Driven: Compelled to Missions by Christ’s LoveSample

No Day of Vengeance

The Nazareth synagogue in Jesus’ day must have been a tough crowd. Otherwise, why would reading the prophet Isaiah and praising a widow and a leper nearly get Jesus thrown off a cliff?

Sometimes with Jesus, it wasn’t what He said, but what He didn’t say. His reading, recorded by Luke, modifies the Isaiah text in some ways, drawing from other Scripture passages. He also omits something important.

Compare the end of Jesus’ synagogue reading from the scroll of Isaiah as recorded in Luke 4:19 with Isaiah 61:2. Jesus’ editing, writes Kenneth Bailey in Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, didn’t please the Nazareth synagogue members living under Roman occupation. Familiar with the text, they were likely looking not just for the “good news to the poor,” but also for God’s vengeance on Gentile unbelievers. When Jesus stopped reading before “the day of vengeance,” He was leaving out an important Scripture in line with their worldview. 

Yet the following dialog may have caused His audience an even greater problem. By holding up the “widow of Zarephath” and “Naaman the Syrian” as examples of faith and God’s favor, Jesus may have been telling the synagogue listeners that they should imitate the faith of those Gentiles. How could a Gentile know more about faith than someone from Nazareth following the one true God?

We know now that no one cultural heritage holds all the insights on faith—don’t we? Many millions of people in the Global South have come to faith in Jesus in the past decades. Their faith stories bring new life to the Church. In our drive to take the truth to more distant nations, are we open to learn from people there whose hearts are full of faith but whose traditions are unlike ours? 

Moreover, as we go or send people on missions, do we pray and expect to find faith in unlikely places? Over three billion people remain unreached with the gospel, but many of those may yet come to faith in the Lord through open-minded, faithful witnesses to God’s Good News.