Then Ezra said: “Go, eat the fat, drink the sweet wine, and send a portion to the one who has nothing prepared ready. For this day is sacred to the Lord. Don’t be sad: the joy of the Lord is your stronghold.” Nehemiah 8: 2-6, 8-10
Jesus unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” Jesus said to them: Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 1: 1-4; 4: 14-21
I wonder what might happen if, at the beginning of our liturgy on the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, all of us in the pews were invited to contribute what we know of Nehemiah (author of the Second Reading) in order to shape a picture of who he was. My guess is that we would come up with a picture that was less than adequate. In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Nehemiah was originally part of the Book of Ezra. While Nehemiah is sometimes called a prophet, he was neither a prophet nor a priest. He was a Jewish layman, held captive by the Persian King Artaxerxes. He rose to the position of cup-bearer in the king’s court, and carried out his duties so well that he was released by Artaxerxes from whom he obtained permission to rebuild the walls of the city of Jerusalem that was razed to the ground by the invading Babylonians. Nehemiah was successful in convincing the people of the Province of Judah, of which Artaxerxes had appointed him Governor, to get involved in the joint undertaking of rebuilding the walls. While he is not held up as one of the great Jewish leaders, what Nehemiah achieved was neither insignificant nor second-rate. The task he undertook bound the people together in unity and purpose.
When the job was finished, Nehemiah declared a day of celebration and festival, and invited Ezra, the priest, to lead the people in prayer. Today’s reading tells us that Ezra was quite a homilist. For close on six hours Ezra read and explained the Book of Moses. Moreover, we are told that the people’s attention didn’t waver. The kernel of Ezra’s message is contained in the last paragraph of today’s second reading and concludes with his exhortation: “Don’t be sad: the joy of the Lord is your stronghold” (Nehemiah 8:10). Acknowledging that, as a people, they had been unfaithful, he urged them to put the past behind them and to celebrate the fact that Nehemiah had reunified them and brought them back to realise that they were, indeed, a community blessed by God through Nehemiah. For that very reason they ought rejoice.
The message for us is that we, too, have been abundantly blessed by God. All that we are, have and have achieved are gifts from God. When we are acutely conscious of that, we won’t get trapped into regretting our past but will exude positivism, gratitude and happiness, all of which are contagious. This reading challenges me to ask myself whether I reflect to others, by the way in which I live, that I am grateful to God for all I am and have and that I am convinced that, whatever happens around me, I will always be in God’s safe keeping?
As we shift our focus to today’s gospel-reading, it is opportune to stop and reflect on what has filled our TV news bulletins and our newspapers over the last few days. We have heard and read a barrage of statements and boasts made by the newly installed President of the United States of America. They add up to his manifesto of what he intends to do in the course of his term of office. How much does that have in common with the manifesto of Jesus?
The substance of today’s gospel is Jesus’ manifesto for his mission to the world. It consists of a social justice agenda to provide justice and care for the forgotten and overlooked of his world, for those whom many of Jesus’ contemporaries believed their world would be better without: the destitute, those in prison, the blind and the marginalised and downtrodden. They were the very people identified by Isaiah in the scroll from which Jesus had read as the ones to whom God’s Messiah would reach out. What it was that upset the people gathered in front of Jesus in the synagogue of his home town were the only words that did not come from the mouth of Isaiah: “This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen” (Luke 4: 21).
Jesus did not say that it would be fulfilled. He boldly stated: “It is being fulfilled” right here and now. And it was that which shook everyone in the synagogue to the core.
What would Luke have intended it might do to us who profess to be followers of the Jesus who articulated that as his manifesto? Isn’t Luke implying that we had better set about identifying those in our parish and neighbourhood who are destitute, imprisoned, blind and trampled down and who, therefore, are deserving of our recognition, care, attention and encouragement?
The very first verses of today’s gospel-reading are Luke’s manifesto for the task of writing his Gospel for the community in his care. He addressed his undertaking to his “Excellency Theophilus” who might have been his sponsor. It could also have been a title personifying his community, for Theophilus literally means “lover of God”. As followers of Jesus are we, too, not meant to be lovers of the God who first loved us?
Has it ever occurred to us that we are meant to be good news to the destitute, the imprisoned, the blind and the down-trodden through the way we live and act? Luke has written a very carefully crafted Gospel. But aren’t we meant to be good news – the very meaning of the word “Gospel”? And we may be the only gospel that some people may ever encounter. By way of preparation, we might do well to articulate for ourselves who we believe Jesus to be and then busy ourselves determining how best to express that in Spirit-inspired action right where we live and right where we gather for worship.
