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

Why should we be surprised when people receive the gospel and discover their lives being transformed from captivity to freedom? What is it about us that is not sure that we can communicate the Word of God? Of course, there are many things that prevent us from hearing the Word that liberates us. In today’s lesson we see that it is none other than our own familiarity with the Word that sometimes blocks us.

For example, we have just completed two training sessions for our assisting ministers and servers. Among their many tasks at worship is the one most pastoral as readers, that is, proclaimers of the Word. We discuss a lot in our training sessions about how important it is that the readers have lived with their readings all week as they prepare to read the Old Testament lesson and the epistle. The goal of the readers is to so embody the Word that the communication of its sense happens effectively in the assembly.

It will not do for us to read today’s gospel and hear that Jesus reads from Isaiah and then preaches to his home congregation, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). We should hope that in every assembly we hear in such a way that the Word is fulfilled in our hearing. For us to experience this we will have to put aside habitual dispositions in worship by which we think that we are going through the same old repetitive patterns. We cannot come to the liturgy of word and sacrament with a “ho hum” attitude. There must be an expectation that it is not just the words in the Bible or the words in the sermon or the words at the meal. Christians at their best assemble together to encounter the Word of God and not simply take in the words.

We expect to encounter the Word of God, and the Word of God for us is a person, Jesus the Christ, in whose person the fullness of God chose to dwell and whose spirit we continue to meet along life’s journey. Half of our problems when Christians engage each other is that most of us are more concerned with the words to the exclusion of the Word of God, Jesus Christ. Is it no wonder that we toss the Bible around as though the words were the be all and end all? We either do not know or have forgotten that we gather together in Roman, Anglican, Reformed, Methodist, Baptist, Orthodox and Lutheran churches in order to meet the Lord present in the words of the Old and New Testament and in the breaking of the bread. The world has lots of words, but the church witnesses through the words to the Word of God who is Jesus Christ.

In every assembly we gather to tend to the word and the sacraments. Perhaps this is the problem for pastors and for assisting ministers and servers. We get so busy tending to the words that we forget or despair of meeting the Word in our assembly. Do you have any idea what an altar guild member, an acolyte, crucifer, server, assisting minister, usher, bell ringer or pastor must do in order for us to conduct worship? Think about it. Sure, we should be easy on ourselves if we get lost in the details. We forget why we assemble and lose our expectation that Christ will meet us in the words of Moses, the psalms, the prophets, the epistles and the gospels.

Today’s gospel reading teaches us to beware of such habits. The readings teach us that the loss of expectation can lead to a dangerous situation in which the hearers in Nazareth do at least three things. 1. They try to own Jesus. 2. They try to restrain Jesus’s mission to their own land. And 3. They become enraged that Jesus will not submit to their provincial understanding of God’s rule and work.

First, Jesus returns to his home town. Everyone recognizes him as Joseph’s son. They like his reading and they are pleased with the sermon. They are excited that finally the miraculous proclamation that he carried out in the next town was being brought to Jesus’s own hometown. They seem to think that Jesus’s declaration that the prophecy of Isaiah has been fulfilled in their midst is about to establish them as the central shrine for the long-expected fulfillment of God’s promises to the patriarchs, to David and to the prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah.

We have only to remember two prophecies which declare the promise of God. One is the promise to Abraham recorded in Genesis 12.

I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Genesis 12:3

Abraham is not called for his own sake but for the sake of the whole world. Then there is the prophecy by the later Isaiah from whose scroll Jesus just read.

The Lord says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (Isaiah 49:6)

The promises are proclaimed to Abraham and to Israel not for their sake, but for God’s sake.

The hometown crowd like what they hear and shake their heads in wonder as they question, “Is not this Joseph’s son” (Luke 4:22b). They seem to be asking whether Jesus is not one of them and, therefore, does Jesus not belong to them.

Second, Jesus agitates them at that point by quoting two proverbs. One states, “Doctor, cure yourself.” In other words, “Do here also in our hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” The crowd wants Jesus’s work to take center stage in Nazareth. This would make the little town a kind of Mecca. This would make them important. People would come. They could build a bigger synagogue. Maybe some hotels!

Jesus will have none of this thinking. He then provokes the crowd by reminding them that God’s work can never be limited to the persons or to their land. Jesus refers to Elijah and to Elisha. Both prophets did some of their best work not in Israel who already worshiped the God of Abraham, Moses and David. Elijah and Elisha went to the Gentiles, pagans and heathens where they performed works of wonder and healing.

This sets the crowd off. We should always remember how dangerous is the ego which is not fed according to its demands. The resentment becomes explosive. One must learn how hard to push and when to get out of the way. In Jesus’s case the crowd rushes to throw him off a cliff, but Jesus successfully evades their action—for now! Jesus continues on his journey, an ominous journey toward Jerusalem where the people will accomplish what the people in Nazareth were unable to do.

Dear congregation, the church lives by the Word of God, who comes to us in proclamation of the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. This Word of God comes to us in human words in all languages. This Word comes to us whether in the Orthodox or Western liturgies or without any historic liturgy. This Word comes to us in Spanish, Swahili, Japanese or Hindi. This Word comes with or without incense, with or without vestments, with or without a pipe organ. There is no either/or here. It is both/and.

What is not “up for grabs” is the assembling of God’s people to hear and see the words in the expectation that we meet the Word, and thereby know our calling in this world and go forth to do it.

He comes in truth when faith is grown;
believed, obeyed, adored;
the Christ in all the scriptures, shown,
as yet unseen, but known,
our Savior and our Lord.

(Hymn 737 ELW, Words: Timothy Dudley-Smith)

Amen.