Then
Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report
about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in
their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where
he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his
custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to
him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to
proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the
oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to
the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on
him. Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing."Luke 4:14-21
This week’s gospel shows us Jesus in full stride. He
is back from a month of fasting and prayer in the desert. He has put Satan and
his temptations to rout. And he’s raring to go. In Luke’s gospel this is
Christ’s debut as a preacher. And significantly, he begins his ministry, not by
making promises, but by revealing that he is the answer to all the promises
that God has made to his chosen people over the centuries.
His new covenant is not a rejection of the old. It
is the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He is
the long-awaited answer to so many hopes and prayers. He will surprise and
delight many. He will anger and outrage many more. But in all things, he will
precisely conform to God’s law and God’s prophets. Jesus has come to deliver
salvation. But he will do it on God’s terms, not on man’s.
There’s a big lesson here for us. God’s answers are a
lot wiser than our questions. Jesus proclaims liberty to prisoners and to the
oppressed. But he has not come to plan a massive jail break or start an armed insurrection.
He has come to free us from sin and overthrow the kingdom of pride, hypocrisy
and greed. In prayer we should seek God’s will for us, not try to impose our
will on him. As a child I remember praying up a storm for a toy I wanted for
Christmas. I didn’t get the toy. And only later did I realize that God had surely
answered my prayer. He was telling me to pray for something worthwhile. Stop
wasting my time and his. It wasn’t the answer I wanted. But it was the answer I
needed.
After reading Isaiah’s prophecy predicting the Messiah,
Jesus tells his neighbors that the scripture has been fulfilled in him. They
are amazed and then outraged. They had prayed for a superhero, a caped
crusader, a masked avenger. And here was this soft spoken carpenter’s son
telling them he is the answer to their prayers. From the perspective of two
thousand years, we can appreciate their confusion as well as the profound
wisdom of God’s answer to their prayers.
What do we pray for? Do we have an active, ongoing
conversation with God, constantly seeking his will? Or do we pray only in
extremis, throwing a “Hail Mary pass” in wild desperation when all else has
failed? John Wesley gave us some terrific advice on prayer and priorities
confiding that: “I have so much to do that I must spend several hours in prayer
before I can do it.” Not surprisingly, the best advice on prayer, comes from
the author of the greatest prayer of all, when he prayed to the Father: thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
God knows what we want and he knows what we need. He listens. He loves us. He
keeps his promises. He answers our prayers. Talk to him.
