[Note: The sermon references a song and links to the official video, both of which contain sexual imagery, though I do not reference those aspects in the sermon.]

Allow me to read from further in the Gospel of Luke. 

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “You are an evil doer and you deserve to rot in hell, while I go on to Paradise.”

Let us pray.

Are you troubled with what you heard? The Gospel of Luke does not read that way, does it? No! To the contrary we read Jesus’ reassuring words, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” If you were troubled at what I read, if you found it difficult to concentrate while I prayed, count yourself among those fortunate enough to be led by God’s Spirit.

But why were we troubled? Why is it that a different last line, a line of condemnation, unsettled us so much? That is an important question and we will answer it shortly.

But first let us look at our text for today. This is the first episode Luke narrates following Jesus’ temptation. Jesus goes to Galilee, empowered by the Spirit, and begins to teach in the synagogues of the area. Then he goes to Nazareth, his hometown. And on one Sabbath, he goes to the synagogue there.

The people of Nazareth had probably heard word from Galilee about this wonderful teacher. So the leaders there probably invited him to give the sermon that day. Unlike the practice in most churches today, ours included, the preacher was the one who also read the scripture. He would read some part of scripture and then expound on it.

And so Jesus stands up to give his sermon and the scroll of Isaiah is given to him. Jesus unrolls the scroll to the part we call Isaiah 61. And he reads the first verse and a part of the second.

After reading it, he hands the scroll back to the attendant and sits down. The suspense in the synagogue is growing by the second. This was a key scripture that expressed the Jewish hopes for full restoration. What was Jesus going to say? 

Jesus sits down. The congregation is in suspense. They had heard about his insightful teaching at Capernaum. What was he going to say now in Nazareth. The tension builds as  Jesus spends a few moments in silence. Finally, Jesus simply says that the scripture had been fulfilled that day in him.

Then we read, in almost all our translations, something to the effect that the people spoke well of him and were amazed at the words he spoke. Sounds like they looked favorably on Jesus, right? I mean, if someone speaks well of me, I would assume he or she looked favorably on me.

But then Jesus starts accusing them. This is almost as though he had condemned the repentant thief on the cross, as in the amended version I read earlier. Why is it that there we were unsettled at Jesus’ words but here have no problems with him turning around and accusing those who supposedly were praising him?

Nowhere else in the Gospels do we see Jesus say unkind words to anyone who praised his work. He may have asked penetrating questions as when he asked the religious leader, “Why do you call me good?” But he does not accuse. Elsewhere he seems to function under the assumption that, if someone recognised his work as being good, it must be because they were led by the Holy Spirit. 

But here? Here it seems he is out of character. And we have no problems with it. No problems despite this not being the Jesus we see elsewhere. This has troubled me for many years. I never could understand why Jesus just suddenly began an unprovoked attack against the people of Nazareth, nor why he framed his attack with the proverb, “Physician, heal yourself.” Perhaps you have also been confused in a similar fashion.

But then this past week, I realized that this sermon has been in the works for at least 12 years. Not that I’ve been working on it since 2005. Rather, way back in 2005, a student of mine told me that she had messed up big time. My first impulse was to punish her in some way and make an example of her so others would not follow suit.

But then, I decided against that course of action. She had, after all, come to me with a confession of her fault. I decided to forgive her no conditions attached.

The next day she asked me to become her mentor because she said she had never experienced forgiveness before. So I became her mentor also. And two weeks back she got married. I was not here that Sunday. I was the only teacher she invited.

And at the cocktail party she introduced me to a friend of hers, who introduced me to an acquaintance he had brought along. Let’s call her Sima. During our conversation, Sima told me about how her parents had converted to Roman Catholicism when she was very young. And she grew up in the Roman Catholic church.

She told me about her experience at the confessional. And, since my student had told her that I am a pastor, she asked me if her experience was the norm. She told me that whenever she went to the confessional, the priest would say shaming things, things that condemned her for sinning, things that made her feel like dirt. 

And she wanted to know from me if this was how it was supposed to be. I told her it wasn’t. But I wondered then why Sima was telling me all this. 

But then this past Wednesday, a current student of mine recommended a song by Hozier called ‘Take Me To Church.’ I liked the song immediately, especially since the song interweaves two parallel metaphors with a single lyric. But one line struck me with unexpected force.

I’ll tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife

And as soon as I heard this line, the thought came to me, “This is the key.” This is the key to the passage we are dealing with today. And this was the key to Sima’s story.

