On Staying Put - Or Not

Luke 4:21-30

Once again, Paul Palumbo and I talked about the gospel text this week by phone. He asked, "What did Jesus do?" (Now there's a bracelet idea....) What did Jesus do to torque the hometown crowd sooooo out of shape? "They were filled with rage," Luke says, and they tried to kill him. What was so upsetting?

We agreed that the standard reading of the text is that Jesus says, "This work of God toward healing, binding up broken-hearted, releasing captives, etc. is not just for Israel," and upon hearing that "Our God is an awesome God," big enough for good deeds to outsiders, the Nazareth congregation gets ugly.

"Maybe," Paul said, but he was unsatisfied with that reading. Was it really such new and upsetting information that God is paying attention to others? This is a theme throughout the Law and the Prophets. Would a "God is gonna share the love" speech really get Jesus in that much trouble?

It's a good point. So, if the scandal is not a generous and inclusive God, what is it?

I wonder if the scandal doesn't have something to do with the people wanting Jesus to keep the work local in a different way. "Don't let the buffalo roam," the billboards used to say in Jamestown, North Dakota, encouraging us to shop locally and support local businesses. Maybe the people want Jesus to establish himself at home, to set up shop there, to give something back. They like it when he is reading and speaking in the synagogue. The young rabbi could establish himself right at home.

Instead, he makes it clear that he will just keep moving on, and he also makes it clear that in doing so, he is following God's lead from the old days. I once heard a speaker talk about how Luke does not use verbs that have to do with status or with being established (relatives of ) in favorable contexts. Rather, being "on the way" is Luke's metaphor for the Christian life. Of course, not every impulse toward restlessness is an impulse to be a better Christian. For this reason, parts of the Christian tradition have put a high value on stability. Yet Jesus doesn't. Jesus "the same yesterday, today and forever?" I don't know how the writer of Hebrews meant it, but if we're talking about Jesus, we have to say, "For Jesus to 'stay the same' is to say that he will stay on the move. To stay with him will mean joining him on the road rather than coming back to a place where he has established himself, or a place where he will establish us, "setting us up" in a manner to which we could become accustomed. No such promises have been made, not to the people in the Nazareth synagogue, and not to us.