January 31, Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

After Jesus takes the scroll, reads the words of the prophet Isaiah, and then delivers the startling announcement that he is the fulfillment of scripture, he pushes the shock index even further. It’s not enough to proclaim to the poor, the captives, the hurting, and oppressed that freedom is now theirs, that their long-awaited Messiah brings them good news. Jesus challenges those around him, people of low social and economic status, to accept others whom even they may have disregarded—the widow, the leper, the foreigner.

First, Jesus dares the people to ask for a demonstration of the wonders he performed in Capernaum, a city with many gentiles. Surely he would do for his hometown what he did for strangers, people who aren’t even in the fold. But Jesus answers his own question—“no prophet is accepted in his hometown,” he tells them—and instead of miracles, he gives them two stories from their own scriptures. When there was famine in the land during the time of Elijah, the prophet was sent to a widow not in Israel but at Zarephath in Sidon, in order to deliver the good news of reconciliation. And when there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha, only one leper was cleansed and healed of his affliction: Naaman, in Syria.

In these two instances, God chose foreigners over the faithful—a theme Jesus signals when he visits Capernaum before traveling to Nazareth. Upon hearing this, the people in Nazareth become enraged and turn on him with deadly violence.