Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I love this time of Epiphany, dear congregation. Epiphany is the time when we begin to spell out what it means that God’s glory lives among us, is among us, God’s Word become fully flesh, unreserved, exuberant. Once the three wise kings were there and Jesus is baptized, we get to enjoy such great moments as the wedding in Cana with impossible amounts of wine, we get to hear Jesus’ reading from Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor, releasing people from everything that binds them, releasing to the people such impossible gifts as complete forgiveness, healing, restoration to wholeness of all that is shattered and broken. And we get to enjoy Jesus who at the end of his stay in Nazareth just passes through the raging crowd, masterfully and untouched, continuing on his way.

I love this, dear congregation. This miraculous way out. We know that Jesus is not a miracle worker in the first place but the Son of God with a specific place in our history, in the human story, but the manifestation of God’s glory allows occasionally for such miraculous, impossible ways.

This episode in Nazareth is scary though. The crowds wanting to hurl Jesus off the cliff so he might die. Because he proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor as it is described in the book Leviticus, fulfilled and true right there and then the very moment he spoke and the people listened. The people in the synagogue seem to turn violent against Jesus for the same reason they first praise him, “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. ‘Is this not the son of Joseph?’”

Does not this episode bring back memories of passages like these: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”? Or how about this one: “He was in the world , and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”? (The prologue in John, 10 verses into the first chapter of his gospel.)

The challenge, it seems, belongs right with the beginning, dear congregation. The glory of God challenges us, there is no way around it.

In Nazareth, in the synagogue, it is actually Jesus himself who begins to challenge the people. He turns ironic on their positive response, saying “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.’”
I do not know whether Jesus is fed up, or why he would be so fed up with his listeners who were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. He seems to want to put down his foot right at the beginning to avoid any wrong perceptions. Jesus’ ironic remark is saying that his healing and his proclamation, in Capernaum, in Nazareth and elsewhere, are not cute and they should not be the subject of neighborly gossip even if it is well meaning. And oh, by the way, Jesus is not the son of Joseph. How could we forget? The angel said to his mother Mary, “The child to be born will be holy, and will be called Son of God”.

The year of the Lord’s favor that has been fulfilled also in our very hearing, dear congregation, with the coming of Jesus, is a challenge, is maybe even a scary thing. Just imagine what would happen when the poor, those on the margins would all hear the good news. When all who are in our prisons would be released, the blind would see, all oppressed would be liberated from that vicious circle of victim and oppressor. I cannot imagine this. I rather not imagine this for my own life time. I would hope that in this year of the Lord’s favor all our efforts for peace and healing and understanding in this world would count some, but still, if the poor, the captive, the blind would all be released, the entire world would be so disrupted, the big world and our small worlds. Maybe this is why Jesus is so ironic and the masses in Nazareth are caused to turn into a violent mob.

Jesus indeed stretches any sympathy that’s left for him beyond the tolerable by pointing out that the prophets Elijah and Elisha in the time of a famine and in a case of healing were sent not to the people of Israel, though many marginalized people like widows and lepers were suffering in Israel, but Elijah and Elisha were sent outside the country to Sidon and Syria. This is too much for the people to take.

But, Jesus is actually not asking for more than could be common knowledge in Israel. The year of the Lord’s favor goes back to Leviticus 25 where each fiftieth year is described as a year of rest and forgiveness for the land and the people. In Jesus’ time, the promises for the land were often understood as meaning the whole earth and all peoples coming to Zion, to the place and time of glory. All Jesus is saying by mentioning Elijah’s and Elisha’s mission outside Israel is that he is sent to the whole world and that the year of the Lord’s favor has been fulfilled in their hearing for the whole world.

Who said that faith was an easy thing? Who said that life was going to be easy?

Christian faith can never be dull. As much as we enjoy God’s glory manifest in our lives and world, we will also always feel the challenge. God’s glory will always be calling us somewhere, pointing to the unfulfilled and requiring us to believe in the unimaginable and impossible, in things that are much harder to grasp than the change of water into wine or the passing through a violent crowd untouched.

I still love Epiphany, dear congregation. The stories. I am glad they had enough wine in Cana, and I am glad Jesus was not hurt in Nazareth.

Not yet hurt. For I know, Jesus as he is leaving Nazareth behind, continues on his way to Jerusalem, to the cross where he will die.

But where the story seems to be over and finished, we may trust again in God’s challenging glory, for God who is faithful to Godself and to us, will raise Jesus from the dead, because God is not God of the dead but of the living.

Glory be to God.

Amen.