Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Saturday, February 2, 2013 Read – Luke 4:31-44 When we last heard from Luke, Jesus had just escaped from his hometown of Nazareth where he was rejected by the religious people in the synagogue. In clear terms Luke has announced to his readers that Jesus is the Messiah Isaiah and the rest of the OT people had hoped for – “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing!” (Luke 4:21). In a seamless construction, Luke now picks up his major source, Mark, and continues. As we noticed earlier, Luke had reached forward into Mark (Mark 6:1-6) to use the story of Jesus’ visit to and rejection by the people of his hometown. Now Luke tells us that Jesus journeyed to Capernaum. Capernaum had been the first village that Mark tells us Jesus visited to begin his ministry after he had called four disciples (Mark 1:21ff). Mark’s story is of a wonderful and amazing day in Capernaum. Actually, as we have noticed, Luke does not hide the fact that he is using and following Mark since the people of Nazareth ask Jesus to do the amazing things in Nazareth that he had done in Capernaum (Luke 4:23). The only problem is that in Luke Jesus has not yet been to Capernaum. That is of little concern to Luke. In our reading today, Luke basically follows Mark’s story of that first day in the ministry of Jesus at Capernaum – shortening Mark’s version a bit and modifying the “hunt for Jesus” the next morning by saying that it was the crowd who came looking for him rather that his disciples because in Luke there are no disciples yet. That leads us to tomorrow’s reading.