Hometown Zero: The Anointed One is Rejected at Nazareth

We now come to the second year of Christ’s ministry. It is traditionally referred to as the Great Galilean Ministry, since he spends so much of this time in Galilee. This is the time when he begins to introduce his mission as the Anointed One to his people.

For some time up to this point, he worked in secret. He showed himself only to a privileged few, stating in multiple places that it is not yet his time. The time refers to his crucifixion, which is far off from here. Yet, Jesus enters a new phase of self-disclosure. He starts with those who are nearest to him relationally and expands his scope geographically.

After Jesus healed an official’s son in Capernaum with just a word, Luke chapter 4 shows us his next stop. “He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him” (Luke 4:16-17). This text shows us the trust and familiarity that Jesus’ hometown had with him. Luke indicates that Jesus made it a habit of spending Sabbath days in the synagogue. The people there trusted him to read the Scriptures to them. They even gave him free reign to choose a reading from the largest scroll of the prophets: Isaiah.

Not Just Any Sabbath

The people of Nazareth were expecting this to be like any other Sabbath. They were not expecting what would come next. “He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, ‘”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 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.”‘ And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him” (Luke 4:17-20).

Filled with suspense, the leaders and congregation stared at him awaiting some sort of explanation of such a passage. After all, this is a quote from Isaiah 61. It’s found in a section full of promises of hope and restoration for the people of Israel.

These Nazarenes certainly could relate to that hope. They actively felt the burden of Roman oppression daily, under Caesar’s thumb. They functioned as normal citizens, but they lived life under military supervision. The Jews were constantly reminded of their people’s descent into wickedness and subsequent exile. Their religion was limited. Their income was limited. They knew oppression. So when one of their own shared hope that they would be set free, their ears perked up.

Jubilee Eschatology

This particular passage makes reference to “the year of the Lord’s favor.” By this time in history, a lot of ideas about the end times were floating around in the Jewish mind. Among those was a common association of the Mosaic Year of Jubilee with God’s ultimate restoration of his people.

Commanded in Leviticus 25, the Year of Jubilee was a mandatory observance in Israelite religion. Every 50 years, the Israelites were to “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (verse 10). Regarding business dealings, God specifically emphasized fair treatment (verse 17). Additionally, if a man sold property to survive, it would be returned to him in the fiftieth year (verses 25-28). And further, slaves who were indebted to serve a master would be set free (verses 39-55).

The Year of Jubilee was to be a national act of freedom and justice. It was God’s way of moving the moral arc of his people toward justice and goodness.

Anointed for Jubilee

This legal command, along with other Mosaic prophecies, became a basis on which the end times were understood. Many Jews of Jesus’ day understood the “Day of the Lord” to be a time when the people of Israel would be restored to their land out of the hands of Gentile oppression. They believed in a coming a restoration of all they had lost in their centuries of exile and dispersion. Certainly restoration would be ushered in by the coming of the “Anointed One,” or Christ. But when Jesus referred to “the year of the Lord’s favor,” they had preconceptions of what he was talking about.

Jesus didn’t just read a future promise, but he became that promise for them in the here and now. “He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing'” (Luke 4:21). They “all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?'” (Luke 4:22). They were caught off guard. They were pleasantly surprised Joseph’s son would make the claim that the Anointed One had come. Doubtless, they had questions, but they were hopeful that Jesus was indeed correct. Nazareth hoped that God’s timetable was moving them into the ultimate Jubilee.

Anointed to Act

It may go without saying that everyone who was anointed in the Bible was initiated into a set of duties. Prophets were anointed. Priests were anointed. Kings were anointed. The anointing was obviously an impartation of authority to act.

Traditionally, the anointing of those authorities was done with a special oil, and it was carried out by the priesthood. However, Christ was communicating that he is the one anointed by God’s very Spirit. This anointing was not just to hold a title, but to do something.

While he is certainly worthy of all his titles, he is trying to telegraph something much more important than his notoriety: Jesus is revealing that his mission, his very purpose, is to act on his people’s behalf. Each line of the prophecy Jesus quoted is a description of what it looks like for an authority to work justice.

There were many traditions and interpretations of Scripture that took their expectations of the Christ to varying places,¹ and one of those expectations was that he would be the descendent of King David. This hope was rooted in God’s promise that David’s throne would one day be permanently occupied (2 Samuel 7:16; Jeremiah 33:17). It is important to realize that “Christ” typically refers to a person who is anointed to be the new king. Accordingly, in his own day, David was a christ, and after him, his son Solomon. Jesus is here appropriating that term upon himself: “He has anointed (or christened) me to proclaim good news to the poor.”

Christ, the All-in-All

Jesus was indeed “descended from David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3), so he fit the bill of that expectation, making him the rightful heir to the throne of Israel. But he is not merely a King; he is also a Prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15; Hebrews 1:1-2) and High Priest (Hebrews 4:14). In this way, Jesus restores God’s intended hierarchy: one leader pointing God’s children to their Father.

