Revealed as Messiah
For Meditation (Corey Widmer)
In this season of Epiphany, we're exploring the ways that Jesus is revealed in the stories about him in the Gospel accounts. In the book of Luke, the first thing Jesus does after his baptism and temptation in the wilderness is to return to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. Initially everything seems familiar. Jesus reads from Scripture they know well. He speaks of God’s long-promised liberation—good news for the poor, freedom for the captive, healing for the broken. And then, shockingly, he identifies himself as the Messiah who has come to bring this promised day.
At first, the congregation is amazed. These are “words of grace.” This is the kind of Messiah they’ve been waiting for! But then something shifts. Jesus presses beyond what feels comfortable. He insists that God’s saving work cannot be contained within familiar boundaries- national, religious, or moral. The grace he brings does not belong to one group alone. And that revelation — grace for outsiders, even enemies— provokes fierce resistance. What begins in admiration ends in rage.
This story is not just about the people of Nazareth. It is a mirror held up to every community that gathers around Scripture. It invites us to ask not only whether we believe the promises of God, but whether we are willing to receive the scope of those promises. The gospel is good news, but it may not always be good news in the way we expect.
As we prepare for worship, we come to meet a Messiah who refuses to be managed or domesticated. Jesus reveals himself as the one who brings God’s healing Jubilee to the world, and who calls his people to participate in that work, even when it challenges our fears, loyalties, and assumptions.
Questions for reflection:
What do you find most compelling or most unsettling about Jesus’ announcement that Scripture is “fulfilled today” in him?
Why do you think the crowd initially responds with amazement, but later with anger? What changes?
Where are we tempted to assume that God’s grace is primarily for people like us?
How does Jesus’ vision of liberation (for the poor, the captive, the outsider) challenge common ideas of salvation?
What might it look like for the church today to live as a “preview” of God’s Jubilee—God’s new world of release and restoration? How could we embody that in our families, Parishes and church community?
Luke 4:14-30
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.
Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.