“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed
my father. Prepare to die.”
William Goldman, The
Princess Bride (1973)
The gospel of Luke records that one Shabbat
early in his ministry, Jesus rocked up at the synagogue in Nazareth, where he
grew up, and read from the book of Isaiah.1 Specifically, he read
from the beginning of chapter 61: The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because
the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to poor people. He has sent me to
bind up those broken in heart; to proclaim to captives freedom, and to those
bound, opening; to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour –
 |
| An old postcard of Nazareth, kindly uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Fadil Saba, under the usual conditions. |
And he closed the book – rolled up the
scroll, that is – gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and everyone
stared at him. At that point, they were staring at him, before he’d even said
anything that wasn’t in scripture. And OK, maybe there’s an extent to which
that can be accounted for by the fact that they’d heard about him doing all
sorts of cool and shiny miracles in other towns in Galilee, and were expecting
something similar here; indeed, in just a moment, he’ll confirm that that’s
precisely what they’re expecting: physician, heal thyself.2 But
then again, they knew about the cool and shiny miracles before he even stood up
to read, so why was it at this particular moment that, as Luke phrases it, the
eyes of everyone in the synagogue were looking intently at Jesus? That’s a
pretty strong statement; what has he done to catch their attention? Hasn’t he
just read a verse and a bit from Isaiah?
Well, that’s just the thing. He’s read a
verse and a bit, and then put the book away. He stopped right in the middle of
a sentence. The verse continues and finishes: – and our God’s day of
vengeance, to comfort all who mourn. Everyone’s staring at him because he
missed a bit. He left the thread hanging. It’s as if someone were reading out
of The Princess Bride and said, “Hello; my name is Inigo Montoya; you
killed my father.”3 And left it there. There’s a bit missing –
specifically a bit consisting of a warning of impending vengeance.
So why did Jesus choose to stop where he
did? Well, the next thing he says – or begins to say, Luke puts it, implying, I
suppose, that he got a bit cut off by everyone then gushing about how great he
was – is, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. The bit he
just read is fulfilled as he speaks it – and that makes sense, right, because God’s
Spirit is indeed upon him, more so than on anyone before, and in the very act
of reading those words aloud, he is indeed preaching good news to the poor and
proclaiming freedom and favour and so forth. The fact that he chose to break
off in the middle of the verse, then, suggests that the bit just after what
he read, is not fulfilled in his audience’s hearing. It is the year of
the LORD’s favour, but it is not the day of our God’s vengeance.
Otherwise, why stop there?
Jesus goes on to use some typology to unpack
what the year of the LORD’s favour actually looks like, stressing that it
involves a heck of a lot of grace being doled out to Gentiles, and not so much good
stuff for Israel as they might expect. And all of a sudden the entire
congregation stops gushing about how great Jesus is, and indeed change their
tune to the extent that they try to chuck him off a cliff. Yikes. Well, he did
just warn them that they weren’t going to like what he said: no prophet is acceptable
in his hometown, which I guess is ultimately another scripture that was
fulfilled in their hearing.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the year of the
LORD’s favour doesn’t refer to a literal one-trip-round-the-sun year. We’re
still in the year of the LORD’s favour: the Church, as symbolised by
Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Zarephath, is continuing to receive God’s
grace, while Israel isn’t yet getting the fullness of the blessings it was
promised in the Law, Prophets, and Writings. And we certainly haven’t yet arrived
at the day of our God’s vengeance, because believe me, if we had, we’d blooming
well know about it. Back in Isaiah 61, however, these two occasions are listed
right next to each other, and it certainly wouldn’t seem to be an unreasonable
leap of logic to make that they would happen at the same sort of time. For this
reason, I encourage you to cut Jesus’ disciples and the other Jewish people of
the time a good deal of slack in terms of their expectations that the Messiah
would inaugurate a physical restored kingdom of Israel straight away; as
conclusions go, it wasn’t what you’d call totally bereft of justification. The
year of the LORD’s favour and our God’s day of vengeance often look pretty
inextricable from one another in the Old Testament. Still, extricating the one
from the other is precisely what Jesus does in this passage of Luke –
and thereby he sets that as a precedent for us. This is how to figure out what’s
going on in Old Testament prophecies pertaining to the coming Messiah and interpret
them rightly: figure out which bits refer to the year of the LORD’s favour and
which bits refer to our God’s day of vengeance.