So I went back to the passage. Remember, I said earlier that, in almost all our translations, we read something to the effect that the people spoke well of him and were amazed at the words he spoke. That is v. 22. And that is where the problem lies because it shows an out of character Jesus.

Why? Simply because v. 22 says nothing of the sort. The Greek of v. 22 reads:

καὶ πάντες ἐμαρτύρουν αὐτῷ καὶ ἐθαύμαζον ἐπὶ τοῖς λόγοις τῆς χάριτος τοῖς ἐκπορευομένοις ἐκ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ.

(kai pantes emarturouv auto kai ethaumazon epi tois logois tays charitos tois ekpoeumenois ek tou stomatos autou.)

If we weren’t predisposed to thinking well of Jesus, we would translate it as follows:

“And everyone was witnessing him and was astonished at the words of grace that came from his mouth.”

There is no word indicating they were speaking well about Jesus. They simply witnessed what he said. And they were not amazed or filled with wonder at his words. Rather, the words of grace, drawn from Isaiah 61, gave rise to astonishment because Jesus had said that those words had been fulfilled in him. 

Those words were expected to be fulfilled after the political restoration of Israel. They were supposed to come true after Israel had been delivered from the Roman oppressors. 

But Jesus was saying that they had been fulfilled during the Roman occupation. The grace of God had come on them in the midst of the oppression and not after it.

Jesus had gone to his hometown, just like any candidate. And he had announced the platform on which he was going to run his campaign – good news for the poor, freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, release for the oppressed. 

The audience would have welcomed all of that. They wanted all of that. Who would not? It was part of Isaiah’s vision of a grand future.

But when Jesus sat down and spoke, he said things they were not expecting. For what he said was that Isaiah’s words had been fulfilled right then and there. And though they wanted those words to be fulfilled, they wanted them as the second stage of God’s plan, with the first stage being the removal of the Romans from the Holy Land. But Jesus was saying that the time of God’s favor, of God’s grace, had begun. In other words, the occupation of Israel by the Romans was inconsequential to God’s plans. 

But if God’s grace was to come to the land while the Romans were still in it, then the Romans too would be beneficiaries of that grace.

This, in the perspective of his audience, was an unforgivable sin. To say that the oppression of God’s people, their subjugation by the Romans, would continue as God initiated his kingdom, was a supreme heresy. And to insinuate that the Romans would also be recipients of God’s favor was almost blasphemy. So as soon as Jesus mentioned this heretical thought, the audience began to sharpen their knives.

“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. Only Mark and Luke tell this story. But both do it in different ways and with differing intents. Hence, in Mark’s Gospel we read that the question asked was, “Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” There the issue is one of familiarity. In Mark they were asking, “How can we follow the boy next door?”

But in Luke’s Gospel the question is, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” We know that soon after Jesus was conceived, Joseph planned to divorce Mary, but his plans were thwarted by the intervention of an angel. 

Even if Mary and Joseph had gotten married the next day itself, Jesus would have been born less than nine months into the marriage. Everyone would have assumed that Jesus had been conceived out of wedlock.

The question “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” is intended as a reminder of Jesus’ supposedly illegitimate birth and a slur on his character. In other words, “What can we expect but sinful ideas from someone born in sin?”

Jesus does not back down. He rather reminds them of two occasions when a non-Israelite received God’s blessings despite there being equally needy people in Israel. In other words, he reminds them that Yahweh, the God they claimed to worship, was God of both the Jews and the Gentiles. 

Things could have gone two ways from here. The people could have accepted their error and welcomed God’s grace bestowed on Jew and Gentile alike. 

Unfortunately, they chose to reject this way. The weakness of Jesus’ platform was evident to them. He refused to punish those who had oppressed God’s people. He was saying that these Gentiles could receive God’s blessing even without repenting of their grievous sins.

Like to many of us, this message of God’s grace shown to those who had sinned, was repugnant to Jesus’ audience. We want to be forgiven all our transgressions. But when it comes to others, especially those who have hurt us, we like Paul’s line about people reaping what they sowed. When it comes to us, we want there to be no consequences. But when it comes to those who have hurt us we insist on consequences. 

And so Sima heard words of condemnation after her confessions rather than words of forgiveness. She had to endure words that opened her wounds rather than words that healed them.

But if we want God’s unmerited grace to visit us, then we must expect the same unmerited grace to visit those who have hurt and abused us. 

This is Jesus’ manifesto. The oppressed and the oppressor are both in need of God’s grace. And God’s grace comes to both. This manifesto was unwelcome when Jesus first announced it. How welcome is it now?