As Was His Custom

Luke says that Jesus had to wrestle with how he was going to perform this ministry and determine what kind of Messiah he was going to be. The time in the wilderness at the beginning of chapter four was about deciding, wrestling, if you will, with the possibilities in front of him. Give the people what they want; that was within his power. Turn this stone into bread; feed them; get to them through their bellies, through their hungers. Feed them, and they’ll follow you anywhere. “No,” he says, “There is more to it than that. I want to feed the hungers they forgot they had.”

“OK, then, show them strength. Flex your muscles; play the power card, the authority card. People are drawn to power, like bees and honey. Be strong, and they’ll fall at your feet.”

“No,” he says, “True power is not of this world. Power belongs to God;, we live in humility; we live vulnerably because that’s what living is— risking, letting go, surrendering.”

“Hmm. Ok then, go for the sensation”; it was whispered in his ear, the miracles, death-defying acts of derring-do. “Folks go for that; give them a show: you’ll have to fight them off with a stick.”

“No,” he says, shaking off these thoughts as he shakes off his raging hunger in the wilderness. “No, you can’t live by miracles; you can’t sustain a faith based on miracles. No, that won’t work.”

What’s left? How will he run this traveling salvation show? “I know what I’ll do,” he thought. And he came back from the mountains, got a drink of water and a Slim Jim, and wandered into the synagogues and town centers. “Word spread,” Luke says, and the early reports were positive. Everyone spoke well of him. He taught something different, something new but old at the same time. He taught ancient truths in a new language, as one with authority. He spoke plainly, but he told the stories; he offered a simple truth but drew it in pictures that seemed familiar to everyone.

But what was that truth? What did he teach? It wasn’t until he strolled home that Luke tells us the essence of his message. He ambled into the synagogue where he sat as a boy in Sabbath school, reciting lines and repeating answers to old questions and maybe asking an impertinent question now and again. They had gotten the news; his reputation preceded him. So, he was invited to teach. Called to the front, he was handed the scroll—Isaiah, the biggest one, the heaviest one. He was told to read. Luke says he looked for the bit he wanted. This wasn’t an accident; it just happened to come in when the lectionary had the right text. No, he searched for it. He found the place after an uncomfortable silence had filled the room, and he began to read. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” Well, of course, it was. Luke told us that in verse fourteen! He was throwing off Spirit-sparks wherever he walked. It surrounded him like a cloud, preceding him like headlights on bright. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach.”

Yeah, well, that Isaiah, he was quite a guy. He had quite a message, didn’t he? Jesus read it through. And they all sighed contentedly. “Yeah, those were the days,” they thought. “When old Isaiah stood there declaring the Word of the Lord, people took notice; you better believe it. God was closer then, when people like Isaiah were around, proclaiming, setting free, opening eyes, saying God is close, real close, pay attention and see. Those were the days.”

Jesus let the scroll roll up in his hand like a window blind and then handed it to the dazed attendant, and then he sat down—not because he was done. That’s what it sounds like to us. But no, rabbis taught sitting down. You stand to read out of respect for the Word, but then you sit to explain and expound and apply. You sat down, and we had the Word for lunch. We chewed it over and approached it from every perspective we could think of—the historical (What did he mean and what was going on at the time?); the literary (What devices was he using to help them hear and see? Is this poetry or prose?); the contextual (Who were the listeners at the time? How did they hear these words); the theological (How does this tell us more about God according to thinkers over the years?). They expected a lecture on the text when Jesus sat down.

Instead, they got a nine-word sermon: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” That’s it. I can’t imagine they were thrilled by that. Of course, this passage is about Jesus. He declared his ministry priorities, his core values. He trotted out his mission statement, laid it out for all to see and hear. “In your hearing,” he said. That means that, yes, this is about Jesus, but it is also about you. It’s about me. We have signed up for something bigger than we knew. When we decided to be within hearing distance of Jesus, we entered into a whole new world, a whole new understanding of our own lives and the mission to which we have signed on. It’s about us as much as it is about him. Because we claim to hear; we claim to follow. We may be afraid of the call, afraid we aren’t up to it, afraid it is more than we knew. But it is about us. It is about loving as he loved, loving enough to make a difference in the world (not just in us, but in the world).

So how do we get closer to being like Jesus? Closer to loving as he does? We make it a habit. “Jesus went to the synagogue,” Luke tells us, “as was his custom.” It is just what he did. Maybe we can conquer our fear of following if it just becomes a habit. We don’t stop to think whether we should follow; we just do . . . as is our custom.

“Follow me,” he says. Wouldn’t consider anything else, Lord; just wouldn’t.