NewCreation

Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. And this week we continue with our adventure in Luke. This is the direct continuation of last Sunday's Gospel. You remember that where we finished last Sunday was with Jesus proclaiming the Jubilee text from Isaiah, but leaving out a key phrase at the end. He proclaimed "the year of the Lord's favour" but did not proclaim "and the day of vengeance of the Lord." Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Remember, I brought up where the fixedness of the eyes came from. So then he begins to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Well, I tried to bring out last time what a momentous statement that was. He was saying this is the beginning of the Jubilee fulfillment. The Jubilee is being fulfilled — the one that promised the coming in of the Melchizedek priestly figure who was going to fulfill the tenth Jubilee in the first week of that Jubilee. In other words, he was making a very serious claim of the sort that either had to be taken seriously or not, but was not a matter of indifference. And I think that's hugely important. It's not, maybe he just had a reading and said, "Well, I think that I'll bring out a few bits of fulfillment here." No, he's saying something much, much stronger than that. And immediately at the beginning of our Gospel today we come across two of the most problematic words in terms of translation in Luke's Gospel, because the two words which are translated in our text as "all spoke well of him and were amazed" unfortunately give entirely the wrong impression. They give the impression that first of all they listened to him and thought, "Oh, this is wonderful," and then for no reason at all turned, saying, "Is not this Joseph's son?" But I suspect you will find that, as always with Luke, you don't look at the word itself, you look at what's going on with it in the Septuagint — that's the Greek version of the Bible — and what these words mean is to speak well of someone. The Greek word Martureō (μαρτυρέω) means to bear witness, and it's normally used in the Septuagint of a witness to a murder or to a crime having been done, which enables people to be killed. In other words, you're not allowed to kill somebody on the witness of only one person; there has to be two or more people, and preferably everybody together, in order for a person to be justly killed. The witness of everybody allows a lynching to happen. Remember, this story happens at the beginning of an attempt — an attempted lynching. But there's a key place where this appears in the Hebrew Scriptures in the book of Deuteronomy, which I think is even more important, because it's where the Lord, just before Moses's death, is going to give to him the song which he's to leave for the people of Israel, which is going to be the great song, which is the end of Deuteronomy. The Lord says to him, "And when many terrible troubles come upon them, this song will confront them as a witness; it will witness against them." So the notion that something positive is given to people and yet they bear witness against it is part of the biblical understanding of the word. So the question is: what were they doing? Were they remonstrating with him? Were they refusing the message of favor which he had just given? He'd given the jubilee text, and he had excluded the promise of vengeance. Now, if you all know the text, and you know that someone has excluded the word of vengeance, you're suggesting that they're mucking with the word of God. So witnessing against them is saying, "Oy, you're altering the text; there's something fraudulent about what you're doing there." And in fact we get something similar in — if I can find it — Ezekiel: "For there shall no longer be any false vision or flattering divination within the house of Israel," even a divination of favor. In other words, they're suggesting — maybe, and of course all this is tentative — they're suggesting that he's engaging in flattering divination; in other words, that there's something seriously wrong with that, because he's left out the bit of the ending of the Lord which the Lord promises. In fact, in that thing it says, "But I the Lord will speak the word that I speak and it will be fulfilled; it will no longer be delayed, but in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak the word and fulfill it, says the Lord God." In other words, their reaction is to treat as bad theology, if you like, worse than bad theology, an offense against the sacred word, something which is in fact the Lord's fulfillment of the word. So it says all — I would say — remonstrated with him, and then it says "and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth." Well, again, the word "amazed" — the word thauma — can mean not just amazement, stupefaction, being astounded, with different degrees; it can be a positive thing, it can also be a more shocking thing. But the most basic use in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures is taking exception of persons. It says, "Thou shalt not be amazed in the face of a person." It doesn't mean you should go "whoa"; it means you should not look at the state of a person's face before deciding what they say is true or not — in other words, you should not judge the rich differently from the poor, or the poor differently from the rich. "Exception of persons" is, I think, the way we say it in English. So here it says: "they remonstrated with him and made exception of persons at the words of favor that came from his mouth". In other words, they understood that he was speaking only the favorable words, but they didn't judge it on its merits, but on what sort of person he was. And they said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" Well, that makes much more sense, because if they're making exception of persons, the way you make exception of