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.