“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
When Jesus spoke those words in the synagogue of his home town, there was
amazement at his claim. His listeners
immediately knew that Jesus was quoting from the prophet Isaiah about what the
Messiah would accomplish when he appeared. There, in his home town, Jesus was
essentially claiming to be the long-awaited-for Messiah. All the Nazarene’s hopes for a Messiah, their
centuries worth of waiting, were coming to fulfillment, and they were amazed.
Finally, hope had come.
So, how did they go, so quickly, from amazement to fury? How
did they go from seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of their hope of salvation to
attempting to murder him, right then and there, leading him to the top of a
hill to throw him headfirst to his death?
Well, after their initial excitement and amazement, they
began to “put two and two together”, they began to consider how his message
applied to them.
Last week, we heard part one of his message. Jesus stood in
the synagogue and said, “the spirt of the Lord is upon me, he has anointed me
to bring glad tiding to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recover of
sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free.” And so the people of Nazareth
began to think, if he has come to preach to the poor, does that mean we are
poor? If he came to give sight to the blind, did he just call US blind? Is he
saying that we are poor, captive, blind, and enslaved?
And the tension began to build as they started to question
his credentials. How can he be the Messiah, he’s Joseph’s son, he’s the son of
carpenter!
If you are really the Messiah “do here what you did in Capernaum,
turn our water into wine, perform miracles for us!” Their initial amazement had
changed into a scrutiny of Jesus. They begin to sound a lot like Satan out in
the desert, “If you are really the Messiah, turn these stones into bread”.
If the Messiah really had come, what would have been the
proper response? They should have been jumping up and down in excitement over his
arrival. Saying to Him, “Messiah, Lord,
show us the way to salvation!” They would sing as we did in the Psalm today: “In
your justice rescue me, and deliver me; incline your ear to me, and save me”
And yet what did they do. They begin to discredit him, demand of him that he
conforms to their will. Did they want a Messiah or did they want a magic show?
Did they want salvation or entertainment? And when he claims that the widow of
Zaraphath and Naaman the Syrian, a non-Jew, had more faith than they were
showing right now, the tension, the fury really starts to build.
He had come to save them, and free them, and cure them. But the first step in following him, was
recognizing their need for him, and they wanted none of that. They didn’t not want to change. And so their
hard-heartedness bubbled into a steaming rage, and they sought to murder
him.
This drama played out again over and over in the Gospels:
Jesus offers a word of challenge and people become furious over his teaching
and seek to kill him. After the
Pharisees refuse to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, they plotted to kill
Him. The people of Jerusalem who had
cried out their “Hosannas” as Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, cried out
in the courtyard of Pontius Pilate’s palace “crucify Him, and give us Barabbas”
we prefer a murderer and a traitor to this man.
Again, is this just a story of what happened in a remote middle-eastern
country two thousand years ago? Doesn’t this very drama play out in our own
lives all the time?
So often we want the Jesus on our terms instead of his own.
We want a Jesus that heals us without the Jesus who challenges us. We want
Jesus to perform miracles instead of liberating us from our sins. We want paradise without the cross, heaven
without conversion.
The people of Nazareth were willing to accept Jesus up to a
point, but when it meant repenting and changing, they simply said, “NO”. We’ll accept what you say Jesus to a point,
but beyond that “No”. And from that “no” to the will of God, the “no” of “putting
aside childish things” as St. Paul said in the first reading, comes anger and
violence.
I can’t count how many times I’ve witnessed anger over the
Church’s moral teachings—even from members of my own family. Who is the Church to tell us how to live? Who
is the Church to tell us we can’t use contraception, we can’t live together
before marriage, we have to go to Mass on Holy Days of Obligation, who is the
Church to tell me I have to confess my mortal sins to a priest if I want to
receive Holy Communion? Never is the role reversed: never is asked, who am I to
question God, who am I to ignore the teaching of the Church who Christ has
authorized to teach in his name? So often it is that hard-heartedness, that
inflexibility, that resistance to give up our sins, that is the source of anger
towards God and the Church.
And given fallen human nature that’s partially
understandable: it is not easy to admit, “boy, I have been blind and enslaved
to my own passions. I’ve wanted my way instead of God’s way.” Admitting we are wrong takes a deal of
humility, and our proud egos resist humility. I think this is why Jesus
explains that the very first step in following him, is one of humility. The
very first beatitude, the very first condition for entrance into the kingdom of
heaven is to become poor in spirit, recognizing our need for God and our need
to repent of our sins, to accept not just some of Jesus’ teachings but all of
them.
There is a tendency to say, I couldn’t possibly give Christ
everything, that’s for people like Saint Francis, Mother Theresa, and Saint
Paul, that’s for Christians of the middle ages, or the early Church. I came across a beautiful quote this week,
from a Russian Saint, St. Nilus, who speaks of the tendency to exempt ourselves
from fully living of the Christian faith, and the importance of following the
example of the saints. He said, “It is my conviction that if it is by God’s
will that we are gathered together, then we should be faithful to the
traditions of the saints and the holy fathers and to our Lord’s commandments,
instead of seeking to exempt ourselves by saying that nowadays it is impossible
to live according to the Scriptures and the precepts of the fathers. We are weak indeed, but we must nevertheless follow,
according to the measure of our strength, the example of the blessed and
venerable fathers.”
In just a week and a half we will begin once again the great
season of Lent. Lent is meant to be a
season of change and growth and repentance.
If at all possible, come to daily Mass throughout Lent, or at least
reflect on the daily scripture readings which are printed in our bulletin. Hear
and read what the Lord has to teach us in that Holy Season. Allow the
Scriptures of Lent to be fulfilled in you. What amazing things the Lord could
do in our parish, if we all sat down for 10 minutes daily with the scripture
readings and asked the Lord, “what are you saying to me through these
scriptures, how are you challenging me, what spiritual growth do you want for
me?” There was a very venerable Italian exorcist, who would say, “you can do
nothing more useful for yourself than to dedicate yourself to the sacred
scriptures”. Before picking up the
television remote this Lent, pick up the Scriptures, and allow the Lord to
speak to you.
As the Lord comes to us in Word and Sacrament at this Holy
Mass, may we open our hearts entirely to him, more than we ever have before, to
allow him to shape us, reform us, change us, and strengthen us for the glory of
God and salvation of souls.
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