Daily Devotion – January 18, 2022 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison
Luke 4:14-21
4:14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.
4:15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
4:16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read,
4:17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,
4:19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
4:20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
4:21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Our reading for this week comes from the 4th chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel. It begins at verse 14, with the word Then. Starting a reading with that sort of word, then, always makes me wonder what happened right before, in verses 1-13.
If you check, you will find that verse 1 starts almost exactly the same way as verse 14: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan…†So right after his baptism in the Jordan River, full of the Holy Spirit, Jesus goes off into the wilderness, where Satan tempts him three times. And right after that, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, he returns to his home country.
We might guess that the Lord’s speaking to him at his baptism (having ripped the heavens open and having descended upon him in the form of a dove) filled Jesus with the Holy Spirit and a sense of his missional vocation as a person. The 40 days in the wilderness and the temptations by Satan only served to strengthen Jesus’s sense of his calling and purpose. He is even more filled with the Spirit, and he is determined to return home and start his ministry from there. He preaches in a number of synagogues on his way and is praised by everyone. (When does that ever happen? Universal praise? Hardly ever.)
So God has given Jesus the Holy Spirit and a vocation, a calling to do ministry, it has been tested and questioned and come out strong, and now he is ready to start. It seems like a strong point in Jesus’s life. So he attends the church where he had grown up. He is given the scroll of Isaiah. He knows the book, or at least portions of it, by heart. He finds where Isaiah describes almost to a T the calling Jesus has been given by God. He reads it out as the day’s reading from Isaiah, as was the custom in the synagogue. And, in the final verse of today’s reading from Luke, Jesus claims that writing of Isaiah’s as his own job, his own vocation: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
The people in the synagogue wait, then, for some commentary, some preaching. After a moment of silence for sinking in, Jesus tells them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.†The Holy Spirit has emboldened Jesus to publicly claim a mission for his life.
What about you and me? What is your/my calling from God? How has God blessed us with the gifts to accomplish that calling? And, related to today’s story, how has the Holy Spirit emboldened you/me to publicly claim that mission for our lives?
Gracious God, Thank you for loving us. Help us to be faithful to the mission you have given us and to use the gifts you have bountifully given us in service to others. Help us do what you need us to do. Amen.
