The selection that goes from verse 21-30 of Luke 4 looks awkward. After reading verse 21, one may as well ask: which passage is fulfilled? So one will have to check the immediate context of the text. In fact the whole narrative begins in verse 16. Jesus goes to his hometown, Nazareth, attends the Sabbath service and while there reads from the scroll of Isaiah 61:1-2. After reading the passage, he sits down and speaks as was customary. He begins his speech with the words: Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled even as you listen.
Isaiah 61:1-2 then is the passage that Jesus referred to as being fulfilled at that moment while he spoke. The passage is an oracle about the Messianic times when peace will finally be restored to Israel through an Anointed one.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind
to let the oppressed go free
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
(Isaiah 61:1-2)
When Jesus says the passage is being fulfilled, he is actually saying, "this Anointed One is me". Thus, Luke begins his account of the rejection of Jesus in Nazareth.
In Mark 6:1-6, Jesus is rejected by his townmates and they showed this by their lack of faith. The motive is expressed by Jesus thus: "No prophet is honored in his own native place, by his kin and his family." Mark gives us this account in order to explain why Jesus didn't perform many healings in his own hometown. "So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there apart from curing a few of the sick and laying his hands on them" (Mark 6:5)
Luke rewrites the Nazareth incident so as to give the theological basis for the healing ministry and to explain why the direction of the ministry is outside and beyond the confines of his hometown and ultimately outside of Israel. By doing so, however, he transfers the account to the beginning of Jesus' ministry, just after he defeats the Tempter in this latter's homecourt (Luke 4:1-13). Below is a table that shows how Luke made the transposition:
Notice that in Mark, the account of Jesus' rejection at Nazareth happens after several healings and miracles have been done. One of the these is the healing of a demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum. In Luke, however, the healing made at Capernaum is anticipated in the narrative of the rejection. "Do here in your native town what we heard you did at Capernaum" (v.23) To be sure Jesus, in verse 23 is pre-empting the desire of his townsmates for healings. Their remark "Isn't this son of Joseph" actually means, "Surely, he would perform those miracles foretold in Isaiah in our midst." But Jesus has other things in mind. Recalling the events surrounding Elijah and Elishah, two of Israel's greatest wonder-working prophets, he reminded them that their ministry was directed beyond and outside the circle of Israelites: (cf. 1 Kgs 17:1-7;17:9). In other words, Jesus was saying that as to miracles, he has none for his townsmates. Thus, the violent reaction at the conclusion of this synagogal meeting. It was Jesus the prophet who rejected his own people, not the other way around. (This anticipates Paul's "rejection" of the Jews in a synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia, cf. Acts. 13:46-47). In this way, Luke explains why no miracles were made in Nazareth: Jesus, like Elisha and Elijah, had a mission that goes beyond the confines of his own town. In other words, what in Mark was an account of Jesus' rejection by his own townsmates because of lack of faith becomes in Luke a justification for the healings and miracles of Jesus outside of his own hometown. The whole story then also becomes a preview of the turning of the Christian missions away from the Jews towards the Gentiles.