Moses was meant to fill this sort of role: a political, priestly, and prophetic leader. However, he made excuses not to fill his role as a priest, so God gave his brother Aaron to father the high priestly line. From then on, no one would be all three at once.

The closest they came was Samuel, who trained as a priest, often functioned as a prophet, and started to lead the people as a judge, but his position as a judge of Israel was usurped by the people’s desire for a king. Then David was a king and a prophet, but he was not authorized to perform priestly duties. On and on, leaders filled one or two of these roles at a time, relying on other leaders to meet the various needs of God’s people.

King David, however, prophesied of a day when there would be “a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110:4). This refers to the man who appeared in Genesis 14:18-19. Melchizedek was “king of Salem” and “priest of God Most High.” David knew that one day God would restore this priest-prophet-politician paradigm, and we now know this is accomplished in Christ. His hometown didn’t understand this yet, but he was claiming his place as the threefold authority. He is our Anointed One, our Christ, our All-in-All.

Jesus Makes Bold Claims

The Nazarenes were open to the idea of God’s Christ coming to rescue them. They would have likely assumed this meant they would be free from the clutches of the Roman Empire. But that excitement quickly turned when Jesus opened his mouth again.

“He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.”‘ And he said, ‘Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian'” (Luke 4:23-27).

Offended by Hope

Verses 28-30 tell us they were “filled with wrath” and attempted to throw Jesus off a cliff outside of town. But why were they so angry?

First, Jesus predicted that they would mock him by demanding he heal himself the way he healed others. The spirit of this prediction idea is echoed in Luke 23:35. As he was crucified, the people said, “He saved others; let him save himself!” Jesus saw this coming, and he told these people that they would participate in the Jewish rejection of their Christ.

Next, he claimed to be a prophet, namely, the very one anointed by the Spirit in Isaiah 61. This would be a strange thing to them, because their expectations of this Anointed One did not include a humble carpenter’s son from Nazareth.

Finally, Jesus offended them the most with his closing remarks. His gave examples of two prophets, Elijah and Elisha, who worked miracles of restoration for two Gentiles who humbled themselves in faith in the God of Israel. These biblical stories conflicted with the superiority complex of many Second Temple Jews.

This was a level of blasphemy in their eyes that could not be tolerated. Jesus had to be punished. So they led him out of town and tried to kill him, but his time had not yet come. He escaped their wrath and moved on with his mission elsewhere.

Oaks of Righteousness

A powerful reality of Isaiah 61 that many don’t recognize is found in verses 3-11. It says those who this Anointed One liberates will “be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations” (verses 3-4).

He speaks to these redeemed people in verse 6, saying, “you shall be called the priests of the Lord; [the nations] shall speak of you as the ministers of our God; you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast.”

In verses 8-9, God speaks of himself: “For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and wrong; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their offspring shall be known among the nations, and their descendants in the midst of the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are an offspring the Lord has blessed.”

And finally, in verse 11, God declares, “‭‭For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.”

This chapter of Isaiah is a promise from God, a prophecy about Jesus, but more than these, it reveals the pattern of redemption. The Anointed One sets us free, not so that we keep that freedom to ourselves, but so that we participate in bringing that freedom to the world who has yet to experience it. We are restored to restore, redeemed to redeem. Paul says in Galatians 5:1, “For freedom Christ has set us free.”

Following the Anointed One

This is the King I serve: the one who gives hope to the poor, freedom to the captives, sight to the blind, help to the oppressed. The one who does not limit this good news to one nation. This is the gospel: He is the saving and delivering King, the King of the Jubilee, the King of all the earth.

The things that Christ was anointed to do, he now empowers us to do. He gives us that anointing of the Spirit to participate in redemption. To say I follow this King, and to never do what he does, is a falsehood of the highest order. May we synchronize ourselves with the heartbeat of our Savior and make it our aim “to seek and to save the lost.” May we identify ourselves with the mission of our Lord and “proclaim good news to the poor.” And may we respond to the goodness of our Christ by participating with him in this process, until the final day when he will “cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.”

For some of us, that will mean giving financial resources to a ministry that works toward that aim. For others, it will mean giving up other opportunities to serve as a missionary. Some will serve their local churches as volunteers, and still others will offer their homes to foster children. There are endless ways to participate in God’s restoration, and none of us can do them all, but I dare you to ask the Lord for a task, and then “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). See what God will do through your willing heart. See what miracles he will work through your hands, as you follow the Christ of the Jubilee.

Footnotes

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1. For a deeper discussion of the Messianic expectations of post-exilic and Second-Temple Jews, listen to Dr. Michael Heiser’s Naked Bible Podcast Naked Bible Podcast Episode 415: Paul’s Use of the Old Testament Series: The Messianic Story Part 3 with Dr. Matt Halsted. ↩︎