persons is to say, "No, this is Joseph's son, he doesn't really understand what he's talking about, he's not important enough to be saying these sorts of things." And it's in those terms that Jesus now speaks to them. I want to have a look first at the question of the gracious words that came from his mouth, because it's the words of favor. Remember that the words of favor exclude the words of vengeance, and this is something which is going to be absolutely key in Luke's Gospel, as we will see time and time again. People want vengeance, because they assume it's for other people. And, in Mark's Gospel, when Jesus gives his initial preaching, Mark describes Jesus' initial preaching as him saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand." But here Jesus is saying the kingdom of heaven has come amongst you, and he's not urging them to repent. In other words, the violence is purely on the part of people who don't accept the word of favor. The word is purely positive, but a purely positive word amongst a jealous and violent people produces a violent reaction. The violent reaction is not a divine punishment; it's human violence. And that's what we're going to see enacted out in this thing. It's a brilliant part of Luke's Gospel, which is that the thing that is not present throughout is vengeance. So he says to them, "Doubtless you'll quote to me this proverb: 'Doctor, cure yourself.'" And here we have a little hint of the passion, because on Jesus' cross people will say to him, "Come and save yourself." In other words, there's a hint of the passion being given here — what is already going to be, it's already announced what is going to be fulfilled. In other words, you want — and he's going to say here — what you want is for me to sort things out for you. And you will say, "Do here also in your hometown the things that we've heard you did at Capernaum." Your mimetic fascination is all on whether the local boy is going to do good here. In other words, you are not available to the good news that is coming upon you. And he says, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown." He's making a perfectly straightforward point here. It's not a punishment to them; it's quite simply an anthropological fact. The people least likely to understand someone are the people who are familiar with them. What is the word, the phrase? "No man is great to his valet." I think Napoleon or someone pretty grand like that said, "No man is great to his valet." This is the equivalent, because you focus too much on his involvement in your local nitty-gritty, you cannot understand the great thing that that person brings in. And then he does what he's going to do throughout Luke's Gospel, which is to start to make this coming in available to outsiders, to the nations, to the pagans. He says: "But the truth is there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine all over the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon." In other words, God always starts outside. "There were also many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elijah, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." Naaman the Syrian, who had a great deal of favor outside but no favor in Israel, and he humbled himself to be without favor, without regard, no exception of persons, and he was healed. It was when he gave up his pretension to grandeur and was able to drop exception of persons that he was able to be healed. So when they heard this — when they heard that Jesus was actually saying, "This great thing is coming, I'm announcing it, you're not really going to be able to see it, because you're focused on me, the local boy, rather than what is in fact coming around in your midst" — "when they heard this, all of the synagogue were filled with rage". Now, in other words, at this stage they understand that they are witnessing against him in the formal sense: he has spoken a word from God which they think is false. So they got up and drove him out of the town and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built. In other words, they think that they have, under the law, not only the right, but the duty to stone him to death, or the equivalent of that, which is to nudge him off a precipice. Now, as it happens, and various biblical scholars have looked for it, there is no such precipice in Nazareth. So this is what I call theological geography on Luke's part. This is something that doesn't really exist physically, but perfectly foreshadows the crucifixion. This is going to be the story throughout of Jesus trying to speak the truth to the people of Israel, and the people of Israel wanting to hear the words of grace but also wanting to hear the words of vengeance to outsiders, getting upset when they don't have it, and eventually throwing him out. This is all prophetic of what is going to happen. So they led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. And then it says: "But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way." And of course many of us imagine, as this being something a little bit miraculous, but really no. The way throwing someone off a cliff worked was that you formed a semicircle around the person and then little by little came together over against that person, until such time as he had no space to move and he fell off himself or fell over backwards himself. But the key thing was that nobody should touch him, because if somebody touched him then they were guilty of killing him. But if everyone did it together, no one was guilty of killing him. That's the whole point of how lynch deaths, group sacrifice, and so on work: that everyone is responsible and no one is responsible at the same time. So, if Jesus steps forward bravely, then they part, because no one wants to touch him. So that's what happens here. Jesus moves through the lynch mechanism and starts his public ministry.