The Gospel reading this week was the continuation of Luke’s account of Jesus’s return to his hometown of Nazareth after he had begun his ministry. I wrote about the entire passage last week in the post “The Hometown Boy”. This week I wanted to focus on the question I raised at the end of the earlier post:
What lesson is there in this for us?
First, here’s this week’s Lectionary passage:
Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
In discussing this in the previous post I mentioned one lesson we might take from this and last week’s combined passage (Luke 4:14-30) which I’ll summarize here as just because you don’t get the answer you want to prayer, doesn’t mean you should stop praying. Not exactly profound, but a lot of lessons aren’t.
But now I want to focus on the last verse —
“But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”
While the Gospels of Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus didn’t work many miracles in his hometown, Luke’s version ends on a note that is particularly sad. Here they are, about to throw him off the “brow of the hill”, crazy mad at Jesus because he’s told them that others might receive wonders before they do. Does Jesus throw lightning bolts to blast his way free? Does he soar above them like Superman? Does he raise his hand in Star Wars fashion and send forth a pulse of energy that knocks down the crowd?
No.
In one of the most poignant passages in the Bible, we’re told that Jesus simply passed through the midst of them. They didn’t even see a him perform a wonder in evading their wrath.
And then, he “went on his way”.
Of course, “his way” led through a host of other miracles, wonders and signs, but also passed through the Cross on the way to the empty tomb. I can’t help but wonder if the “hometown people” missed out on all of it. Or did some of them leave Nazareth and follow Jesus and witness where “his way” ultimately led? Surely there were some who did.
What strikes me as truly tragic about that last verse, however, is that it echoes down through the ages as Jesus passes through the midst of so many “hometown people” since then — silently going on his way and leaving them in his wake.
Do you think he turns from time to time in sorrow, looking at his “hometown people” and wishing that they had understood his message and his mission? Do you think he, like the father in Luke’s account of the Prodigal, yearns for these lost souls to come to their senses, put aside their anger and bitterness and accept the extraordinary miracle he offered then and in every age since then —
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
One more lesson this passage offers us is to feel empathy for the “hometown people”: the hometown people around whom Jesus grew from a boy to an adult, but also all the hometown people who have rejected him in disappointment, disbelief, anger or indifference since then.
Out of this lesson let us feel not just empathy, but let it move us to reach out and invite our “hometown people”, wherever we find them, to turn with us from the brow of the hill and follow the One who would otherwise pass through our midst and go on his way without us.