The Third Sunday After the Epiphany
Because They Know You
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen! Dear Christian friends, God has a great blessing for you in today’s
Gospel, especially if you have people in your life who do not appreciate or
admire your breed of Christianity.
• Do you have friends or loved ones with whom you cannot discuss matters
of the faith because a fight will break out? Today’s Gospel is for you.
• When you do take courage and speak about the faith, does anyone roll
their eyes because they know you too well? Today’s Gospel is for you.
• Are there people who do not want to hear any Bible verses from you
because they already have their minds made up? Today’s Gospel is for you.
Wearing your shoes for you today, “Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been
brought up.” By coming “to Nazareth, where He had been brought up,” your Lord
Jesus voluntarily faced the very same things you must face from the people who
know you best. By taking the punishment that the people of His hometown dished
out to Him, Jesus is letting you know that He fully understands the punishment
you also must take from your own friends and family.
Today’s Gospel is somewhat like a family reunion where everyone seems to know
that it is just a matter of time before things get nasty. At one moment in
today’s Gospel, “All spoke well of [Jesus] and marveled at the gracious Words
that were coming from His mouth.” In the very next moment, the good people of
Nazareth began to scratch their heads and wonder Jesus’ audacity, speaking the
way He speaks! “And they said, ‘Is not this Joseph's son?’” Very quickly after
that, the wheels fell off the cart, so to speak, and “all in the synagogue were
filled with wrath” toward Jesus and His arrogant way of pointing to the
Scriptures.
How closely our Lord’s life runs in parallel with our own lives! Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Kentucky and Texas all have towns named Nazareth, but I do not
suppose any of you were born there. Nevertheless, each Christian has his or her
own Nazareth. That is to say, each of us has—as Jesus had in Nazareth—people
who have a hard time taking seriously our Christian faith and way of live.
• We all have people who do not take our faith seriously because they
know us to well. They have seen us in action and our actions have not been
good! I once attempted to stop a family fight. I recited a Bible verse to my
warring relatives. When I did, their wrath immediately turned away from one
another and toward me. And my relatives were right, despite their screeching:
“Sweep in front of your own door! You are no better than us! What makes you so
holy and sinless to speak that way?” (Perhaps something similar has happened to
you.)
Praise be to God! The very same thing happened to our Lord Jesus here in
today’s Gospel. “All in the synagogue were filled with wrath” because Jesus
dared to bring a Bible passage to bear on their lives. The people of Nazareth
knew Jesus as well as our own people know us, and the people of Nazareth held
that knowledge against Jesus. To be sure, Jesus has none of the sin that we
have (Hebrews 4:15), but that does not mean Nazareth had nothing to hold
against Jesus! “Is not this Joseph’s son?” they asked. It is as if Nazareth
said concerning Jesus, “This is the little child we once saw running in our
streets and playing with our own children. How does this overgrown brat now
dare to cite Bible passages to us? Where did He get these ideas?”
• Just as we all have people who will not take us seriously because they
know us too well, we all likewise have people who do not want to hear about the
things we believe! More than holding our sinful actions against us, family and
friends will also hold our faith against us.
o Do you have friends who dislike your faith in infant Baptism, or who
feel angry our practice of closed communion? Do you have a brother or a sister
who has left our confession of faith, through marriage or otherwise, and now
refuses to discuss the very things he or she once believed? Do you have a
relative who flatly rejects the Christian faith, or who pretends to be
Christian but wants nothing to do with Christ and His Word? Such family and
friends do not wish to hear your Bible verses any more than the people of
Nazareth wished to hear what Jesus read from the Bible to them.
o Again: are there people in your family who feel disgusted at you
because of the way you planned a family wedding or funeral? They wanted the
service to be all about the family, and you insisted that the service be all
about Jesus! Your Bible verses did not help then, either! Your family members
plugged their ears and perhaps are still plugging them (cf. Acts 7:57), in much
the same way that Nazareth finally had enough of listening to Jesus.
o Yet again: do you have loved ones who simply will not listen because
they are totally hung up on their own ideas? Do you have loved ones who have
already made up their minds and do not want to be confused by any facts? Do you
have people whose joking will turn to anger at a moment’s notice, especially
when talk of the Christian faith is involved?
Praise be to God! The very same thing happened to our Lord Jesus here in
today’s Gospel. Praise be to God! Jesus bears up where we so easily fall short.
Praise be to God! Jesus speaks faithfully and Jesus acts faithfully for us and
for our salvation:
o Enduring the very same temptations and torments that we ourselves must
endure from some of the closest people in our lives, thus showing Himself to be
fully sympathetic to our temptations and torments;
o Doing for us in “Nazareth, where He had been brought up,” the very same
things that we find so impossible to do in our own circles!
That is truly the wonder and joy of today’s Gospel! Today’s Gospel is an
excellent and praiseworthy example of how our Lord Jesus has done much more for
us than simply die on a cross to give us forgiveness and life. Yes, Jesus
certainly died on His cross for your forgiveness and life; and yes, all your
sins are utterly and completely are forgiven because of Jesus’ suffering and
death, which results in you eternal life. But your God is not satisfied with
giving you that one gift—even though His gift of forgiveness and life stretches
beyond the limits of any human imagination and it far exceeds anything we might
expect or deserve!
In today’s Gospel, God wants us to know that our dear Lord Jesus did much more
than die for us. Today God illustrates how our dear Lord lived every moment of
His life for our profit, for our strengthening, for our blessing and benefit.
• God says in His Bible that Jesus fully and completely understands all
our weaknesses because He personally experienced all our weaknesses (Hebrews
4:15)—including those weaknesses you and I feel on account of our closest
family and dearest friends. Today Jesus faced and endured family-weakness for
us and for our strength. “He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up.”
• God also says to you in His Bible that Jesus “in every respect has been
tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Here in today’s Gospel,
Jesus bears and carries the very same temptations imposed by family and friends
that we ourselves must bear, sometimes on a daily basis.
Here in today’s Gospel, Jesus displays for us His Epiphany glory. Today, Jesus
shows us that His glory is found in much more than merely displaying His divine
strength and power to us. Today, Jesus wants us to know that His Epiphany glory
consists of bearing our temptations and enduring our trials for sake—including
those temptations and trials imposed upon us by family and friends.
Draw comfort from today’s Gospel, dear saints! When you have a hard time with
your sister or brother, think of Jesus here in Nazareth. When you find that you
cannot talk about the Christian faith with your son or you best friend, think
of Jesus here in Nazareth. When your father chuckles dismissively; when you
aunt rolls her eyes because you listen to God’s Bible; when people at your
family reunion smile and nod and walk away, remain here with Jesus at Nazareth.
You have gone nowhere that Jesus has not gone before you—not even family
reunions. “He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up.” Jesus stood
faithfully among His own kith and kin, and He will continuously bear you up as
you stand among your own.
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