Today we begin the reading from Luke’s Gospel, which will bring us to the end of the Church year. We have already gone through Matthew’s and Mark’s, and John’s Gospel has been spread through various parts of the year, especially during the Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter seasons.
Luke’s Gospel is a companion volume to the Acts of the Apostles, and the language and structure of these two books indicate that both were written by the same person. They are addressed to the same individual, Theophilus, and Acts refers to Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel and Acts could be considered as volume 1 and 2 of the same book.
Luke presents the works and teachings of Jesus that are especially important for understanding the way of salvation. Its scope is complete from the birth of Christ to his ascension, and it appeals to both Jews and Gentiles.
As our reading opens (Luke 4:16-30), we find Jesus in Nazareth, the small town in Galilee where he grew up. From the verses immediately preceding, it does not seem that Jesus actually began his ministry in Nazareth. The event described here may not have taken place until a year later. Luke has arranged the structure of his Gospel so that Jesus will begin his public life in Nazareth, and will gradually proceed southwards towards his goal, Jerusalem, without turning back. In the other Synoptics, he moves around Galilee in all directions, and John suggests that he made a number of visits to Jerusalem during his public life.
As the reading opens, we find Jesus in the town synagogue. It is a Sabbath day. He gets up to read the Scripture and comments on it. The passage he reads is full of significance. It comes from the prophet Isaiah and Jesus’ reading of it amounts to a manifesto or what we might call today a ‘mission statement’. ‘Books’ in those days were in the form of scrolls, and the Scriptures were kept in a special place in the synagogue and given to the reader by an attendant. Jesus may have chosen the passage himself or it may have been assigned for that day.
As he reads, it becomes clear that the whole statement is about Jesus himself: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” This has already been confirmed during his baptism in the river Jordan when “the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove” and a voice was heard to say: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Jesus continues: “…because he has anointed me…” In saying this, he is making an unequivocal claim to be the Messiah or the Christ, the long-awaited liberating King of Israel. The word ‘Messiah’, translated into Greek as Christos, means someone who is anointed with oil (we call the oil in baptism and confirmation ‘chrism’). And a person was made king by having oil poured over his head (remember how David was anointed king). Jesus, of course, was not literally anointed, but had been figuratively ‘anointed’ by the coming of the Spirit on him during his baptism. ‘Anointing’ is our equivalent of ‘coronation’, symbolized by the putting of a crown on the new king.
Jesus reads the mission of this King:
- to bring good news to the poor,
- to proclaim release to the captives,
- recovery of sight to the blind,
- to set free those who are oppressed,
- to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
There is nothing here of restoring the glories of Israel, nothing about conquering enemies and laying waste their lands. No, it is about letting the poor of this world hear the Good News of God’s love for them. It is about healing and reconciliation. It is about liberating those who are tied down by any form of enslavement. It is about helping people to see clearly the true meaning of life. It is about restoring wholeness to people’s lives and to societies. It is about the inauguration of the Kingdom by its King. It is, in short, the whole picture of Jesus that will unfold in the pages of Luke, a Gospel which focuses on the poor and vulnerable, a Gospel of tenderness and compassion, a Gospel of the Spirit and of joy, a Gospel of prayer and healing.
When Jesus concludes, he puts down the scroll and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The townspeople who thought they knew him so well were overawed by the wisdom with which he spoke. This positive reaction to Jesus is a favorite theme in Luke. Rhetorically they asked, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” But they were wrong. He was not Joseph’s son; he was the son of Mary and of the Father, the divine Word sharing our ‘flesh’.
And this in turn leads us to the third section of the reading which provides an unexpected turn of events and is more in harmony with the later part of Jesus’ public life. Jesus’ hearers were surprised at the way he spoke, but they were not moved to change. After all, he was ‘just’ the son of Joseph, and someone they knew so well could have nothing to say to them. At the same time Jesus says they, his own townspeople, must be wondering why he is not doing the things in Nazareth that he was doing in places like Capernaum.
Capernaum, apparently a sizeable town, was where Peter lived and Jesus made his house, the center out of which he did his missionary work in Galilee. A modern church now stands over the ruins of a 5th century basilica on the supposed site of Peter’s house and there is a 4th century synagogue nearby.
The reason for the townspeople’s non-acceptance of Jesus is that they do not really accept him for what he is. He reminds them that prophets are seldom accepted in their own place. Familiarity blinds people to their message. Their attitude was: “I know who he is, and he has nothing to say to me.” Jesus then gives two rather provocative examples:
- During a great famine in the time of the prophet Elijah, Elijah was sent to help, not his fellow Israelites, but a poor widow in Zarephath, near Sidon, in non-Jewish territory. Sidon was one of the oldest Phoenician cities on the Mediterranean coast about 33 km north of Tyre. (Later, Jesus would heal the daughter of a Gentile woman here.)
- In the time of the prophet Elisha, there were many lepers in Israel, but Elisha was sent to cure Naaman, a gentile general from Syria.
God reaching out to Gentiles through his prophets sets the stage for the Gentiles to receive the message of the Prophet Jesus, which is so much a theme of Luke’s writings. These remarks so angered the people of Nazareth that they dragged Jesus to the brow of a hill with the intention of throwing him down, but “…he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
Prophetic voices being rejected by their own is a phenomenon only too common in our own day. And it was something Jesus foretold would happen to his followers, simply for being his followers and proclaiming his vision of life. Let us make Jesus’ mission statement our own. It is what being a Christian means.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!