Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
February 3, 2013
Reading I: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19
Responsorial Psalm: 71:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 15-17
Reading II:1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13 or 13:4-13
Gospel: Luke 4:21-30
Gospel Lk 4:21-30
“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, “Isn’t this 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 Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.
"No prophet is accepted in his own native place." I was sure this would be the issue this week: why do we not give ample respect and attention to the prophets among us - our own prophets. We lionise our sporting heroes, and even then it takes constant promotion via every form of media to keep our enthusiasm on the boil. Is it just familiarity, as Georgeh suggests, or are we resentful and jealous of a fame we cannot share in? Or are we especially threatened by the words or example of one whom we know and understand? Is it that we cannot escape the challenge the prophet puts before us because we know that he knows us too well?
Presently there is much protest against the silencing of prophets in the church. Should we be surprised? Has it not ever been so.
I think it is a question we have to ask of ourselves, and I am not pointing to contributors to Catholica. ...
Simply by asserting that prophets are not accepted by their own is to challenge us to see why?
The odd thing here is that while Jesus challenged whatever it is that makes people reject the prophet whom they know as one of their own community, he did not take his challenge any further, but left them and made his centre of operations in Caphernaum - or perhaps he had already done so. May we conclude that this is a fight not worth fighting? Should the 'prophet' in today's church simply walk out once it is made clear he is not accepted by the leadership of his own community? Is it his first task to find somewhere else where his message may be proclaimed effectively and perhaps heeded?
What was it not only angered the townsfolk but enraged them to the point of lynching? Their reaction becomes a symbol and a foretaste of the anger and rejection of the priesthood in Jerusalem later on. But in Nazareth you would not think the people felt threatened, as the Jerusalem establishment may have been.
I suspect all these questions might lead us eventually back to the strange tendency we all experience of rejecting our own good luck and the gifts we find ourselves endowed with gratis. How often we see someone has blown their chances and used their talents in some contrary fashion. Perhaps the so frequent reports of top footballers getting involved in scandalous goings-on, even losing their place in the game of their choice and wasting their talents, apparently on account of some perverse inability to appreciate what they have been given gratis.
Perhaps many of us get over this with the passing of the years. Having learnt to appreciate many things in hindsight, after they were lost, and having learnt that we have nothing of ourselves in fact, but all we are and all we have is gifted to us, then we learnt to be grateful. But when we were younger we wanted only what we had gained by our own effort - never realising what a gift it was to be able to work so well in our chosen field.
So too with the prophets among us: a pure gift, and as such already resented, for we don't like being given good things that we haven't earned. At this level I feel there is a mixture of good and bad: it is good to want to work to achieve one's goals; but it is stupid pride that rejects the helping hand freely offered. We might be jealous of their notoriety, thinking we could do as well as they and should get the same acclaim. We might not want to bask in their glory or become followers of one who is just one of us, for instead of glorying in his glory we feel the lack of glory of our own.