Readings of the day: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 15-17; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30
One of my brother Basilian priests has said that, when we hear readings as we do today in which we hear a short verse or two, and then the reading skips over a section before continuing on, it is sometimes a good idea to pay attention to the part that is skipped over.
So what gets skipped over in our readings today? From the Book of Jeremiah we hear God’s call of Jeremiah to serve as God’s prophet. Luke’s Gospel also features a prophetic call story, that of Jesus, beginning his public ministry in the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth.
The Book of Jeremiah begins with God’s call to the prophet, lines from our Scriptures than which few are more beautiful: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” For me, God’s opening revelation to Jeremiah, the beginning of God’s call to Jeremiah to be his prophet, is always a beautiful reminder that, whatever I had planned for my life; however we have discerned how God is calling us to live and serve God in our lives, God had a plan, for me and for each one of us, before we were even conceived!
But what if we do not want to do or be exactly who God is calling us to be? What if the vocation to which God is calling us is, say, one that will put our life in danger? Such is the case with Jeremiah. As soon as Jeremiah hears the call of God to be a prophet to God’s people, he senses the real danger to his life, and immediately tries to refuse God’s call.
And this is the part of God’s call to Jeremiah that our reading skips over today. Jeremiah protests: “I do not know how to speak. I am too young.” God, do you not know that every prophet before me has been a laughingstock in Israel; that some have even been killed? Yet Jeremiah’s protests are to no avail. God has his heart set on Jeremiah as God’s prophet, and even promises to protect Jeremiah against the worst the people would do to him. “They will fight against you,” God reassures Jeremiah, “but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you… to deliver you.”
I will admit that the part our Gospel reading from Luke skips over today is not really skipped over. We heard last Sunday what today’s Gospel reading does not repeat: The mission statement of Jesus’ public ministry, in the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth. Jesus is given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Our Gospel reading picks up again today where Jesus rolls up the scroll, sits down, and says to everybody gathered in the synagogue, with all eyes in the assembly “fixed on him”: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” I find it consoling to be reminded that Jesus’ public ministry started well that day in his hometown. In that synagogue of Nazareth, Luke says, “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Even the assembly’s identification of Jesus as “Joseph’s son” is spun positively in Luke’s Gospel, whereas in the other Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and John), when the people who hear Jesus ask, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”, they mean it in an insulting way. And, I do not know how all of us feel but, when Jesus’ audience belittles him by asking, “Is this not Joseph’s son”; the son of the carpenter, I begin to feel just a little indignant, wanting to defend not only Jesus but Joseph, the humble, righteous man whom God chose to mentor Jesus like a father in this world.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ public ministry begins well, even in the eyes of the people of his hometown. This is in marked contrast to Jeremiah, or in fact most if not all the prophets: Their ministry is poorly-received by the people from the start. It is no wonder that Jeremiah, from the beginning of the biblical book in his name, wanted to get out of being a prophet to Judah as God had called him from before he was even conceived in the womb.
But the good will of the people toward Jesus would not last. We know this from what we hear in Luke’s Gospel today. And we know this from the fact that, even though Jesus escapes the murderous rage of the mob who wants to “hurl [Jesus] off the cliff” at the end of today’s Gospel reading, his destiny—the focal point of our Gospels—is to be tortured and crucified; to die for us in this exceedingly cruel way.
It is unclear from Luke’s account what the people in the assembly that day in Nazareth wanted to hear from Jesus. But maybe they wanted to hear a message that would support elements of tribalism and sectarianism in their social and religious attitudes. Maybe they were unaware, until those tribalistic and sectarian attitudes were kindled into open fury at Jesus’ message in their synagogue, of the extent to which those attitudes had affected them and become engrained in them.
We, sisters and brothers, are not exempt, either, from the kind of insular tribalism and sectarianism—a “silo mentality”—that nearly led to Jesus being killed on the very first day of his public ministry, in his own hometown. It was the movement and the mentality among Jesus’ own people that cried out, “We are God’s chosen people,” over and against the people of other nations and faiths: The Phoenician people, represented in Jesus’ commentary in today’s Gospel by the widow of Zarephath, to whom Elijah was sent in a time of famine in 1 Kings; the Syrians, represented by the Syrian king’s general, Naaman, who is afflicted with leprosy but healed by Elijah’s prophetic successor, Elisha. “We are God’s chosen people,” the people in the synagogue of Nazareth protested. “God’s promise of salvation; God’s covenant; God’s presence would never be with other people as it is for us”! Why should we be concerned for the other; for people not of our nation? It was Israel first, after all. And so their rage was kindled against Jesus.
But how often do we hear or observe the same silo mentality at work today? How often do we hear cries of “our country first”; our tribe first; our religious creed first; our social “in” group first; and ultimately me first? Why should I be concerned about the other person, especially the poor or otherwise excluded person? Why should I be concerned (some say today) about protecting public health, out of love of neighbour, in the face of the public health crisis our world continues to face, and that disproportionately affects the already-disadvantaged? Jesus’ counter-message to this entitled and selfish insularity is as challenging and as controversial today as when he preached it in his hometown synagogue of Nazareth. It is challenging and controversial to many of our sister and brother Christians of our time.
Jesus’ message is challenging and controversial still, first because it did not begin with Jesus and, second, because his message is not some superficial all-inclusiveness, but an inclusiveness that is preferential toward the people whom this world’s elites exclude in the name of nation first; the well-to-do of society first; the advantaged first; me first. Jesus’ vision of the reign of God on earth—think of this when we pray, as part of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come”—is one that is preferentially inclusive of the poor, the disadvantaged, the outsider, the poor first. Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God is one preferentially inclusive of those whom the entitled and advantaged exclude: Not one Israelite, but the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian!
This vision of God’s reign on earth was the vision of God’s prophets: Isaiah, whose scroll Jesus reads and interprets in the synagogue of Nazareth; Jeremiah, whom we hear first from the word of God this morning. Isaiah’s message was preferentially inclusive: All the nations would know and be invited to witness the glory of God that had saved Israel time and again. Jeremiah’s message was preferentially inclusive: Israel’s slavishness to the temple of Jerusalem would mean nothing if its people did not open their hearts to practice justice preferentially toward the least well-off: The poor, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan.
So, indeed, may we pay attention to the parts our readings at Mass skip over. But, also, may we pay attention to those parts God is urging us not to skip over: The parts of the word of God that trouble us; that are controversial to us; that challenge us or our societies in fairly well-off countries like our own to open our hearts to the least-advantaged among us first.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” This is God’s vision of justice; God’s vision of the reign of God on earth for which we pray. It is a vision that calls us beyond ourselves; beyond our social circles; often beyond our comfort, to be “good news to the poor.” It is a vision we are invited not to skip over; a vision to ensure that God’s word of our Scriptures continues to be “fulfilled in [our] hearing.”
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