FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME C

[cappie]

When Jesus came to his hometown of Nazareth and began to teach, the local Jewish community was quite proud of him. They had heard of the things that he had done at Capernaum and were convinced that he was some sort of prophet from God. They believed that Jesus  was about to shower them with God’s favour because, after all, he was one of them, so that is what he would do. They agreed with what he was saying – at least at first.

Then Jesus starts talking about the blessing going not to those in his midst, but further abroad, to gentiles. He uses stories of Elijah and Elisha where God healed and included people that were not part of the fold, that God’s liberation is more inclusive and abundant than the exclusive covenant that the people in the synagogue believed God had with them. With this, everything changes.

It is interesting how the mind can turn quickly when we do not agree with someone. We may feel that a priest, a political leader, a teacher, or a friend is wonderful until they say or do something that isn’t exactly what we believe. Then we are shocked or angry, because it feels good to be part of a group that we understand and that we think understands us as well. When someone who is one of us says something contrary or challenges the current status, we are often quick to turn on him or her

This is where we find Jesus in our gospel story today. When the  inclusiveness of Jesus’ message became clear to those in his home congregation, their commitment to their own  boundaries they erected overtook the joy that they initially had in receiving a prophet of God in their midst. They were blinded by indignation and did not want to believe that God’s grace is not subject to our lists of who is in and who is out.

This is the cautionary tale that we receive from those at Jesus’ hometown synagogue. They were so focused on what they believed God’s blessing should look like – just for them – that they missed the opportunity of grace that Jesus was bearing. The gospel says that “everyone in the synagogue was enraged” and “ hustled him out of the town.” How dare Jesus tell them who should be included? How dare Jesus tell us?

Part of becoming a maturing Christian is learning how to put our boundaries and expectations aside in order to listen to what God’s are. This is challenging work, and it is lifelong.

In our Second Reading today, the Apostle Paul is encouraging the churches in Corinth to love in the radical way that Jesus teaches. They are enmeshed in conflict around what spiritual gifts are the greatest. To help them understand, Paul writes to them of love and spiritual maturity. He likens the growth of our hearts to the growth in our life cycle, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” We know that when we are children, we have a narrow view of the world. It is always about us and what is in our immediate vicinity. As we grow into adulthood and experience more of life, we understand how big the world is. As we mature as Christians, we understand more fully what grace is, and it continues to widen our hearts through love.

Being a Christian isn’t easy. Neither Jesus nor Paul ever tells us that it is. It requires things of us, as it says in  the Catechism: “The duty of all Christians is to follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God.” This is a full-time job that shapes our lives. It calls us to live, to die to ourselves and be resurrected with Jesus over and over and over again. With each time, our hearts get a little wider, we know grace that much more deeply, and we are able to follow Jesus a little bit more down the road of love.

When Jesus speaks to his hometown synagogue, he’s speaking to our hometown church, too. Paul echoes Jesus’ message, “ In short, there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.”

Jesus shows us how to love as He loved—to love God as our Father, as the one who formed us in the womb and destined us to hear His saving Word. This is the salvation, the “mighty works of the Lord,” that we, like the psalmist, are thankful to proclaim daily in the Eucharist.