Today The Scripture Is Fulfilled

“We have to start with Jesus and refigure our ideas around him, rather than trying to fit him into our existing worldviews.”
- N. T. Wright

“I knew Jesus before he was a Christian . . . And I liked him better then.”

- Rubel Shelly

How is it that Jesus is rejected in his own home town of Nazareth? Maybe the saying is true, “Over familiarity breeds contempt!” Jesus is assigned to read from the Prophet Isaiah scroll. He puts his finger on this place and begins to read:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon,

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.

Jesus rolls up the scroll and in the synagogue with his fellow towns people, he says prophetically, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus reads from Isaiah 61:1-2 but breaks off the ending of the verse of God’s judgment and God’s vengeance. If someone were to read the Scriptures today and do this, people might yell, read the end of the verse! For God’s sake, read the end of the verse! The people were looking forward to the day when all of Israel’s enemies would be destroyed and they would go back to the glory days of how it was during the time of the reign of King David and King Solomon’s reign.

          What happens next is unbelievable. The people cry out for a sign because they heard stories of Jesus doing mighty miracles and works of God but they had not personally witnessed any themselves. I mean, ‘C’mon, isn’t this Joseph son who did day labor for other people in town? We know this kid, and he seems liked an average Joe in our community.’   

          So Jesus does the unexpected. The crowd in the Synagogue were somewhat admiring his reading of Scripture but Jesus begins to tell how God used Israel’s enemies in the past from other Older Testament Scriptures like Elijah went to the widow in the land of Sidon and the prophet Elisha only healed a leper who was from Syria. The crowd went from being impressed to being enraged. They actually tried to physically push Jesus off a cliff. Can you see the hometown newspaper the next day? “Riot breaks out and home boy falls off a cliff!”

          We neglect the Scriptures or read them to bring us some comfort or help us to fall asleep reading at night. Yet reading the Scriptures can be quite dangerous and get you killed in certain places. God’s message to Israel was good news for the whole world. The problem was Israel just saw it as good new for themselves while it was bad news for everybody else. What many Jews believed was salvation was their exclusive right and they were willing to fight and do violence over that belief.    

          Can we come to the point to understand what Jesus is driving at over and over when it comes to what some people call the doctrine of election? Wars and divisions have been fought over the meaning of this little word. Election gives us no claims on God and certainly not a privileged status over other people. God’s incredible love is for the whole world and all people of every nation.

          When Jesus comes on the scene, Israel had failed throughout most of biblical history to live out their covenant faithfulness to God. We read over and over of their failures and their extended exiles. When all of Jesus disciples abandoned him and he was left standing alone, it was because Jesus represented the sole elect one for all of humanity. Where all others failed, he remained true to his calling and identity for God. If election means anything, it more means a vocation of suffering and greater responsibility in living for others. We are all elected corporately into Christ who was the faithful elect one of God.

          What Israel had a hard time understanding about Jesus was not only his willingness to hang out with all the wrong people but salvation and God’s kingdom were both universal and cosmic in scope. Jesus continually reversed everything where people who thought they were in God’s kingdom are out and those who thought they were out were actually in (Matt.25). No one for Jesus was beyond God’s redeeming love and the last will find oneself first and the first will find oneself last (Matt. 20:16).