28/10/07 (Trinity 21 - Bible Sunday)
Luke 4:16-24
Jesus' listeners were amazed at his gracious words, so amazed that they tried to kill him. His words of grace were not what they wanted to hear! They dearly wanted the Messiah to appear, and they would have been willing to lay down their lives to see the hated Romans kicked out and the Prince of Peace reigning instead. But the son of Joseph the carpenter was nothing like the Messiah they were hoping for, and it would take a lot to convince them that he really was the one. He'd lived among them for thirty years, hadn't he, so surely they were the people who really knew him! So when he spoke about the grace of God benefiting the poor, the blind, the prisoners and the oppressed - the social misfits, the people punished by God - they were shocked. And when he said that this was happening now, and that this was the fulfilment of that prophecy, they could not accept it. They knew that Scripture was a prophecy about the Messiah, and that it went on to talk about the day of vengeance of our God - but Jesus stopped short of that bit. He only talked about the grace of God, God's love to those who do not deserve it or merit it in any way, and they did not like it.
Our problem may be the opposite to that of the people of Nazareth. We may only want to hear words of grace, not words of justice and judgement and wrath. The law of God is not something we can imagine meditating on all day long like the Psalmist! So we too may see only what we want to see in the Bible, and miss what God is saying.
It is impossible to read the Bible from a neutral point of view. We cannot help but see things from our own standpoints. But every day life involves learning to understand where other people are coming from, and why they see things differently from us - and that is the same with the Bible. The Bible is written by a host of different authors, each with a different axe to grind, and it is helpful to see what it is that drives them. However, we need to remember that alongside the limited human author is the eternal Holy Spirit, and that he is inspiring, 'breathing in to', the words that are being written, so that those words have spiritual power. That power does not just work by magic; it works as we try to listen and understand, and as we see how each passage relates to Jesus our Lord, who is God in the human dimension, and as we look for what God is saying to us. It may not be what we want to hear; but it will be what we need to hear.
Questions:
1) Does God speak to you in the Bible? If not, is there a reason why not? If yes, how does he do so? How can we hear more?
2) Luke tells us Jesus had the habit of going regularly to the synagogue. He also knew the Scriptures. What can we learn from this?