ORDINARY SUNDAY 3 (January 22nd) 1989
(my final sermon at St John’s, East Bentleigh)
Readings
Psalm 71:1-2,3-4,5-6,15,17
1 Corinthians 12:31—13:13
Luke 4:21-30
“But passing through the midst of them, he went away” (Luke
4:30)
In the temple, Jesus has just stood up and for the first
time in his ministry “gone public” about his identity. If you were to place this
week’s gospel reading in context you would find that it follows on from that
which we read last week, the passage in which Jesus returns to bis home town of
Nazareth and begins to expound the scriptures amongst his geographically
closest neighbours.
The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me.
The passages should never be separated. The claim made by
Jesus following the reading from Isaiah is that the longing of the people of
God for a Messiah, to bring good news to the poor, is fulfilled in him. Last
week[1]
I claimed that to be the shortest of sermons. This week we discover that it was
no more than the dramatic opening to an exposition of scripture which “won
the approval of all” and which had the gathered people “astonished by
the gracious words that came from his lips.” And so it is that we have
heard read today the kernel of what I have called his sermon.
But if you were to
turn to Luke’s account of the gospel you would find that these events do not
take place until after Jesus has experienced and, as it were passed the test
that we know as the temptation in the wilderness.
Any attempt to understand what Christ is telling us must be
put in the perspective of his life. Whatever we might understand by the story
of the temptations, it is clear that Luke is telling us that the Messiah’s money
is where his mouth is; that his proclamation of good news to the poor and
liberation to the oppressed must be seen in the context of his own experience
of human suffering and of the temptation to play silly human power games.
Mark, in his gospel account, stresses the same element.
Never does he allow anyone to identify Jesus as the Son of God until they come
to understand that it is precisely and exclusively in the tragedy of Good
Friday and the consequent joy of Easter Sunday that Jesus’ sonship becomes
authentic.
Jesus goes on to tell us more about his vocation, including
the prophesy that he will not be understood by his hometown people. His
provocative comments upset the locals, and in a radical about-face that
foreshadows the events of Palm Sunday and Holy Week, they seek to kill him. It
is at this point that Jesus makes his miraculous and seemingly effortless
escape. So what is Luke telling us by connecting these events?
Luke, like Mark, is adamant that the teachings of Jesus about
himself cannot be understood except in the light of the events of Good Friday. Eduard
Schweizer puts it this way:
Jesus’ mysterious magical departure is not to be explained
psychologically; for Luke it is a sign pointing already to Easter. Human beings
have no power over him; when he dies at their hands, it is because that is God’s
will. They cannot stand in the way of his work but must advance it: he goes on
to Capernaum.[2]
The question we must continue to ask, though, is “so what?” So
what if both Mark and Luke have this obsession with Jesus’ suffering?
The answer is not difficult to discover, and it is an answer
consistent with all our readings today. In our other readings today we read
first of vocation – in this case the calling of the prophet Jeremiah – and then
of the universal human vocation to love.
Weaving these threads together, from the calling of the reluctant
Jeremiah, to Paul’s masterful and eloquent hymn to love, to the provocative commencement
of Jesus’ public ministry, is the connecting preparedness of the central
characters to put their faith and their relationship to God into dynamic
action.
If I give away all that I
possess, piece by piece, and if I even let them take my body to burn it, but am
without love, it will do no good whatever.
(1
Cor. 13:3)
It is my prayer that as a people of God we can learn to put our
money firmly where our mouth is. We will fall short – we always will. We will
be torn between priorities, and always will be. We will enter the dangerous
zones of misunderstanding and alienation – Jeremiah certainly did – and suffer
at times the depths of doubt of God and of ourselves. But the message of the Incarnation
is that it is precisely in the depths of hell and despair that God’s selfhood,
God’s nature, is revealed. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” cry
both the Psalmist and Jesus. It is in the darkness that the light shines.
It is to the darkness that we must allow our faith to lead
us, so that we too with Jeremiah may exclaim,
For these things I weep;
my
eyes flow with tears;
for a comforter is far from me,
one to
revive my courage;
my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed.
(Lamentations
1:16)
For it will be when we experience the despair of knowing and
loving and serving God with our whole selves that we will find the surety of
knowing God to be all in all. That discovery is known by Jeremiah, by Paul, by Jesus.
By Jesus above all. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
It is my prayer that we too might know it. Then,
It I say, “I will not mention him,
or
speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
shut
up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.
(Jeremiah
20:9)
May God be with you and burn within you.