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Today This Scripture Is Fulfilled: Jesus’s Bold Proclamation in Nazareth

Sermon on Luke 4:14-30 (Edited for Readability)


This passage from the Gospel of Luke is a powerful text. Jesus has spent time in Capernaum—a town near Nazareth—preaching, teaching, healing, and doing amazing things. Now He returns to Nazareth, His hometown, and everyone is excited because they have heard about what He did in Capernaum. They wonder what He might do for them.


Jesus goes to the synagogue in Nazareth. Often, when we think of a synagogue in biblical times, we imagine something like a modern church—possibly large. But Nazareth was a very small town. The synagogue there likely served around twenty families. By way of comparison, our own church has around 718 families. So, it was quite small.


It was customary for Jesus, as a faithful Jew, to attend synagogue and participate in worship. In a small synagogue like this, there wasn’t always a single rabbi who taught every week. Instead, the men might take turns reading Scripture and offering an interpretation. That day, it fell to Jesus to read and interpret.


In a typical Sabbath service, there would be readings from the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the recitation of the Shema from Deuteronomy:


“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”


After this, a passage from the Prophets would be read. Our text tells us that Jesus was handed the scroll of Isaiah. He unrolled it and chose a specific passage (Isaiah 61) to read:


“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”


Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was on Him, because after reading, He was expected to interpret the passage. His interpretation was astonishing. He said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” By saying this, Jesus was revealing His mission—His very purpose—and the rest of the Gospel of Luke unfolds in ways that demonstrate what He declared.


Luke’s Gospel is often called “the Gospel to the least, the last, and the lost.” It emphasizes that Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. A church historian, Justo González, points out that Jesus does all of this in the power of the Holy Spirit. Luke, who also wrote Acts (often called the Acts of the Apostles or the Acts of the Holy Spirit), centers both books on the movement of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’s ministry and in the early church.


At first, the people of Nazareth were thrilled Jesus was among them. They liked His miracles and teaching—so long as they could keep Him in their own box, expecting Him to do what they wanted. But when He spoke of bringing good news to the poor and release to the captives, challenging them to see that God’s salvation includes outsiders as well, they became uncomfortable—even hostile. They wanted quiet, comfortable lives, and they resisted when Jesus began to “color outside the lines.”


Jesus reminded them that the prophets Elijah and Elisha, in times of famine, did not help only the people of Israel; they also helped outsiders. In the same way, Jesus’s mission was not just to His hometown or to one group of insiders—it was for anyone in need of God’s mercy and liberation.


We might ask ourselves how we would respond if someone who grew up in our own church stood before us to read Isaiah 61 and then declared it was now being fulfilled. Would we be open to being challenged and transformed? Or would we prefer a more palatable Jesus—one who asks little of us?


Jesus makes many of us uncomfortable precisely because the Gospel has the power both to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. His mission in Luke 4 is clear: to bring good news to the poor, release to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. This theme resonates throughout Scripture, from the laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, to the prophets like Isaiah, to New Testament writers like James. Over and over, God’s people are commanded to care for the poor and welcome the outsider. We see God’s desire to free the oppressed in stories of slavery in Egypt and exile in Babylon, and through Jesus’s healings of physical and spiritual blindness.


When Jesus proclaimed “the year of the Lord’s favor,” He was referring to the biblical idea of Jubilee—a time when debts are forgiven, slaves set free, and the land rests. The congregation in Nazareth became offended enough to drive Him out of town, even threatening violence, because they realized He was serious about these changes.


We, the church, seek to be the Body of Christ in our own broken and fearful world. But to do that, we need the same Holy Spirit. A pastor named Joan Gray once pointed out that the power of the Holy Spirit was the only advantage the early church had. They owned no buildings, had no large budget, few members, and no paid staff—yet they turned the world upside down through the Spirit’s power.


By contrast, we may have resources, buildings, and staff, but if we lack the Holy Spirit’s power and guidance, we will never truly carry on Jesus’s mission. God calls us to hear, to respond in faith, and to embody the work Jesus described. We are to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to captives, offer sight to the blind, and declare freedom for the oppressed. May we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, fulfill Christ’s calling in our own time and place.


In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


*Delivered in worship on Jan 26, 2025

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