On New Year's Day I had the opportunity to preach at Central Peninsula Church's North Campus. It was a part of their series answering the question "What child is this?" exploring the Christmas story through Jesus' embodiment and fulfillment of Old Testament texts.
In Luke (ch. 4:16-30) Jesus stands up in the middle of the synagogue meeting and selectively reads from the scroll of Isaiah. The text Jesus reads (Is. 61:1-3) is the unexpected declaration of Jesus' vision of the Gospel,
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering the sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
The crowd is first amazed at Jesus' teaching, but Jesus, perceiving their in ability to grasp the unthinkable reach of the proclamation, goes on to tell two stories declaring God's presence with the marginalized, the oppressed, and the enemies of Israel. The crowd in the Synagogue erupts in violence toward Jesus, dragging him out to the city's edge to throw him off a cliff.
NT Wright describes the scene as follows,
"In several Jewish texts of the time, we find a longing that God would condemn the wicked nations, would pour out wrath and destruction on them. Instead, Jesus is pointing out that when the great prophets were active, it wasn't Israel who benefited, but only the pagans. That's like someone in Britain or France during the Second World War speaking of God's healing and restoration for Adolf Hitler. It's not what people wanted to hear."
Jesus' vision for the Gospel is the restoration of all things, it is a vision of this earth reunited with Heaven where one day, as John writes in Revelation, "[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall their be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore." The Gospel is always more expansive, more inclusive, and more far-reaching than we can ever conceive. And it is this ever-expansive Gospel that causes the "in" crowd to erupt in anger and violence. May we come to recognize the ways we diminish the Jesus' vision for the Gospel, and may we grow in our embrace the Jesus who is unequivocally one for the lowly.