Luke 4:14-21 Commentary

Jesus’s opening teaching session in the gospel of Luke is divided between this week and next. The division affords us the opportunity to hold off on the challenge that Jesus’s prophetic voice will always bring to us as we listen to him. And in light of the Epiphany season, we can read our current text with an eye and ear for what is revealed or made known about our Saviour.

What’s made known from the get-go (and over and over in Luke and Acts) is that Jesus is filled and empowered for ministry by the Holy Spirit. In fact, we can read these verses as the Holy Spirit’s plans for the Prophet Jesus.

Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit at his baptism but that was not the end of their union. As Jesus returned to Galilee, the Spirit went before him, having word spread throughout the area about Jesus. Even so, the Spirit that went before him was also filling him with its power!

As we also know, the Spirit was the power at work to bring about the Incarnation. And knowing what we know about how the Spirit works in our own lives, we can trust that the Holy Spirit was at work through Jesus’s family as he grew up in Nazareth (see the textual point below).

Plus, it was the Spirit of God who inspired and empowered the message in Isaiah that Jesus here claims as his own. Good news for the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and ushering in God’s favour is the mission and purpose of the whole Trinity—not just Yahweh the Father and Jesus the Son.

As Jesus sits down to teach and preach, Luke says that “the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them…” It’s a description of a Holy Spirit moment if I ever heard one. The Spirit is the one who makes the word of God come alive with meaning and understanding to us and in us. The Spirit does the same here—both in Jesus and in the people gathered.

This connection between Christ the Spirit-filled Prophet and the Spirit-alerted congregation will be challenged and break in just a moment, but let us not forget this moment. (We’ll get to the challenge soon enough with next week’s lectionary text.) Right here, right now, the Spirit has put the prophetic word of God into their ears; the Spirit has brought the prophetic word of God right in front of their eyes.

This work of bringing God to their midst led them to praise and to listen to the anointed one. And it is this same Spirit who will invite them to be part of what Jesus proclaims through himself: to receive and to be good news to the poor and to receive all the good you can get while in poverty. To seek release for captives and to be freed if captive. To be part of helping the blind to see, and to open your own eyes when the miracle has been worked. To fight for the freedom of the oppressed and to live in freedom once it’s been wrought. To proclaim and live in God’s favour.

Luke wrote his gospel and the book of Acts with the Holy Spirit as the central character. The incarnate Jesus Christ may be the image of the invisible God, but the Holy Spirit is the Revealer of God: the one who sets Jesus right in front of our eyes and puts Jesus right into our ears and places Jesus to rule and reign in our hearts. The Spirit is the maker of Epiphanies. May the work of the Spirit continue to inspire and illuminate us.

Textual Point

I was alerted by Luke Timothy Johnson’s commentary to these points in verse 16. Jesus is described as going to the synagogue regularly (i.e., “as was his custom”) and the gospel writer Luke describes Jesus as being “nourished” in Nazareth (the NRSV’s “brought up”) with the Greek verb trephō. By using a word for eating, as well as noting Jesus’s piety, we are given a short but fulsome picture of how Jesus grew up: he was cared and provided for, body and soul.

Illustration Idea

Jan Richardson’s poem “A Prophet’s Blessing” is inspired by this passage. I like to understand and imagine “the blessing” as the Holy Spirit.

This blessing

finds its way

behind the bars.

This blessing

works its way

beneath the chains.

This blessing

knows its way

through a broken heart.

This blessing

makes a way

where there is none.

Where there is

no light,

this blessing.

Where there is

no hope,

this blessing.

Where there is

no peace,

this blessing.

Where there is

nothing left,

this blessing.

In the presence

of hate.

In the absence

of love.

In the torment

of pain.

In the grip

of fear.

To the one

in need.

To the one

in the cell.

To the one

in the dark.

To the one

in despair.

Let this blessing come

as bread.

Let this blessing come

as release.

Let this blessing come

as sight.

Let this blessing come

as freedom.

Let this blessing come.