as their Messiah. He wanted them to really listen to and pay attention to what he was telling them. He warned them to be careful about how they would respond. We need those same reminders and warnings, too, don’t we? I don’t mean that we will reject Jesus because we are his neighbors in Nazareth, but that the temptation is to admire or be impressed with Jesus for the wrong reasons. We might want to see Jesus work miracles and healings in our lives. We may want him to bless us in specific ways that fit our thinking about how the world should work for us. We might want Jesus to do something special for us because we think we are pretty special people.