The Messiah God Wants, Not Necessarily The One You Want Series

Monday of 22nd week in Course

1 Cor 2: 1-5; Lk 4: 16-30

Hearing today’s Gospel with fresh ears might lead some of us to be a little critical of Jesus. After all, the townsfolk of Nazareth welcomed Jesus back and invited Him to act as lector and even give the homily. When he told them that He was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, they didn’t stand up and object. They spoke well of him, and, knowing that Joseph was of the house of David, they said, “Good lad–Joseph’s boy, rest his soul–I always knew he’d make his daddy proud.”

But Jesus was more than that. He was, as Luke explained early on in His Gospel, God’s Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit working in Mary. Jesus knew these people intimately; he’d spent thirty-some years with them. And he had the wisdom and discernment of a prophet. He could, as St. John taught, see into people’s hearts. So he came to the point immediately, and that, any politician will tell you, is not the way to get votes. He implied that, if he held to the pattern he had established in the other Galilean towns, he would next cure the sick. But he wasn’t going to do that; he wasn’t going to be able to do that because he knew the people of Nazareth did not want the kind of Messiah He was destined to be.

The Biblical personalities Jesus picked–Elijah and Elisha–ministered to an Israel that did not want to hear what they were preaching. In the time of the prophets, Israel was constantly turning its back on the true God. In fact, it was the time of Ahab and Jezebel, who committed crimes of injustice, who sponsored the ritual murder of young children in honor of pagan gods, who got themselves into pointless foreign wars. Jesus knew that His people were just like that. No, they didn’t practice human sacrifice anymore, but they were just as self-willed and stiff-necked toward God as they always had been. They wanted a political Messiah to lead them to throw out the Romans in fire and bloodshed. They wanted a change in their political and economic fortunes, not a change in their hearts.

So the last part of this scene is reminiscent of the way the people of Jerusalem would have Jesus lynched a few months later. It’s such a shame that when the promises to the prophets were fulfilled, and fulfilled in power with healings and preaching like nobody had ever heard, the Jews were closed to the real conversion that would have given them eternal life. Only a handful, a remnant, accepted Jesus’s message and sacramental means of safety. Ultimately the New Israel, the Church, would flourish among us Greeks and Germans and Italians and Irish and Africans and Spanish and on and on–we Gentiles. All over the world, we have hope because we have the presence of Christ in our midst. As the psalmist sang: Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it. The victory is won, and we are on the victor's side.

But we must take heed ourselves and continue to listen to Christ, lest we, too, fail in the ultimate test. Our task is to discern and do God’s will, to live and preach his kingdom of peace and reconciliation. And, I believe, to pray for the conversion of the Jews who rejected God’s message, so that they will accept their brother, Jesus, as Messiah and Lord and be reconciled and healed.