Luke 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day… The moment was overcharged with a certain sad intensity. Since last He stood upon that spot, a change had passed upon Him; a light, long struggling with the clouds, and often drowned in a golden haze of mystery, had cleared itself within Him; He was no longer at His own disposal, nor free to rest upon the trodden paths; but the sacred dove was ever on the wing before Him; and now alighted on the synagogue of Nazareth, and there, where He naturally fell into the attitude of docility, left Him to speak the word of supernatural power. Never is it so hard to follow and trust a higher inspiration, as amid the crowd of customary things. If ever Jesus could yield to misgivings of what was committed to Him it would be in that place. There, in the presence of those at whose feet He used to sit — there, where He first heard and pondered Israel's hope, and watched a holy light on other faces, not knowing that it was reflected from His own — how could He stand up and draw the great words of Isaiah upon Himself, and say aloud, "This is the hour. Lo! it is I." But He had emerged from the desert that lay between the old life and the new. The very Spirit of God had driven Him thither to hear what could be said against itself. And now, He was no longer His own. No flitting of the Spirit, off and on. It rested with Him now. And so He could bear those native scenes again, for they lay in another light; the hills of Nazareth were transfigured before Him; from all things round the chill and weary aspect had fled, that makes them press with the weight of usage; and He stood amid the well-known groups, as some immortal friend might return and look in among us here, with unabated love, but with saintly insight into meanings hid from us. Lifted then into the full power of the Spirit, whither, as least congenial, does He take His heavenly point of view? To the village synagogue, on the stated day of rest; nothing newer, nothing higher; but just the place and time which had been sacred to the fathers. The first thing which He did, under freshest inspiration, was to resume the dear old ways, to fall in with the well-known season, to unroll the same venerable page; only to find a new meaning in words that had long carried their rhythm to His heart. We are sustained then by the sympathy of the highest inspiration, when we make it our "custom," too, to illuminate in our calendar some holy day, and to raise near every cluster of our dwellings a house where "prayer is wont to be made." Against the Christian habit of seasonal and local worship the truth is often urged that God is a Spirit, eternal and omniscient, abiding neither in "this mountain" nor in that "Jerusalem," and bearing equal relation into every mind and moment. In the occasionalism of piety I see, however, not its shame but its distinctive glory. For of all God's agencies and manifestations, it is the lowest that are least mutable, and most remain the same from first to last; whilst the highest have ever a tidal ebb and flow — moving in waves of time, and surprising hidden inlets of space with their flood. Be assured then that in your ancient usages of seasonal and local worship, in seeking here to meet at intervals the high tides of God's Spirit, you are in harmony with His sublimest providence — with a law of variation transcending any physical uniformity over which "it sweeps. Reverence the holy custom, shelter from heedless slight the living impulse that week by week calls you hither to remember, to aspire, to pray. Bring only the pure, lowly, childlike hearts, tender to everything except the sins you must confess — full of hope for the world and trust in God; spread out an eager and a gentle spirit for the dropping of fruitful seeds from Holy Writ and saintly hymn; freshen the fading vow of self-sacrificing love; and your worship here will not only resemble His who, in fulness of the Spirit, "went as His custom was," &c., but prepare for a higher communion where "your life is hid with Him in God." (J. Martineau, LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. |
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