So yeah, I said last post that the idea of
the Old Testament Eschatology Project was to test the soundness of my current
eschatological views without relying on the New Testament – but perhaps
I should have reined that mission statement in with a caveat or two. If I were
to deliberately ignore the fact of where we stand now, in the year of the LORD’s
favour, I’d have nothing to stop me making the same mistakes as Jesus’
disciples when they supposed that he was going to usher in the kingdom with
military might there and then – nothing to stop me conflating the year of the
LORD’s favour with our God’s day of vengeance. My method for reaching
conclusions about eschatology, therefore, is to imitate Jesus’ – to pull apart
prophetic passages by distinguishing what in them has already come to pass, from
what hasn’t; by distinguishing what Jesus could have said “today this scripture
is fulfilled in your hearing” about when he was on earth, from what he would
have to have broken off before; by distinguishing, in other words, his first
coming from his second. Matters are complicated somewhat, of course, by the
principle of multiple fulfilments of prophecy, but there’s always going to be
Stuff That Definitely Has Happened and Stuff That Definitely Hasn’t, and I
reckon it makes sense to get that jazz down and sorted, as far as possible,
before looking for additional fulfilments.
So all right, fair enough, I’ll need to rely
on the NT a little bit for the sake of referring to the actual events of
Jesus’ life, but that’s the only way I can be sure, when assessing whether a
particular statement fits with my eschatology or not, whether it’s even about
eschatology. Plus, crucially, the question that prompted the project was,
would these eschatological conclusons have been recognisable and logical to
believers in the very earliest days of the Church, based on the information
they had?, and I’m not introducing any information they wouldn’t have
had into the proceedings.
I’ve outlined the principle I’m working to,
then: distinguish, as Jesus did, the year of the LORD’s favour, which he
inaugurated on earth, from our God’s day of vengeance, which is still yet to
come. Isn’t that incredible, that God has delayed the outpouring of his wrath
for so long, so as to offer so much grace to so many, and especially to so many
Gentiles like me with no innate claim on his favour? Well might we stare; well
might we marvel at these gracious words coming from our Lord’s mouth. He breaks
off before the day of his vengeance to make room for grace upon grace, and much
as I long for that day to come, so that he might be revealed in his glory, and
we along with him, and the kingdom might established in its fulness, and he
might rule in truth and equity, and creation’s labour-pains might obtain their
reward – much as I long for that, and much as I readily devote my time and
trouble to trying to understand what God has revealed about it, I am
nonetheless grateful for every second longer that the year of the LORD’s favour
might last, every fresh opportunity for the lost souls of the world to find grace.
Today, as on that Shabbat nearly two thousand years ago, this scripture is
fulfilled: Jesus came to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour, and he is
still today binding up those who come to him brokenhearted and setting those
who come to him captive free.
Footnotes
1
I’ll give you the Luke, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+4&version=ESVUK,
which you might want to keep open for reference, and also the Isaiah, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=is+61&version=ESVUK,
which, come to think of it, you might also want to keep open for reference.
2
They had the Eighth Doctor quote that line in the special mini-episode that
functioned as a prologue to the 50th anniversary special a few years
ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U3jrS-uhuo.
The prologue was better than the special itself if you ask me. But I have high
hopes for the new series starting on New Year’s Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkEB0ysv7sM.
3
I bet you were wondering how my opening quotation was going to come into
things. I know everybody in the world loves the film of The Princess Bride,
but trust me, the book is even better; it’s not only got everything you love
about the film, but a bunch of other brilliant stuff on top of that: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/William-Goldman/The-Princess-Bride/1895133.
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