Epiphany 4 – The Freedom of Jesus

02/03/25 • -1 min

Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church

Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Ecce Homo! (cropped) by Mihály Munkácsy (1896)

Epiphany 4 2025
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Luke 4:21-32

Isn’t this Joseph’s son?.

Luke 4:22b

In the Name of the Living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen

Our Gospel reading today picks up where last week’s reading left off. Let’s just walk through it for a start. As you remember from last week, Jesus read from the prophecy of Isaiah about his messianic mission, and gave a very short and powerful one sentence sermon: “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled even as you heard it being read.” The people marvel at this proclamation of grace, and say the one thing they know for certain about Jesus: “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” They are correct, even if not biologically so, but that’s really about all they can say. It seems they have missed the importance of the “Today” that Father Doug reflected on last week. Jesus is Joseph’s son, we know him. But “Today”? The very fulfillment of the promise of God? Or even a prophet- as Jesus suggests in verse 24- they can’t really say that about him. If we think about it for a minute, we realize they can’t say much about him or about what has just happened at all. Only that he is Joseph’s son.

After the service, Jesus takes his proclamation a bit further. There is grace, yes, but not perhaps in the way that the worshipers at Nazareth would have thought.

Joseph’s son? I get it. I’m from here. Probably makes it hard for you to see just what’s happening when you can remember me as a little boy with smudges on my face. That’s how it was with the prophets, too. Elijah wasn’t listened to during the famine in Israel, the only one who got fed was that widow in Sidon. And although there were plenty of lepers in Israel in the time of Elijah, it was only a Syrian solider that saw the truth and got healed.

In saying these things, Jesus is speaking the truth, but he’s also become very provocative- so much so that the people of his own hometown tried to kill him. His assertion is that the believers in Nazareth are missing the truth of God’s anointed one and the Kingdom because, well, he’s too familiar to them. He likens it to the all-too-easy and comfortable way that Israel ignored Elijah, and so relief during the famine was only brought to a foreigner, an enemy citizen who nonetheless had eyes to see. He reminds them of Naaman, the Syrian commander who was healed of his leprosy because he can perceive what God is doing through the hand of Elisha, when God’s own covenant people cannot. He is suggesting, none too subtly, that God’s covenant people can become so familiar with the God of the Covenant that they miss their “Today” altogether. He’s not just Joseph son, but they aren’t looking for anything else.

The ancient Greek storyteller Aesop is often credited with coining the phrase “familiarity breeds contempt.” It express the idea that a close long-term relationship with a person or situation brings about feelings of boredom or lack of respect. I think that’s part of what’s going on here- the people present in the synagogue of Nazareth are so familiar not just with Jesus, but also with Isaiah’s prophecy, that they can see nothing new. Certain of their ethnic identity, their moral superiority, and the excellence of their religion, and so settled in their own interpretation of the Scriptures, they are missing the inauguration of the Kingdom in their midst.

Familiarity breeds contempt- or if not contempt, at least a dulling of our sense of expectation. We can fall victim to it as well. When you’ve been a Christian for a long time, the wonders of our faith can begin to seem so ordinary, so routine. We know the stories of the Bible so well. The same liturgical pattern, year after year. Knowing how the story goes, it can become commonplace, the liturgy rote. Like a favorite song from our teenage years, we can listen with the ears of nostalgia for what we already know we will hear, muting even the possibility that what we hear might be something new. So this morning, I want to suggest some ways that we might see Joseph’s son with “fresh eyes,” ways that can hopefully shake off the familiarity that can breed an unwarranted level of comfort, control, and yes, contempt of our living and active God.

We need to start with the most basic truth: God is a person, not an idea. Elementary, yet we forget it so easily. As Father Doug reminded us last week, “It is not my knowledge of this truth that rescues me. It is Jesus Himself.”

