Homily: 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings: Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10; Ps 19; 1 Cor 12:12-30; Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21

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If you’ve ever been inside St. Mark’s cathedral in Venice, you might have noticed, in the baptistry, a striking 14th century mosaic of Jesus’ baptism. The water that washes over Jesus looks remarkably like a shroud, and Jesus seems to be rising up out of it. At the same time, the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, descends on him from the brightness of the Father’s presence.

Well, that same Spirit is present with Jesus in today’s Gospel reading as he travels through Galilee preaching the Good News and then eventually visits his hometown. How does Luke put it? “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit…” He returned, Luke tells us, “…to Nazareth, where he had grown up…”
 

Now here’s something interesting.
 

It’s in that same Spirit, St. Paul tells the Corinthians – and he tell all of us – that “…we were all baptized into one body, whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.” And so it is through this Spirit of God, Paul says, that we are the body of Christ. What the Spirit is for Christ, the Spirit is for us. What the Spirit does for Christ, the Spirit does for us.What the Spirit sends Him to do, the Spirit sends us to do.

And what does the Spirit send Jesus to do? Exactly what He told the people of Nazareth. Quoting Isaiah, Jesus says that the Sprit sends me "to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind. to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

The Spirit sends Jesus to heal, to free, to restore, to bless, to bring to fulfillment. This is God’s desire for all of humanity, and Jesus embodies that desire. He makes it present and makes it felt in His own time and place.
Now here’s where it gets really interesting…

You and I are called to do exactly the same thing. That’s right, brothers and sisters, by His death and resurrection, Jesus makes it possible for us, as members of His Body, to make that desire – that  desire of God for all of humanity – to make it present and felt in our own time and in our own place. Jesus not only makes this possible, but He intends it; he expects it of us. It means that each of us is called to heal, to free, to restore, to bless, to bring to fulfillment. Have you done much of that lately?
 

Every Sunday we come to this place and we hear the Word of God proclaimed – and when that Word is proclaimed it is Christ himself who speaks – just as He spoke to the people gathered in the synagogue in Nazareth. But do we really believe this? If we did truly believe it, wouldn’t we be completely focused on what we were hearing? Wouldn’t we be sitting on the edges of our seats excited about what God has to say to each of us? 

In our first reading we heard Ezra read God’s Word to the people of Jerusalem, a people who had returned home from a long exile. In our Gospel passage, we find Jesus returning home to read and preach God’s Word in the synagogue of Nazareth. Today we listen to these same words – to this same Word – but does it change anything? Or are they just nice, comfortable words that we hear again and again, year-after-year, Sunday-after-Sunday, changing nothing but making everything familiar and comfortable? What does this Word have to do with us? What does this Word do to us when we hear it? “The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free?”
 

Are you and I oppressed? Do we need to be set free? Are we imprisoned or exiled, or downtrodden? Nope, none of that applies to me. And, anyway, all those folks in prison…isn’t that where they belong? And the poor? Well, the poor could stop being poor if they’d only go out and get jobs. And the blind? The disabled and the disadvantaged? Don’t we have laws and government programs to take care of them? What do these people have to do with us? Jesus was obviously speaking to someone else…maybe next Sunday’s readings will actually apply to me.
 

But what if Jesus had said: “I have been sent to pay off your mortgage and your credit card balances, to correct those terrible mistakes you made years ago, the hurt you caused, the damage you did, to cure your cancer, your heart disease, your diabetes.”? Would that make a difference? Would Jesus have our attention then?

But that isn’t what he said, is it? And so maybe those real words of Jesus were meant to unnerve us. Maybe those words were supposed to make us sit up and think, to examine our behavior, and to get us to live our lives differently. Maybe Jesus was trying to challenge our attitudes and confront our biases. Just maybe Jesus was attempting to show us that our faith has everything to do with justice, with life, with illness, with pain and hurt, with poverty…

Does hearing His Word really make a difference to us? Do we try to live better lives? Are we more understanding, more generous in our community and our parish? And as Jesus said, His words are supposed to be fulfilled in our hearing. That can happen only if we bring those words to life — if we give them voice, if we walk with them, if we act with them. Without us, brothers and sisters, those words become barren and lifeless. We make them real. You and I. And for us it’s a matter of faith. Do we really believe the words we hear?

Moved by the Holy Spirit, Jesus went to Nazareth to preach the Kingdom. For the first time, Jesus preached a living Word to the people of His home town. Some rejoiced, some repented, others became hostile, and all wondered what this Word was going to do to them when they heard it.

Well, what about us? God has sent us His Spirit, brothers and sisters. And the Spirit speaks to us through His Word. He speaks to move us, to change us, to lead us to repentance and conversion. Just remember, coming here every week isn’t a social visit. When we enter this sacred space every Sunday, when we open our ears, our minds, and our hearts to God’s Word, we place ourselves at grave risk. You see, God expects His Word to bring about change in us.