Sunday Gospel Comment
Alberic Jacovone OSB
YEAR C THIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - 25.1.04 Neh 8,2-10; 1 Cor 12,12-30; Lk 1,1-4.4,14-21 Who is Jesus? How does he come across? Promised,
fulfilled & rejected. This year, we prayerfully ponder on Luke’s Gospel, and while all New
Testament is no narrative for beginners, Luke is quite sophisticated. In Luke,
the Narrator is a master story-teller, in total control of his material. He has
invested interests, anticipates objections and is out to get us, in order to
convince us about ‘the Good News of God’s Visitation’. He makes sure that we
are in the story all the time. Luke is amazingly modern: he lived at Ephesus
(today’s Turkey) in an age when society seemed dysfunctional, torn by upheavals
& divisions, when people were disenchanted in their expectations. Luke
wished to reassure them & us, that God has fulfilled, and indeed still now
fulfils, his promise to come & be among us. However, God acted then, and
acts now, in his own unpredictable and marvellous way, not as we would
anticipate & expect. In today’s story, Luke is out-standing: to start
with, he sets the scene: God’s Visitation did unfold, as promised by
the Prophets; but sadly the Jews in Nazareth rejected it. You too, reader of
today, watch out & recognize the signs of God’s Visitation, lest like
them, you fail to understand and reject your Lord. Then, he sets his inter-pretative
grid: 1st, God’s Visitation invariably fails to be recognized as such.
2nd, We the readers are asked to look again at the interplay between God’s
Promise in Old Testament and its Fulfilment now. 3rd, The Characters in the
story come to believe only if they interpret rightly the signs. 4th, People are
left free -in a take it or leave it situation- to respond to faith or reject it.
5th, Know how to handle TIME: move back to when the promise was made, &
forward to when it is fulfilled in the story, which now makes sense because it
fulfils the promise. Meet
Jesus in today’s story.
Luke 4,14-30 will occupy our homily today & next Sunday. It’s a story
riddled with hidden & ‘strange’ vibes: why would Luke start Jesus’
career with a story of failure & disappointment? why in his hometown - at
the Synagogue - on a Sabbath? how much is there that we readers are not yet
told? Surely there could have been a more positive and likely approach to open
Jesus’ career. Luke wants us to
be worked up along these reactions, because
he wants us to discover something central to his approach, and it is this:
-unlikely, unconventional and unusual as it may seem, Jesus-Messiah has come to
overthrow the established, prescribed, conventional expectations of his time and
of all times. Now let’s enter the scene & leave for next Sunday the
reasons that prompted his own people from accepting Jesus’ message of
liberation. Luke brings us in the middle of a fierce confrontation between the
people of Nazareth & Jesus. He also introduces the topic of contention: the
promise made by God in Isa. 61,1-2 is NOW fulfilled. Jesus quotes & then
owns his role of Messiah in an intensely personal way: ‘The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me - He has appointed & sent me to set free - forgive - proclaim’.
Then he tells us how the people reacted: they approved of him, wondered at his
gracious words... & rejected him. Notice that while Luke has skillfully set
the characters in a position of confrontation, at the same time he asks us
readers, to follow step by step the points of contention and look for hidden
clues. Jesus has chosen the text - read it - given the scroll back - sat down
and all eyes in the Synagogue are fixed on him. Luke says to us: what does it
mean to you that Jesus is Messiah & Lord? For the people in Nazareth, God
was only for the privileged Jews: how is He for you now in multicultural
Australia? Is He for the poor & dispossessed, the distressed & despised
& lost? & How? ______________________________________ |
