No Parade for this Hometown Boy

Monday of Week 22 in Ordinary Time

Luke 4:16-30

Jesus comes to his hometown of Nazareth, to the community of his youth.  He reads from the prophet Isaiah:

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 free,

         and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

But the drama is just heating up.  He rolled up the scroll, handed it back, and took a seat.  But increasingly, every eye was upon him.  He wasn’t done.  There is more.  Then comes the best and most scandal producing part:  Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

The assembly went from astonishment to filled with fury and on the way to hurling him headlong off a cliff!

His claim is the Incarnation.  In the first instance it is so particular…the carpenter’s son from just down the road.  The incarnation continues in and through Christ’s body, the church.  The scandal of particularity is manifest in me. 

May I incarnate the vision proclaimed in Isaiah.

May I bring glad tidings to the poor in the midst of my ordinary day.

May I help the blind to see and in doing so broaden my own vision.

May I lighten the burden of the oppressed with my compassion at work.

May I put the grace of my baptism to work!

Amen