Love
always provokes, as for example this affirmation: Today this Scripture passage has been fulfilled in your hearing.
These are the first words we hear today in the gospel from the mouth of the
Lord Jesus. It is the Sabbath, and we are with Jesus in the synagogue in
Nazareth, where he had grown up, as St
Luke explains, and according to his
custom ... he entered the synagogue
and stood up to read. Jesus is here
preaching to his fellow citizens and his own relatives. But what is the prophecy
referred to by Jesus? It is the capital
text of Isaiah that Jesus, as liturgical reader, specifically chose and
proclaimed aloud, and which we heard last Sunday: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore he has anointed me
and sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim release to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. “He has anointed me”: this
statement, on Jesus’ lips, is tantamount to saying, ‘I am the Messiah’. By
identifying himself with this text, we have a case of the Word Incarnate
preaching and embodying the prophetic word: Jesus reveals that he himself, and
the figure of whom Isaiah speaks, are one and the same. This is one of the most
important messianic texts because it proclaims the absolute unity that exists
between the invisible God of Israel and his visible Messiah of flesh and
blood.
Today’s
gospel, however, focuses not on the Lord's messianic activities (teaching, setting free, healing, and so forth) but
rather on the encounter itself,
indeed the confrontation, between
Jesus and the people of Nazareth at this precise moment in time. It all begins
splendidly. Indeed, who would venture to oppose the actions full of goodness,
power and wisdom that Jesus wants to implement for the benefit of all who are
sick, sad, poor and oppressed? On this earth, the Messiah truly embodies, in a
most palpable way, the inexhaustible goodness and mercy of God. Consequently, the first reaction of these very
religious and observant people who came to pray that Sabbath in the synagogue
is extremely positive: They all spoke
highly of him and were amazed at the words of grace that came out of his mouth,
Luke records.
But amazed in what sense? It seems to me
that Jesus suspects that this initial and very welcoming reaction hides a
hidden level of jealousy and resentment.
Even while being overcome with wonderment, the congregation immediately
adds the suspicious question: Isn’t this
Joseph’s son? Perhaps what they really mean to say is, if I may paraphrase
the interior thoughts driving them: ‘How is it possible that the Messiah of
Israel should come from among us? We,
too, want God to be with us and help us in all our needs and desires by
fulfilling them, by giving us what we ask for; but we certainly do not want God
to come so close to us as this! What would be the sense of God making himself
one of us and living among us, of his becoming a member of a specific human
family whose street address everyone knows? The closeness and intimacy that God
apparently wants to have with us is a scandalous thing! Why?
Because, when God is so close to us that he even becomes one of us, we cannot manipulate him like ordinary abstract
ideas. Then he challenges us with the resistant concreteness and demanding
presence of a real person. We simply will not have it!’
We
believers are used to saying that God is all about love and mercy, and this is
undoubtedly true. But how do we
understand this ‘love’ and this ‘mercy’?
To the astonished praise lavished on him by the people surrounding him,
Jesus, who can read hearts, responds with a statement full of realism and
sadness: Amen, I say to you, no prophet
is accepted in his own native place. And he reminds them of the story of
Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, and then of the other story of Elisha and
Naaman the Syrian. The unbearable lesson of both these stories for this pious
Jewish congregation is that foreign, unbelieving, and idolatrous goyím are, ironically, more ready to
believe a Jewish prophet than the Jews themselves are! And so, all those who a moment ago greeted
Jesus with joyful witness and marveled at his words of grace now suddenly fill the synagogue with their
indignation immediately upon hearing
these things. Alas, how easily we all turn inconstant, wrathful, and unjust
when our faith and motivations are not deep when we only want to defend our
precious egos. In homilies, we eagerly
listen to someone who speaks eloquently and sweetly of God, who amuses us with witty
jokes and anecdotes, or edifies us with pious words, but only so long as he
does not touch our consciences or criticize our attitudes!
Today’s
gospel, so full of conflict, and the second reading, where we hear St Paul sing
to us his magnificent Hymn to Agápe
(‘divine love’), seem to present us with the two polar opposites of the
Christian life: on the one hand, the harshness
of correction, and, on the other, the sweetness
of love. But is this a true
contradiction? Let us ask ourselves how
the same Jesus who so strongly provokes his Nazarene acquaintances in the
gospel can at the same time be the
Messiah who embodies the love of God? In what sense can we say that, on this
Sabbath in the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus is enacting God's mercy on earth,
even though in the end he is violently
rejected by his fellow Nazarenes after provoking them by questioning their
faith in the Messiah?
(The text
is indeed violent, saying that when the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all
filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to
the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down
headlong… Who
can fathom the fickleness, treachery, and downright meanness of which we human
beings are capable when our ego feels threatened and thus triggers our reptile
brain to take over and rule our whole person?)
The fact
is that, when we feel prophetically rebuked by God’s love, we can unwittingly
move from a state of joyful wonderment to the most violent reaction of disdain
and contempt. Is any one of us exempt from such an unchaining of destructive
emotions, precisely when the truth about
ourselves is unmasked? I do not think so. But let our consolation be the
certain knowledge that Jesus the Messiah knew full well, in advance, the
reactions of both blissful wonderment and contemptuous rejection he would
provoke that day in Nazareth, yet nevertheless, he walked deliberately into that
situation, surely with the intention of beginning a process of self-recognition
and healing among his townsfolk.
In his Hymn to Love, St Paul declares: Agápe does not seek its own interest, does
not become angry, ... it does not rejoice in injustice but rejoices in the
truth. Those who are listening to
Jesus in the synagogue on this Sabbath sin against love because they do not rejoice in the truth—the Truth that is
present before them in the person of Jesus. Instead, they prefer to stick to
their own ethnic, social, and personal prejudices, to the point of wanting to
throw Jesus off the edge of the cliff to eliminate a presence that bothers
them. Perhaps one or other of us here
will think that Jesus did not act very wisely, that perhaps he should not have
provoked his listeners from the outset, that he should have first started by
telling them about the more acceptable things, and then moved on to the more difficult
issues. As a matter of fact, perhaps
someone will argue that Christ himself is responsible for his fellow
townsmen’s anger! But, on the other hand, perhaps the leap to the truth must be made all at once, across an interior
abyss of pride and prejudice, because Truth is too absolute and one cannot
arrive at the truth by taking baby steps.
In this synagogue today Christ acts as God's prophet, the greatest of
all, because he does not bring a message
from God but rather embodies the Absolute and presents
himself as what he is: the all-inclusive Logos of the Father. There is no
distance, physical or metaphysical, between Jesus and God. His work provokes everyone
to embrace the truth, Truth that is a fire that burns, work that is, therefore, a
work of a love that purifies and transforms.
Although Jesus’ presence and words, as he comes into our lives, may initially provoke outrage, rejection, and violence, this experience is perhaps necessary for our redemption, in the manner of an exorcism. Then we may perhaps come to see ourselves as we really are for the first time, and thus discover the almighty Charity of God, who always loves by purifying and re-creating. The loving God loves us by pro-voking us, which literally means by calling us out of ourselves so that we can begin to live a new life with Christ in the Heart of God.
Photograph by Father Emmanuel. This morning's homily by Father Simeon.
