The Introduction
Jesus’ first recorded homily doesn’t go over well with the homeland crowd. At first they’re surprised by his poise. A fine reading from the carpenter’s son! Imagine that!
But then Jesus pokes them in the eye with Luke’s gospel theme: God champions outsiders. God stands with the people we don’t care about. It’s the foreign widow who gets help, someone else’s lepers who are healed.
The crowd’s admiration melts. Their fury propels Jesus out of the meeting place, out of town, out to the cliff’s edge! The ministry of Jesus might have concluded right there in Chapter 4. But he passes through their hands like sand.
Do we blame Nazareth’s citizens for behaving this way? Aren’t we reluctant to send medical supplies to the Third World when we can’t afford to see our own doctors? Don’t we balk at supporting tutors for city kids as we struggle to get our own children through school? The diocese closes our parish and opens a ministry to migrant families: Where’s the justice in that? It’s hard to point a finger at Nazareth.
Do you give more of your heart over to love or to fury?
Take one line from 1 Corinthians 13 that challenges you in a personal way. Write it out and tape it to your computer or bathroom mirror or dashboard. Mediate on it until it enters your heart and your life.
The Scripture (Luke 4: 28-30)
That set everyone in the meeting place seething with anger. They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way.
The Story – Home is wherever Jesus’ love resides
I have never been thrown out of any place. I’m a law-abiding citizen who appreciated order, rules and regulations. Imagine my surprise, when I was approached by the papal security detail at World Youth Day and summarily kicked out of my seat as I waited the pope’s arrival. My companion and I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were two young Catholics geeked to see the pope and celebrate our faith. It felt strange though to not be welcome in a place I felt so at home. I wanted to protest, “This is my Catholic
community, this is my pope!” While I felt this truth deeply, I also knew that the security people had other concerns unrelated to me, and I acquiesced to the walk of shame through the crowd to another more acceptable location. I felt disappointed and dismayed that my life-sized, within-reach pope would now be reduced to a two-storey jumbotron pope.
I often wonder how Jesus felt as he walked away from the people of his hometown, rejected and eject from the place he had known as home. It couldn’t have been easy for him. At the same time, Jesus’ understanding of home was much broader than a geographic location. Jesus located home in love, pure and simple. He not only lived out of this “home” wherever he was, but he opened the doors widely giving each of us a place to forever call home.
The Reflection
Proclaiming the Word of God can be very risky.
Alfred W. Hurst tells about a minister who sent a New Testament to be rebound. When it came back to him, he was surprised to find it labelled in gilt letter, T.N.T. There was no room to spell out “The New Testament,” so the bookbinder had inscribed merely the first letters of the three words. T.N.T. Quite frankly, that’s not a bad name for the New Testament. On the day of Pentecost it is reported that suddenly there came from heaven a sound of the rising of a mighty wind. Some scholars translate it “a mighty blast”.
The committed Christian, like Jesus, will be persecuted. What risks are we honestly willing to take for Jesus?
The Commissioning
You are called from your very different situations, as servants of the one loving God.
We are called to serve with fellow Christians within this lively faith community.
You are called to serve in the Way of Christ beyond the boundaries of this place. Amen:
We are called to serve the downtrodden and confused, the lonely, sad, and misunderstood, the ones Christ served. Amen.
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