Monday in the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, September 2, 2024

Luke 4, 16-30

Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”  Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph?” He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’” And he said, “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.

St. Luke’s account of the Lord’s return to Nazareth is separated from his account of the Lord’s temptations by the devil by two verses: “And Jesus returned in the power of the spirit, into Galilee: and the fame of him went out through the whole country. And he taught in their synagogues and was glorified by all” (Luke 4, 14–15).  Luke makes it sound as though he was absent from Nazareth for several months.  During this time, his “fame” spread “throughout the whole country” so that even remote Nazareth heard of it.  We might expect that his coming back to Nazareth would have brought about a celebration of some kind, but this does not seem to be the case.  Instead, the people murmuring about him in the synagogue.  Luke says that “all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”  Yet, while admiring his words, many still wondered that he had said them, for how could he?  “Is this not the son of Joseph?”  As though his deceased father Joseph was sullied by a bad reputation, or that a carpenter could not be the father of a King.

The source of the ill-will and the murderous rage of the citizens seems way out of proportion to anything the Lord might have said or done.  Later in the Gospel Luke will show the same strong feelings in the hearts of the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin.  It is St. Matthew who gives us the answer to this, revealing Pilate’s thoughts: “He knew that it was out of envy that they [the Sanhedrin] had delivered him up” (Matthew 27, 18).  Envy, displeasure at another’s good.  This is the vice that brought about the devil’s temptation in the Garden of Eden: “Through the envy of the devil death entered the world” (Wisdom 2, 24).  By compressing several months of preaching into two slim verses, Luke connects the direct attempts of the devil to destroy him with the attempt by the Nazarenes to destroy him, the devil working through them.

“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.” We note here that no one accuses the Lord of any crime, and certainly nothing that would have roused up the ire of the Pharisees. The hatred here is deeply personal.  

“But he passed through the midst of them and went away.”  Of course, if the Lord Jesus had wanted to, he could have poured down fire and brimstone from heaven upon it just as he had long before upon Sodom and Gomorrah such that even the next morning an observer from afar could have seen “the ashes rise up from the earth as the smoke of a furnace” (Genesis 19, 28).  But he does not.  Just as he let Judas slip from the Last Supper to betray him, so he passes quietly from the evil hands of his former neighbors.  Why does he allow Judas to go?  Why does he allow the people of Nazareth to live?  Because he loved them and was giving them time to repent before they were called to account.

Let us cling tightly to a God who can so greatly love even those who hate him.