If someone stood up in church and announced that they were the fulfillment of Scripture, you'd probably think that person might be a little off balance. People would probably turn and look to see if there was anything about his or her appearance or behavior that was out of the ordinary. The person would likely get a lot of stares, from that moment forward.

That's about what happens in today's Gospel. Jesus reads from Isaiah: "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."

Then Jesus announces: "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." We're told that "the eyes of all in the synagogue looked at him intently."

Did people believe him? Did they murmur under their breath, "Who is this lunatic?" Did they even think it was possible that God would send the Messiah to them? After all, this is in Nazareth --- the town where Jesus grew up and, quite frankly, pretty close to the middle of nowhere. They are familiar with Jesus; could their neighbor be the savior of Israel? Did they think "it couldn't happen here"?

We are challenged again and again in the Gospels to never get too comfortable in our assumptions about how and when God will work in our lives. It can happen in the ordinary mundane routines of life. It can happen with dramatic interventions into what we perceive to be reality --- a sickness is healed, a storm is stilled.

Today, a group in an ordinary synagogue service are told by a 30-year-old woodworker that the poor will find relief, the blind will see, and the oppressed will be released. And that he --- the woodworker, the carpenter's son --- is the conduit for this transformation.

Perhaps a group of suburban worshippers aren't too concerned about the poor, the blind and the oppressed. Unless, of course, they look more deeply into their own lives and see their own crippling feelings of inadequacy, blind ambition and enslavement to people, to money, to substances.

Jesus is our savior, too --- those of us who long to feel strong, to see clearly and to live authentically. The good news is that God wants us all to experience the liberating, healing love of Christ, and to not just understand this promise but to live it.

We too need to remain open to God working through the ordinary people and situations in our own lives, communities, neighborhoods, and homes. We may need to "look intently" to make sure what we are seeing or hearing or experiencing is real. But we mustn't turn away. We need to avoid thinking that "it couldn't happen here."

It can happen here. It is happening here. The only question is whether we are experiencing it or not.

Bill Peatman writes from Napa.