Today. This Scripture Is Fulfilled.

I keep coming back to that Sabbath in Nazareth.

Not the flannel-graph version. A real synagogue. People who had watched Him grow up. Folks who knew Joseph’s shop and Mary’s kitchen and the boy who used to sit among them.

Luke says it was His custom to go. He stood up to read. They handed Him the scroll of Isaiah. He found the place.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,

Because He has anointed Me

To preach the gospel to the poor;

He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To set at liberty those who are oppressed;

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

— Luke 4:18–19, quoting Isaiah 61:1–2

He closed the book. Sat down. Every eye in the room fastened on Him.

Then He said it.

Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

At first they spoke well of Him. Gracious words, Luke says. And then the other thing rose up. The thing that happens when you have known somebody too long to believe God could be that close.

Is this not Joseph’s son?

Familiarity has a way of shrinking the holy down to what we already think we understand. I know that in myself. I can hold the Book and still want the room to stay ordinary.

He would not play along. He told them a prophet is not accepted in his own country. He talked about Elijah and the widow at Zarephath. Elisha and Naaman the Syrian. The blessing going outside the circle they thought they owned.

That was enough. Luke says they were filled with wrath. They rose up, drove Him out of the town, and led Him to the brow of the hill to throw Him down. He walked through the midst of them and went His way.

I do not read that story so I can point at a town two thousand years ago. I read it because I recognize the room.

The power He named

What He read out of Isaiah is not a nice motto. It is the work the Spirit anoints a person to do. Good news for the poor. Binding up what is broken. Liberty. Sight. The year of the Lord’s favor.

And the way that work moves through the Church is not by volume or by status. It moves by agape. The love with which Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her. Paul says that straight in Ephesians 5. The Spirit does not rest on us so we can win an argument. He rests on us so that same self-giving love can work through ordinary saints.

I have seen that love. I do not want to talk as if the whole Church is asleep. She is not. There are people who walk in the Spirit, live in the Spirit, get led by the Spirit, and fight the works of darkness without making a show of it. I think of Nick and Robin and the saints at the Branch Church in Cary. I honor them.

The warning in Luke 4 is quieter than a scolding. It is this: you can know the words and still shove the fire out of town. You can love the hometown version of Jesus and still refuse the Jesus who opens Isaiah and says, today.

What I am asking for

I am not asking for a louder church. I am asking for a church the Spirit can rest on.

Honesty. Integrity. The fruit you can taste when you sit with somebody. Compassion that does not make peace with sin. The kind of love that looks like a Man giving Himself away.

If there is any light in our neighborhoods, it will not be because we got the branding right. It will be because He is still upon us. Born again. Filled. Willing to let the acceptable year of the Lord be more than a line we read on Sunday.

A shared prayer

Father, let the Spirit of the living God rest on Your Church.

Fill us with the same agape love with which Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her.

Make us a quiet light in our houses, our streets, our towns, and whatever ground You have given us.

Where we have grown too familiar to hear You, soften us. Where You are already at work, strengthen those who are standing.

Today, in our hearing, let this Scripture live again.

Amen.

The same Spirit who was upon Him is not a memory.

May we not push Him toward the cliff.

May we receive Him. And love as He loved.