Something subtle happens this week and next. Did you catch it? For the last few months, our Gospel readings have come almost exclusively from the Gospel of St. Mathew; but suddenly, without notice, we start to see readings from Luke’s Gospel being used on Mondays-Thursdays. Don’t worry, though. Matthew returns on Fridays and Sundays.
The Gospel for today (Luke 4:16-30) always sends tingles down my spine. Whenever I hear it, my mind goes to that scene from Franco Zeffirelli’s masterpiece, Jesus of Nazareth, where Jesus looks to the crowd with those penetrating sapphire-blue eyes, with such love in his heart, and reads this passage. I find the Gospel for today delightful because Jesus’ words were presented in a context of such wonderful realism. Until this scene, we have been accustomed to seeing Jesus outdoors–on a mountain top, at a riverbank, in a garden, the center of attention doing things I don’t do or don’t see others do.
But here we see Jesus doing what I have seen others do, indoors, and doing something like what I myself have done. “He stood up to read and was handed a scroll… He unrolled the scroll and found the passage…Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back and sat down…”
As a lector at my parish church, I, too, have stood up to read; I, too, have found the right passage; I, too, have read it; and I, too, have sat down. I was just like Jesus in today’s reading. Today’s Gospel also contains the famous passage about a prophet not being accepted in his native place. I, too, have experienced people, parishioners at my parish, filled with fury, verbally abusing me when I stand up for my faith, when I stand up for the sanctity of all life. It is not the furious people that are real to me right now, however, but rather those simple words describing Jesus’s actions. Today those actions, as described in the Gospel, have new importance because they show our Lord doing what all of us can do, regardless of our specific faith tradition.
Jesus was like the young man, my friend, at the Bar Mitzvah I attended when I was boy in Denver, his assuming the responsibility for communicating the wisdom of the Torah. Jesus was like the Methodist minister announcing the Gospel in a small white-frame country church among the Colorado cornfields. Jesus was like Father Syriani, declaring to a big church in Denver, filled with freshly confirmed teenagers, that ours was a mission for others. Jesus was even like the Kickapoo man at a pow-wow in Del Rio, Texas, dancing to affirm his family’s long-held belief that a Great Spirit was at the heart of our universe, to be discovered in the beauty of the land and sky.
All of us, at some time, can assume a posture and use gestures to lead others in appreciating some expression of the Word of God. Today’s reading helps me to realize that whether we are actually reading aloud or merely in some other manner using our gifts of communication, we have the privilege of declaring the message of the Lord. We are among His people, and it is our joyous gift to imitate Jesus. From the pulpit or from the pews, among friends or among the fields, we can be like Him, with confidence, and with reverence.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!