Thoughts for the Day

Luke 4:22 All spoke well of him [Jesus] and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

Again, it is all going so well.  Jesus has returned from his desert isolation ‘in the power of the Spirit’, news has spread, he is teaching in synagogues, everyone is praising him. Then Luke, who has told us most about Jesus’s upbringing, includes this vignette of his return to the place of his childhood.  How will people respond?  On the Sabbath he attends the synagogue as usual.  He stands to read and is handed a scroll from Isaiah.  Did he ask for it, or did someone else choose it for him?  I wonder.  But within it he chooses to read “The spirit of the Lord is on ME, because he has anointed ME to preach good news to the poor…” continuing with freedom for prisoners, sight to the blind, release for the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favour.  He sits down.  All eyes are on him, waiting.  And Jesus declares “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”.  It is more momentous than they realise.  And it still looks to be going well, for we now read that ‘all spoke well of him’ and were ‘amazed’.  Then comes a hint of what is to come.  ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ highlights the contrast between God’s declaration of Jesus as His Son, and the ancestral record that Luke begins with the words ‘He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph’.  Which way will they decide?  God incarnate, or just the son of Joseph?  And it is not only a decision for them, it is a choice we also need to make!