By the time of the Second-Temple Judaism of Jesus’ day, the religion of the Israelites has become quite complex. In addition to the Torah, the Wisdom literature, and the Prophets, there is now a growing library of rabbinical commentary on the same. There are the synagogues, as well as the priesthood and the temple. And also many, many traditions and rituals. None of this is bad in and of itself- a...

Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Ecce Homo! (cropped) by Mihály Munkácsy (1896)

Epiphany 4 2025
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Luke 4:21-32

Isn’t this Joseph’s son?.

Luke 4:22b

In the Name of the Living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen

After the service, Jesus takes his proclamation a bit further. There is grace, yes, but not perhaps in the way that the worshipers at Nazareth would have thought.

Previous Episode

Epiphany 3 – The Year of the Lord’s Favor

Jesus Unrolls the Book in the Synagogue by James Tissot
(1886-1894)

Epiphany 3 2025
Rev. Doug Floyd
Luke 4:14-21

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”^[1]

There’s an excitement in the crowd. The hometown boy has come home. “Did you hear how beautifully he read?” “He’s become quite a young man!” “That’s Joseph’s son. Don’t you recognize him?”

Even as they admire his speech, they fail to hear him. They fail to hear that, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in their hearing.” Even as we listen to these words, I would suggest that “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing.” The kingdom of God is here, is now. The rule of King Jesus is here, is now, is Today.

Today is The Day of Salvation.

Isaiah penned these words over 700 hundred years before by the inspiration of the Spirit. These words address the people of God, returning home from exile. Isaiah 61 speaks of restoring God’s people as a nation of priests, as the Beloved of God, as a people who will proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, as a people who will rebuild the ancient places.

Jesus declares, “Today these words are fulfilled in your midst.”

Let’s consider briefly these words. Our text opens with an image of the Triune God as work. Our passage opens with the phrase

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me”

I hear a Triune resonance in these words. The Lord God points to Israel’s covenant God, YHWH. He addresses his people by His Holy Spirit in the person of His Son, the anointed one that is the Messiah, the King. Jesus is the true king of Israel, but to the listeners in Nazareth, he is Jospeh’s son.

In my History of Western Thought class, the students are reading “The Confessions” by St, Augustine. His conversion is a long, slow process. Though dedicated to God from birth he spends his youth in unholy escapades. As he becomes a respected teacher of rhetoric, he is well studied in ancient philosophy and is a rising star in the culture. He continues to struggle with sinful desires and actions while also exploring sects and ideas outside of the church.

The Bible disappoints his aesthetic sensibility, and he finds the story of God becoming man in Christ as vulgar and unattractive. He wants to ascent philosophically and God comes down to our earthiness in Christ. He says, “To possess my God, the humble Jesus, I was not yet humble enough.”[2]

God condescends to our human frailty, our human weakness. To follow this Christ, this one true King, we do not ascend a throne, we kneel, we humble ourselves, we embrace Him in His utter humiliation, the way of the cross.

With this in mind, consider this anointed King who has come to save: the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed. His hearers do not actually hear what Jesus is saying. And I fear we can easily miss His words as well. This people who praise His eloquence, who delight in His return to the hometown, who speak of His father Joseph, fail to realize these words are being fulfilled as Jesus speaks. They are the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed.

Think back to Isaiah’s prophecies. He is speaking to a people who are prospering under Uzziah’s reign. They are blessed. I can see them hanging little signs in their home, “Blessed.” Isaiah looks at Israel’s prosperity and says,

The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores
and raw wounds;
they are not pressed out or bound up
or softened with oil.
Your country lies desolate;
your cities are burned with fire;
in your very presence
foreigners devour your land;
it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners. ^[3]

He sees their true condition. They are keeping the Temple rituals, but their hearts are unfaithful. They are mixing idolatry with their obligations to the Temple. They are corrupt. They are blind to their condition and to one another. Therefore, they mistreat one another especially those on the margins: the poor, the oppressed. Though they left Egypt a long time ago, they are still enslaved and they are still enslaving others.

