This piece is an excerpt adapted from a talk I gave at Cornerstone Christian Ministry last year, which you can read in full here.

In light of the current climate in the much of the west surrounding immigration, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on Jesus' proclamation of his ministry in Luke 4. Most readers of the Bible interpret this as Jesus' proclamation of his identity as the Messiah who will inaugurate God's kingdom on Earth and redeem God's people from their sins. This is certainly correct. But we often focus so much on the fact of Christ's proclamation that we fail to properly consider its content. In particular, I'd like to focus in on just what was so scandalous about this message.

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and 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 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 he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. 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.”And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?”And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘“Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’”And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land,and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.

Jesus quotes from Isaiah 61 to show what the kingdom he is proclaiming is like: a kingdom where justice reigns, where the oppressed are set free, where the blind see. Everything he says here, he demonstrates concretely in the course of his ministry by actually doing- hence why he proclaims that the Scripture is fulfilled.

But just as important as what he says is what he does not say. He only reads the beginning of the oracle, cutting it off mid-sentence right before “and the day of vengeance of our God”. That line would have been understood by his audience to mean judgment on the Gentiles, and by leaving it out, he’s making a statement about that assumption- namely, that the fulfillment of Israel's hope is not found in the defeat of other nations.

It's a bit unclear to what degree his listeners pick up on this; most English translations (including the ESV, which I've quoted above) make it sound like they're impressed with his speech, and thus that the comment about him being Joseph's son is one of approval. But the phrase "all spoke well of him" could also be rendered as the more neutral "all testified about him", and "marveled at [his] gracious words" could also be read in a negative sense as "marveled against [his] gracious words", a phrasing which is a bit clunky in English, but basically means that they're shocked that he thinks he has the authority to say these things.

This then changes the reading of "Isn't this Joseph's son?" from "Wow, look at what a great young man Joseph's son grew up to be!" to something more like "That's just Joseph's kid. He grew up around here. Who does he think he is?"

Regardless of how they interpret his initial editing of the passage, he goes on to make his point quite explicit by recounting the story of Elijah and the widow from 1 Kings 17 and of Naaman the Syrian from 2 Kings 5. Both of these stories depict times of great need for Israel in which God chose to heal a foreigner instead of ethnic Israelites.

Jesus points this out, and this angers his audience so much that they attempt to kill him.

In telling these stories, Jesus makes clear not only that the kingdom he is proclaiming is not what they have been imagining, but also that it is in line with the character of God as revealed in the scriptures. Rather than a military revolution that would overthrow Roman rule and establish a state in which ethnic Israel would reign over Gentiles, he is proclaiming a revolution of peace and justice that will establish a kingdom where all are welcome and equal on the basis of God’s sovereign choice and their faith in him, not on their ethnic background or cultural practices.