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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
No doubt that that Sabbath-day service initially seemed like any other Sabbath-day service. Among those gathered for worship, there were familiar faces, including a familiar face Who even stood up to read one of the Scripture passages and then, as was customary, sat down to expound it. But, what He said at first left the others gathered for worship bearing witness to Him and marveling at the gracious words that were coming from His mouth, and then what He said next left them filled with wrath and trying to kill Him. We might say that that must have been some sermon! As the Divinely-inspired St. Luke uniquely tells, Jesus began to say to them that, that very day, that very Scripture that He had just read had been fulfilled in their hearing. And, considering today’s Gospel Reading, we also can say that “Today Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”.
To be sure, I am not in any way claiming personally to be the fulfillment of Holy Scripture as Jesus not only claimed but also truly was. Rather, today, in the pure preaching of His Gospel and the right administration of His Sacraments, Jesus Himself continues to fulfill passages of Holy Scripture such as that passage that He Himself read that day in the Nazareth Synagogue. And, when we hear such things, either we bear witness to Him and marvel at His gracious words, or we reject Him as did the people in His hometown, even if we are not, as they were, filled with wrath and trying to kill Him.
Jesus simply may have seemed too familiar to the people in the Nazareth Synagogue, when, in fact they really did not know Him at all (Acts 13:27), and such “hometown” rejection certainly was not without Biblical precedent, as Jesus made clear with both His example of Elijah, who was sent not to a widow in Israel but to a widow in Zarapheth, in the land of Sidon, and His example of Elisha, who cleansed not a leper of Israel but Naaman the Syrian. The people in the Nazareth Synagogue, already struggling with Jesus’s familiarity, may well ultimately have rejected Jesus because with those examples He may well have suggested that their rejection of Him would leave Him preaching the Gospel to others, which is what He had already been doing (Luke 4:14-15) and what He would continue to do, as we will hear next Sunday (Luke 4:31-44).
The people in the Nazareth Synagogue did not heed Jesus’s enabling call for them to repent; do we? Do Jesus and the messengers He sends seem too familiar to us? Do we wrongly let Jesus’s messengers’ personal failings get in the way of our heeding Jesus’s message? Do we reject Jesus and His messengers and their message because of our own wrongful expectations of the messengers or the message? Can we not bear being warned of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, which apart from our repentance deserve death now and damnation for eternity? Are we indifferent or hostile to the Gospel that not only tells us of a Savior from sin but also actually can forgive our sin? How else do we show our rejection of Jesus and so also our deserving to have Him turn from us to others?
When we are poor in spirit, recognize our captivity in sin, our spiritual blindness, and our being similarly oppressed, when we receive in faith the preaching of the Good News of spiritual sight, forgiveness, and the time of Lord’s favor, then God forgives our sinful nature and all of our actual sin. God forgives us on account of His Son, Jesus Christ, Who fulfills that preaching and all Scripture in our hearing.
Jesus is properly the content of all preaching, and preaching arguably is not preaching at all without Jesus’s fulfilling Holy Scripture as its content. Jesus as a human being was brought up in Nazareth and anointed by the Lord with His Spirit, making Him “the Christ”, but Jesus also was the Son not of Joseph, as was supposed (Luke 3:23), but the Son of God (Luke 1:32, 35). Jesus was a prophet in some sense like Elijah and Elisha, and rejected by His countrymen as they were, but Jesus’s rejection later led to His death on the cross for us and for all people, Jews and Gentiles alike. So great is God’s love, mercy, and grace for us! As the theme for this Life Sunday puts it, “God Chose You, and that changes everything”. As He chose the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, so He elects us by grace. When the Good News comes to us and we are united by faith with those who listen to it, then we benefit from it (Hebrews 4:2), receiving the forgiveness Jesus won for us on the cross.
“Today Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”: from Jesus’s mouth to your ears. His Word has the power to bring into effect what is spoken. The reading and preaching of the Word are in some sense the events that matter, though miraculous signs can and do accompany and attest to the Word. As Naaman the Syrian was cleansed of His leprosy in the water of the Jordan River (2 Kings 5:14), so we are cleansed of our sin in Holy Baptism. As the widow of Zaraphath was miraculously fed by the Lord (1 Kings 17:15-16), so we are miraculously fed in the Sacrament of the Altar, both with bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and with wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so we also receive life and salvation. In Jesus, the Divine and human natures are personally united in such a way that the man Jesus both could miraculously pass through the midst of the people from the Nazareth Synagogue (confer John 8:59) and can be miraculously really, physically present in this Sacrament in order to bless us who repent and believe. And, those captive to original sin and oppressed by their actual sin especially are proclaimed and set free in individual Holy Absolution.
This past week, as I visited several members and guests to some extent shut-in or home‑bound, I read and expounded today’s Gospel Reading to them, effected Absolution, and distributed Christ’s Body and Blood and so also the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Yet, we talked not only about the figurative fulfillment of the passage that Jesus had read and expounded but also about its literal fulfillment. Truly, in God’s time and way those who are materially poor, those who are captive in prison, those who are physically blind, and those who are oppressed in any and all ways will fully experience the impact of the preaching of the Good News of liberty, sight, and the Lord’s favor. God, Who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will also, with Him, graciously give us all things (Romans 8:32). Truly our Lord ultimately meets every human need, even if only at and with the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Until then, we can be comforted that, even if those who hear us reject us, as those who heard the Lord rejected Him, our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).
No doubt that this Sunday service in many ways seems like any other Sunday service. Among those gathered for worship, there are familiar faces, including a familiar face who reads Scripture and expounds it. And, in some sense, this Sunday service is like any other Sunday service. For, as at any other Sunday service—or any service on any other day of the week, for that matter—when the Gospel is purely preached and the Sacraments are rightly administered, then as “Today Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”. God so works to bring us forgiveness, with its joy and its peace, now and forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +