"Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.' Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.” What’s that all about? They were amazed; they were proud and then you have to say that! No wonder they wanted to teach you a lesson—the up-start son of Joseph the carpenter.
What was it that you thought you knew that they didn’t? That nothing would ever be enough for this enthralled crowd? That it would always be about you and never about them? That they would seek to rest on their laurels because you came from their town? Or that no matter what you did nothing would retain their attention beyond what you just did—reading and expounding the scripture? It doesn’t make sense to us now. They all spoke well of you and were amazed. What on earth made you say what you did?
True, they turned out to be a fickle group—shifting from admiration and amazement to rage in a moment—but you can’t say that they weren’t provoked. You threw their admiration back in their faces. It looks more like an adolescent tantrum than mature reflection: “The world is against me and nobody can tell me any differently.”
Oh, we know about the prophets. We know about Jeremiah who had to convince the people that he could speak even though he was young; and about Elijah who literally ran from the wrath of the people when he showed up their false gods; and Elisha who cured a foreigner when there were plenty in his own land who were in need of healing. We know that a prophet’s call is a lonely one. No-one like their frailties and failures to be brought to public attention, but what made you… what made you…
What made you speak this particular prophetic word--this communal assessment that cut people to their cores; so that they would prefer to do away with the carpenter’s son rather than face their own demons? Was the response of the assembled company a sign that you had struck more than a nerve, that you had exposed a deep-seated prejudice in that community? Not one of us is good enough. Not one of us can make it in God’s eyes. Not one of us really belongs. We’re happy when we all muddling around together; but if you remind us of our aspirations and our failings; you challenge who we are; and we are afraid. Was it something like we’d call today in Australia, the “tall poppy syndrome”—“Nothing good ever comes from Nazareth”?
We wish we understood Jesus because we suspect if we did; we’d discover more than a little of ourselves in the crowd. Not one of us is good enough. Not one of us can make it in God’s eyes. Not one of us really belongs. We’re happy when we all muddling around together; but if you remind us of our aspirations and our failings; you challenge who we are; and we are afraid.
Or maybe it’s about impossible expectations? And we wonder what are the expectations we have of you, that you know you cannot fulfil and would never want to in 6 billion years, or a thousand creations? Because it’s not what good can come from us; but what good really is and how we so often fail to recognise it for ourselves.
And if you were in our midst today, reading and expounding the scriptures, would we recognise you, or move quickly too from admiration to angst without a moment’s thought, and try to run you out of town?
You know us through and through, Word-made-flesh. You knew us in our mothers’ wombs and long before that in the dust of the stars. You know our rising and our resting; and yet, like Jeremiah and Elijah and Elisha, Miriam and Deborah and Esther, you have appointed us to serve. There are no excuses—being too young or too old; or not having the right words; or not being good enough; or expecting too much or too little. You have enfolded us into yourself, your mission, your ministry, your vocation, your life; and we know that even in our admiration, and our amazement, and our rage, and our aspirations, and our failures, you know us; and we could no more throw you off a cliff than find ourselves in God without you.
And we hear the word which came to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.” And we realise that you have appointed us… Today the scriptures have been fulfilled in our hearing. And we wonder what awaits us in a world which can so quickly move from admiration and amazement to rage and angst.
Your word is a 2-edge sword. Your call over nations is not simply about plucking and harvesting, building up and restoring. It is also about pulling down and confronting, destroying and overthrowing all that which is not of your life. And that work begins in us, as surely as it is the work to which we have been commissioned, for you have appointed us to serve long before we knew your name; and while you are a part of us, one of us, you are so much more; and there is so much more to which you call us. Do not just pass through our midst, O Christ, and go on your way. But stay with us and teach us how to do what you have appointed us to do.
Teach us, good Lord,
to serve you as you deserve:
to give, and not to count the cost;
to fight, and not to heed the wounds;
to toil, and not to seek for rest;
to labour, and not to ask for any reward,
except that of knowing that we do your holy will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Ignatius Loyola, 1491-1556
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