Monday in the Third Week of Lent, March 13, 2023

Luke 4, 24-30

Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth: “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.

The story of the Lord’s return to Nazareth is found in the first tree Gospels and must be considered a significant event in his ministry, for, according to its place in St. Luke’s carefully worked out chronology, he had not yet settled in Capharnaum and called his first Apostles.  If he is not rejected at Nazareth, as all the accounts tell us, then we have to wonder if he would have settled in the town and called his first Apostles from amongst the people there.  Does isolated Nazareth rather than the coastal town of Capernaum become the center of his ministry, in that case?  It is profitable for us to speculate on Nazareth’s lost opportunity because human life is full of lost opportunities, and if we can learn from what we missed, we can resolve to seize the next one.

Luke bridges his account of the temptation of Jesus by the devil and his return to Nazareth with these words: “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and a report concerning him went out through all the surrounding country. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all” (Luke 4, 14-25).  In other words, he does not return at once after his Baptism and the temptation.  But neither does he settle anywhere else.  From this verse we get a picture of the Lord ranging through the land, visiting towns and cities, preaching “in the power of the Spirit” and, evidently, performing miracles.  This period would have lasted some months, at least.

We are not told how his extended family reacted when he came among them again.  His widowed Mother would have stayed with her relatives, and we can be sure of her joy t see his face once more.  The townspeople had heard news of his preaching and miracles, and the Lord was aware of that, quoting to the people in the synagogue their own thoughts: “As great things as we have heard done in Capharnaum, do also here in your own country” (Luke 4, 23).  There, may people came to him to be cured, but not in Nazareth.  In fact, St. Matthew tells us sadly, “And he wrought not many miracles there, because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13, 58).  

On the Sabbath, he went up to the front to read the sacred texts and to comment on them just as he had in other towns previously in his young ministry.  He read a text from Isaiah which began, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Wherefore he has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor, he has sent me to heal the contrite of heart”, found in Isaiah 62, 1-3.  He then pronounced to the people that this reading was fulfilled in their hearing.  That is, he himself, sitting before them, has fulfilled this prophesy of the Scriptures.  It is an astounding statement, worthy of a much greater venue and audience, but he makes it to his neighbors in order to explain to them, before anyone else, who he is and what he has done throughout the land in the past months.  He gives them this chance to believe.

They do not react favorably, and the Lord warns them, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.”  He makes it easier to believe in him with these words, for with them he claims only to be a prophet.  The reports about him which they have heard surely gave backing to that claim.  He refers then to the prophets Elijah and Elisha and how they performed mighty works away from their home towns: many regarded them at the time with contempt and even sought to kill them, but later were seen as powerful in the Spirit of God.  Because the townspeople had listened to him with their hearts already hardened, they mistook his words as comparing them to the Gentiles, and “they were all filled with fury”.  We should think about the hardness of their hearts.  Surely, he had done nothing to incur this.  Perhaps a comment by St. Matthew referring to Pontius Pilate might help us: “For he knew that for envy they [the chief priests] had delivered him” (Matthew 27, 18).  The Greek word can mean either “envy”, “a grudge”, or “spite”: they hated him because he did not attribute or relate his greatness to them as though his association with them was its source.

“They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.”  So great was their hatred of him, so complete their rejection, that they would have killed him.  They would have done this not for any crime he had committed nor for any perceived transgression of the Law, but simply out of their outrage that he was good and they were not.

“But he passed through the midst of them and went away.”  We note here what he did and did not do.  He let them take him to the brow of the hill, giving them every possible moment to repent of what they intended to do, but when they did not, he passed through them as though they did not exist and went his way.  At some point, his Mother and a few others joined him in his travels through Galilee and Judea, but he never went back to Nazareth.  He passed through them, he slipped through them as though touching none of them.  He inflicted no punishment on them.  His desire was not for their destruction but for their later conversion.

Nazareth missed its chance at embracing the Savior of the world.  May we never miss an opportunity to serve him when he sends it to us.