Sunday Gospel Comment
Alberic Jacovone OSB
YEAR C FOURTH SUNDAY - 28.1.07 Jer 1,4-5.17-19; 1 Cor 12,21-13,13; Lk 4,21-30 Our share in being ‘hustled-out’ The
1st of many rejections.
In today’s Gospel, Luke makes clear to his readers that the mission of Jesus
on earth was never meant to be the easy ride of a god who smashes all his
enemies into submission & returns to heaven covered with glory. Again &
again Luke stresses that God has always had a plan to save us; this he had
already mapped out in the writings of the prophets. It’s in the Bible that the
Messiah, will come & amazingly he will be rejected, contradicted,
disapproved, derided, disdained even expelled by us all: 1st, by his home town,
then by his family, then by the religious authorities (Pharisees, Priests &
Scribes), then by the crowds & finally by his disciples & by us all on
the cross. And if we ask why?, Luke answers by claiming a ‘divine
indifference’. Thus God chose, thus it is written. It had to happen this way.
Luke says that God has his unique reason & unique plan, so as to stay
amazingly merciful to us all. More to the point, he says: I am not inventing
this: look for yourselves into the scriptures & read for yourselves how the
Prophets foretold in every detail God’s plan, outlining his promises for our
salvation. Jesus has indeed come & fulfilling God’s promises, He has saved
us. He’s come to teach us the way to God, to die & rise & thus offer
us a place in God’s kingdom: in the Church on earth & in the communion
with God in heaven. In the life & death of Jesus, God has fulfilled his
promise to save us. Now it’s up to us to believe, come to know & accept
God’s unbelievable offer of love. We are left free to take it or leave it
(=thus ‘divine indifference’). Luke invites us to look in the Scriptures
& accept God’s offer of love. Today, enjoy how Jesus is rejected by his hometown & leaves
Nazareth, never to return. The
mystery of rejection in our life. Luke doesn’t advocate ‘divine indifference’ as a sort of “che
sara’, sara’(= whatever will be will be)”, in times of tragedy or
rejection . With stoic asceticism Jesus faces the angry rejection of his people,
& as they hustle him down the cliff he slips through the angry crowd &
walks away. So what’s the purpose of the story? Luke wishes to offer us a
deeper wisdom, about the mystery of rejection in Jesus’ life & in ours.
This wisdom has its own unique logic & approach: we call wisdom of the cross
& in it Jesus himself is the model we imitate. With Luke, we must keep
asking questions: Today’s story opens Jesus’ mission to the world yet it
tells us that Jesus is expelled from his own town. Why start his career with a
failure? He has established already the reputation of a powerful preacher,
healer & teacher in all the synagogues of Galilee (4,14). What’s Luke
trying to tell us? Look at the facts: Jesus comes to Nazareth, goes to the
Synagogue on a Sabbath (as he always did)... & there all eyes are fixed on
him, but in the end, he fails to convince. In fact he is expelled & hurled
down the hill by the angry crowd. but Jesus manages to slip through the
aggressive crowd, & walks away (4,38). The people of Nazareth expected Jesus
to establish his healing business among his own people in Nazareth, so they
could make a profit & acquire power & prestige. Luke however wants to
give a solid basis to our Christian conviction ( the ‘asphalt’ of Lc. 1,1+).
Jesus’ mission is not about profit or prestige; it’s accepting God’s great
pardon & abandoning our closed ‘village mentality’. Today
reflect: Jesus walked through the angry crows & walked away: did He feel?
defeated, daunted, hunted, rejected?. What about you, have you ever been
rejected for saying what others didn’t like to hear? Did it make or break you?
How true is it in your family: no prophet is accepted among his own? ______________________________________ |
