today this word is fulfilled

Jesus returned to his hometown and entered the synagogue. He stood up to read and the attendant handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled it and found the place where it said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor….”

When he sat down to teach about this word, he began by saying, “Today this word has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

I wonder how long it had been since that passage from Isaiah had been read in that synagogue in Nazareth. After all, there were 39 writings; most of them pretty long. Some of them occupied more than one scroll. There were only 52 sabbath days, and only so much could be done in the allotted study time. It may have been years since anyone in that synagogue had heard that particular word from Isaiah.

But there it sat, waiting…sort of like a gift waiting to be unwrapped, on the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, in the ark of the Torah with all the other scrolls, in the synagogue in Nazareth.

When Jesus unrolled the scroll and spoke the words he found on the parchment, there was a new possibility. Suddenly, there was the potential that these particular words, which lived long ago in the life of the prophet Isaiah and the lives of the people he served, could come to life again in the assembly gathered there. There was the possibility that these words could be fulfilled again.

There are many ways to interpret what Jesus taught in that synagogue in Nazareth that day. I hear him saying, “If you listen and take the word you hear to heart, God begins to fulfill it in you.”

The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because we have been anointed to bring good news to the poor….We are the ones gifted and blessed to hear the word of the Lord and anointed to participate in God’s life-giving, re-creative, transformative claiming of all people and all things.

What other treasures have you found fulfilled in God’s word because you heard? What other gifts await you in the parts of the Bible you have yet to hear? If you want more, click here to read Luke4:14-21.

the miracle of wine from water

No doubt Jesus had a huge impact on the wedding after-party in Cana.

No one much likes it when the alcohol runs out, least of all the host. In those days, running out of wine at your wedding was more than a letdown. It was embarrassing to the point of humiliation. Some even say that the party was a reflection on the married life to come; a party that runs out of wine signifies a bitter and disappointing future.

I’ve come to believe that the miracle here is not so much that Jesus produced 750+ bottles of wine out of thin air, but that he produced abundance from scarcity for the sake of his friend. The real miracle is that Jesus cared what the community had to say about the bridegroom and he cared what the bridegroom thought about himself.

God cares about our reputations, both the way others talk about us and the way we think and talk about ourselves.

Jesus wasn’t about to let his friend be cast as stingy, or let the party end in social humiliation. He produced wine from water so that his friend would be seen as generous.

This is the way Jesus begins his ministry in John, which goes a very long way in telling us what Jesus is doing in the fourth Gospel. Jesus is out for our personal and social redemption. In other words, he cares about our relationships with God and one another. And he cares about the relationships that we have with ourselves.

Jesus displays a tenderness and compassion for his friends that he passes on to us. He cares about the problems of ordinary, every day people, and page by page in this gospel, he teaches us all how to grow closer to God and one another.

He leaves the wedding and cleanses the temple, restoring the sanctity of our holy places; then talks about being born from above to the religious leader Nicodemus. He talks with a Samaritan woman and heals the son of a royal official. He heals a man who cannot walk and feeds 5000, all the while giving glory to the God who makes us one.

Jesus isn’t secretive in this gospel. Straight up, he says he’s come from God and that God has given him his power and exhorts us to be one. He changing our names as we read, moving us from selfishness to unity. Want more? Click here to read John 2:1-11.