Having determined to offer myself up to the Gospel of Luke this year, my progress (such as it has been in my episodic fidelity) arrived this morning at the story of Jesus returning to the community of his childhood and gathering with his neighbors for worship. According to the account, he went to the synagogue, “as was his custom,” and read. His selection – whether chosen or assigned – was from the prophet Isaiah about being inspirited – anointed – to preach good news and liberation and healing.
It would have necessarily been a familiar passage. The community would have heard it read countless times in their faithful attendance. It was, after all, not merely a passage from the scroll but a part of their story. But it is likewise apparent that they hadn’t really heard it. The sound of the reader’s voice had passed into their ear canals, vibrating their eardrums, and rippling the cochlear fluid, rustling the hairs covering the basilar membrane – the physiological process of hearing.
But the ears within them hadn’t heard.
And I wonder how many readings, how many instructions, how many sermons, how many truths the hardware of my ears has processed, but the rest of me has ignored? It’s a question my wife can probably answer.
Even here I don’t think I have ever really heard this story – not so much the reading from Isaiah, but the account of Jesus with his neighbors. Somehow the impression I had taken away from prior encounters with this passage was that the townsfolk took offense at what they deemed to be Jesus’ presumption – his suggestion that somehow the prophet’s words were being fulfilled in their hearing that very day. That isn’t, of course, what the story says, but it is apparently what I had heard. No, what the story goes on to report is that Jesus’ childhood friends applauded and thought well of him at this point. It wasn’t until Jesus suggested that such blessings – good news, liberation, healing – wouldn’t be confined to their parochial tent that matters turned violent.
As it turned out, Jesus survived that day; but neither the disapproval nor the violence has gone away.
Whenever a church marshals the organization, the money and the people to send a mission team to some impoverished country to dig a well or build a house or construct a school or provide medical care, the complaint is invariably raised, “Don’t we have poor people in our own town, in our own country?”
Whenever our country sends relief or development aid to some war-torn or disaster-devastated country, the same disapproval is voiced. “Don’t we have our own fire/flood/hurricane/riot damage to clean up?”
“America First,” became the over-shouting cry!
“Us First.”
“Me First.”
To which Jesus responded, “Well…that’s just not the way God thinks – or acts – or wishes for us to behave.”
And that’s when it got bad. That’s when they tried to throw him off a cliff --
It would take them awhile, but they would yet get him thrown off that cliff. They would eventually accomplish their assassination.
It’s a slogan that rallies a crowd, alright, but not in the way intended. And it’s hardly winsome enough to print on a cap. It isn’t a platform for a political campaign any more than it was for a messianic one. But, then, Jesus had already turned his back on that kind of motivation when he refused to take a knee to temptation, or throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple.
Because while "us first" might make us popular, it never gets us right. Mirrors routinely get us into trouble, while windows open to us the Reign of God.
Jesus, exampling the face of God, was content to open his own face to the wind of the Spirit, and thusly anointed, to be blown by it into the work of holiness.
As, reading both the prophet and the one who read the prophet…
…could we.
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