Sermon Tone Analysis

Introducción

The commentators were ecstatic after the game.

‘He played like a man inspired,’ they said.

What images does that conjure up for you?

The commentators were ecstatic after the game.

‘He played like a man inspired,’ they said.

What images does that conjure up for you?

A sports star, perhaps, running rings round the opposition and scoring a brilliant goal.

Or, from a different world, a musician: eyes closed, fingers flying to and fro on an instrument, filling the air with wonderful jazz.

‘Inspiration’: we use the word loosely.

We imply that ‘it just came over them’, that they suddenly became someone different.

Of course we know that it didn’t happen like that.

The brilliant athlete has been training and practising, hour after hour and week after week.

The musician has been playing exercises, perfecting technique for long hours out of the public eye.

Then, when the moment comes, a surge of adrenalin produces a performance which we call ‘inspired’—but which is actually the fruit of long, patient hard work.

When Jesus said ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me’, Luke has already let us into the secret.

His years of silent preparation.

His life of prayer leading up to his baptism.

The confirmation of his vocation—and then its testing in the wilderness.

Then, at last, going public with early deeds in Capernaum (as the exchange in the Nazareth synagogue makes clear, people had already heard of what he’d done elsewhere).

Now, with years of prayer, thought and the study of scripture behind him, he stands before his own town.

He knew everybody there and they knew him.

He preached like a man inspired; indeed, in his sermon that’s what he claimed.

But what he said was the opposite of what they were expecting.

If this was inspiration, they didn’t want it.

What was so wrong with what he said?

What made them kick him out of the synagogue, hustle him out of the town, and take him off to the cliff edge to throw him over?

(Note the irony: the devil invited Jesus to throw himself down because God would protect him; Jesus, having refused, found himself in a similar predicament.

Perhaps Luke is telling us that God did protect him, because it came about not through self-advertisement but through commitment to his true vocation.)

The crucial part comes in Jesus’ comments to his hearers.

He senses that they aren’t following him; they are ready to taunt him with proverbs, to challenge him to do some mighty deeds for the sake of show.

Perhaps they, too, appear in Jesus’ mind like the devil, suggesting that Jesus should do magic tricks for the sake of it.

‘Heal yourself, doctor!’—the challenge is not too far removed from the taunt, ‘He saved others, but he can’t save himself’ (23:35).

But why?

What was so wrong with what he was saying?

By way of defence and explanation for the line he had been taking, Jesus points out what happened in the days of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha, and in doing so identifies himself with the prophets.

Elijah was sent to help a widow—but not a Jewish one.

Elisha healed one solitary leper—and the leper was the commander of the enemy army.

That’s what did it.

That’s what drove them to fury.

Israel’s God was rescuing the wrong people.

The earlier part of Jesus’ address must have been hammering home the same point.

His hearers were, after all, waiting for God to liberate Israel from pagan enemies.

In several Jewish texts of the time, we find a longing that God would condemn the wicked nations, would pour out wrath and destruction on them.

Instead, Jesus is pointing out that when the great prophets were active, it wasn’t Israel who benefited, but only the pagans.

That’s like someone in Britain or France during the Second World War speaking of God’s healing and restoration for Adolf Hitler.

It’s not what people wanted to hear.

What, then, was the earlier part of his address about?

Luke says that the people ‘were astonished at the words of sheer grace that were coming out of his mouth’.

Sometimes people have understood this simply to mean, ‘they were astonished at what a good speaker he was’.

But it seems more likely that he means ‘they were astonished that he was speaking about God’s grace—grace for everybody, including the nations—instead of grace for Israel and fierce judgment for everyone else’.

That fits perfectly with what followed.

Why then did Jesus begin his address with the long quotation from Isaiah (61:1–2)?

The passage he quotes is about the Messiah.

Throughout Isaiah there are pictures of a strange ‘anointed’ figure who will perform the Lord’s will.

But, though this text goes on to speak of vengeance on evildoers, Jesus doesn’t quote that bit.

Instead, he seems to have drawn on the larger picture in Isaiah and elsewhere which speaks of Israel being called to be the light of the nations, a theme which Luke has already highlighted in chapter 2. The servant-Messiah has not come to inflict punishment on the nations, but to bring God’s love and mercy to them.

And that will be the fulfilment of a central theme in Israel’s own scriptures.

This message was, and remains, shocking.

Jesus’ claim to be reaching out with healing to all people, though itself a vital Jewish idea, was not what most first-century Jews wanted or expected.

As we shall see, Jesus coupled it with severe warnings to his own countrymen.

Unless they could see that this was the time for their God to be gracious, unless they abandoned their futile dreams of a military victory over their national enemies, they would suffer defeat themselves at every level—military, political and theological.

Here, as at the climax of the gospel story, Jesus’ challenge and warning brings about a violent reaction.

The gospel still does this today, when it challenges all interests and agendas with the news of God’s surprising grace.

Body

Lucas 4:14–17

14Y Jesús volvió en el poder del Espíritu a Galilea, y se difundió su fama por toda la tierra de alrededor.

15Y enseñaba en las sinagogas de ellos, y era glorificado por todos.

Jesús en Nazaret

(; )

16Vino a Nazaret, donde se había criado; y en el día de reposo* entró en la sinagoga, conforme a su costumbre, y se levantó a leer.

17Y se le dio el libro del profeta Isaías; y habiendo abierto el libro, halló el lugar donde estaba escrito:

The events recorded in took place at this time, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not record them.

They moved right into the Lord’s ministry in Galilee, and Luke alone reports His visit to His hometown of Nazareth.

By now, the news had spread widely about the miracle-worker from Nazareth; so His family, friends, and neighbors were anxious to see and hear Him.

Reina Valera Revisada (1960).

(1998).

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Miami: Sociedades Bı́blicas Unidas.

The events recorded in took place at this time, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not record them.

They moved right into the Lord’s ministry in Galilee, and Luke alone reports His visit to His hometown of Nazareth.

By now, the news had spread widely about the miracle-worker from Nazareth; so His family, friends, and neighbors were anxious to see and hear Him.

It was our Lord’s custom to attend public worship, a custom His followers should imitate today ().

He might have argued that the “religious system” was corrupt, or that He didn’t need the instruction; but instead, He made His way on the Sabbath to the place of prayer.

He might have argued that the “religious system” was corrupt, or that He didn’t need the instruction; but instead, He made His way on the Sabbath to the place of prayer.

He might have argued that the “religious system” was corrupt, or that He didn’t need the instruction; but instead, He made His way on the Sabbath to the place of prayer.

A typical synagogue service opened with an invocation for God’s blessing and then the recitation of the traditional Hebrew confession of faith (; ).

This was followed by prayer and the prescribed readings from the Law and from the Prophets, with the reader paraphrasing the Hebrew Scriptures in Aramaic.

This was followed by a brief sermon given by one of the men of the congregation or perhaps by a visiting rabbi (see ).

If a priest was present, the service closed with a benediction.

Otherwise, one of the laymen prayed and the meeting was dismissed.

Jesus was asked to read the Scripture text and to give the sermon.

The passage He read included , and He selected it for His “text.”

The Jewish rabbis interpreted this passage to refer to the Messiah, and the people in the synagogue knew it.

You can imagine how shocked they were when Jesus boldly said that it was written about Him and that He had come to usher in the “acceptable year of the Lord.”

Jesus was “anointed … to preach good news to the poor” (italics added).

The word “poor” can cover poverty of every kind.