Kirkwood-Meditations: Prophecy and Gentiles (4th Sunday after Epiphany, January 30, 2022]

Prophecy and Gentiles

Copyright Wolf Kirchmeir

[Jeremiah 1:4-10: Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30]

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel is a puzzlement. When I read it, two things caught my attention. First, that Jesus claims to be a prophet. And second, that he mentions how Elijah did not help the Israelites. I saw no obvious way to make sense of this.

Where to begin? I looked for jokes about prophets online. Jokes often help to make sense of puzzling concepts because the humour lies in the oddities in those concepts. But the jokes were all either obvious puns, or about fortune tellers. Whatever Jesus had in mind, being a fortune teller was not it.

     Let’s begin with the concepts of prophet and prophecy. Jesus said, Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country.
     We humans like certainty. Sure, we know we have to take chances, but we’d rather bet on a sure thing. Or as close to a sure thing as the uncertainties of life allow. So when some people claim they know what will happen, we line up to give them our cash. Fortune tellers have always found a ready market for their flimflam.
     But Jesus doesn’t claim to be a fortune teller. He doesn’t gaze into a crystal ball, or study the lines on your palm, or poke around in the entrails of a chicken, or watch the flight of birds, or lay out cards on the table, or do any of the other things fortune tellers do to make their insights look mysterious and true. It’s time for some research into the meaning of the word “prophet”. Here’s what I found:
     The word “prophet” is borrowed from the Greek. Originally, it did not mean a person who foretells the future. It meant someone who spoke on behalf of a god, someone who passed on the divine message. Prophets answered the questions that people put to the gods. Of course, if the seeker after knowledge wanted to know about their future, the prophet would tell them what the god said about coming events. So the connection between prophecy and fortune-telling was there from the beginning.
   The translators of the Bible used the word “prophet” for the Hebrew nabj, which means soothsayer or inspired prophet. But soothsayer means truth speaker. A person inspired by the Spirit would be a truth speaker first and foremost. That’s what we find in the Bible. We also find something else: When the biblical prophets spoke of the future, it was almost always linked to the present. Mostly, their messages were variations on one theme: Keep on doing what you’re doing, and it will go badly with you. Change, and your future will be one of peace, prosperity and joy.

In other words, what you do now is what matters. Because what you do now has consequences. And those consequences are your future.

That’s a thought I will come back to.

So now let’s take another look at the Gospel. Jesus has just read from the Torah, as we heard last Sunday. He’s read from Isaiah, and comments that today the scripture that he read was fulfilled.

He sits down, and there’s a bit of a commotion. His listeners mutter that he’s the son of Joseph, the carpenter. How can he claim to be inspired by the Spirit? How can he claim to be an inspired prophet? And so on.

Jesus takes note. He knows they want him to perform signs and wonders, just as he did at Capernaum. But no prophet is acceptable in his own country. And then he reminds his listeners that in a time of famine Elijah did not help the Israelite widows, but did help a widow from Sidon. And although there were many Israelite lepers, Elijah healed only Naam the Syrian.

The implication is clear: Jesus will not perform the signs and wonders that his fellow villagers expect. It’s no surprise that they would be annoyed. But enraged enough to want to kill him? There’s a puzzle here.

Lets look at this event from a different angle.
Jesus was a celebrity. People had heard about him. When they knew he was nearby, they went to see and hear him. The elders of Nazareth no doubt felt that having such a famous son of their village read from the Torah would be good for them. We often ask celebrities to do small favours for us, hoping that some of that celebrity magic will rub off on us.

So did Jesus play the celebrity game? Well, he did and he didn’t. Yes, he agreed to read. But he read a text that might help people make sense of him as something other than, as someone more than a celebrity. Him that hath ears, let him hear, he says in another place. That is, Listen hard, for otherwise you may miss what I have to say.

So let’s listen hard.

     The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he read. That makes him a prophet, something he emphasises a few moments later. The reading is a message of hope and deliverance. His later reference to Elijah’s helping the widow and curing Naam echoes that message.
     Then he says, The scripture has been fulfilled in your presence.
     And right there we run into a stumbling block. If we think of prophecy only as being about the future, then “fulfilled” means “what was foretold has now, finally, happened.” But if we think about prophecy as truth speaking, then “fulfilled” means “The truth that Isaiah spoke then, I have spoken also.”
     And that should make us hear Jesus’s words as meaning exactly the same now as when he read them, and when Isaiah first spoke them.
     That meaning is a difficult one. Or rather, it’s difficult for us to accept.
     That meaning resonates throughout the Old and New Testaments. God doesn’t like oppression. He doesn’t like injustice. He doesn’t like the rich and powerful preying on the poor and weak. Sell what you have and give the money to the poor, Jesus says to the rich young man who wants to follow him.
     And that’s just the beginning. Because God doesn’t play favourites, either. He makes no exceptions, and accepts no excuses. Elijah ministered to a widow from Sidon, and healed a leper from Syria. Both were supposedly Israel’s enemies.
     Jesus’s point is clear: Not only is a prophet not acceptable in his own country, he doesn’t even try to be. For the truth he speaks applies to all humankind. The good news he brings is good news for all people. It’s not limited to a select few.
     No wonder the people of Nazareth were enraged with Jesus. His words meant that their God was not only their own. Their God did not care exclusively about them. Their God did not exist to meet only their needs and fulfill only their desires. Worse, by thinking of their God as exclusively theirs, they saw their God as their property, accountable only to them. And that attitude gets it exactly backwards. Jesus’s reading from Isaiah, his refusal to perform signs and wonders, and his reminder of Elijah’s career made that perfectly clear.
     No wonder they reacted with fury.
     But how different are we? Don’t we tend to think of ourselves as the elect, the ones with a special relationship to God?
     Well, we are the elect. We do have a special relationship with God. At least, I hope we do.

But that relationship is not exclusive. God offers it to everyone and anyone.