Isaiah and other prophets will speak of caring for the poor, the captive, the oppressed and so on. He is literally emphasizing the responsibility of God’s people to t...

Next Episode

Candlemas – Light from Light

Rev. Doug Floyd

Presentation of Jesus at the Temple from Georgia (12th century)

Candlemas

The Presentation of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple
Rev. Doug Floyd
Malachi 3:1–4, Psalm 84, Hebrews 2:14–18, Luke 2:22–40

For the Lord God is a sun and shield. – Psalm 84:11a

The sun in the heavens enlightens the whole world, energizing all things and revealing all things in glory. The glory is all-consuming. If we were to stare into the sun, we would eventually go blind. If we were to stand in the full light of the sun for too long, it would burn our skin. We can only bear this glory within limits. At the same time, we cannot live without the sun. If not for the sun, we would die in darkness.

The glory of the sun is but an image of a greater light, the Creator of heaven and earth, who said, “Let there be light” and there was light. In him and his light we live and move and have our being. We cannot bear the full light of his glory or else we die. He is both sun and shield. He makes a way for us to draw near, to dwell in the light of His glory without being consumed.

We behold our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made.”

Gregory of Nyssa helps explain this phrase “light from light.” He writes,

“We see that the radiance from the sun is integral to it and that the substance of the sun is not divided or diminished, but its substance is entire, and its radiance perfect and entire, and the radiance does not diminish the substance of the light but is as it were a genuine offspring from it. Thus we see that the Son is begotten not from without but from the Father and that Father remains entire, while the “stamp of his substance” exists always and preserves the likeness and image without alteration.”^[1]

In the face of Jesus Christ, we behold the full glory of the Father, and yet we do not go blind. We are not destroyed, but instead we grow from glory to glory. Just as Simeon beheld the glory of God in infant Jesus, we behold him and are changed.

Sophronius of Jerusalem tells us that,

“The true Light has come, ‘the light that enlightens every person who is born into this world’. Let all of us, beloved, be enlightened and be radiant with its light. Let none of us remain a stranger to this brightness; let no one who is filled remain in the darkness. Let us be shining ourselves as we go together to meet and to receive with the aged Simeon the light whose brilliance is eternal. Rejoicing with Simeon, let us sing a hymn of thanksgiving to God, the Origin and Father of the Light, who sent the true Light to dispel the darkness and to give us all a share in his splendour.”[2]

Today as we observe the Presentation of the Jesus Christ in the Temple, we rejoice that Jesus is the “light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to God’s people Israel.”^[3] From the early ages of church, candles have been lit at the altar and in the church as a sign of this joyous news.

Today marks 40 days after the Feast of the Nativity, Christmas Day. According to Jewish law, a new mother must wait 40 days after having a child to return to the Temple for purification.

As Mary returns to the Temple, she is not simply obeying law, she is fulfilling it. In one sense, Mary becomes an image of all Israel. She is the culmination of human longing and satisfaction in the coming of the Lord to His Temple. Mary bears the child who will fulfill the ancient promise to Abraham. From his offspring, God will bless all families of the earth.

Jesus Christ, born of Mary, has come to restore Israel to the Father in Heaven. According to our reading in Hebrews, Jesus is the faithful high priest, who comes to make propitiation for the sins of the people. In the words of Simeon, we see hints that Jesus will be offered for His people. He is the great high priest, and he is the sacrifice. And according the words of Jesus, His body is the Temple. Even as the law is obeyed, the law is being fulfilled. Jesus is making a way that will restore His people to God that will lead them from death to life and from glory to glory.

And as Simeon says, Jesus is a “light of revelation to the Gentiles.” Jesus will not only redeem His people, he will call Jew and Gentile into one new family, one new man, one holy communion before the Father in heaven. He will make a way through his very life. His life will be poured out unto death on the cross and even as He is raised from the dead, he will raise many to new life.

With this in mind, I return to the image of Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus in the Temple. In this moment, we see but...