Last Sunday we heard the first words and the final words of the Mother of Jesus in the Gospel of John. Today, we hear the first words proclaimed to the people of Israel after their exile in Babylon. We also hear the first words of Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry.
Nehemiah takes us to a beautiful and powerful scene. Ezra, the priest and scribe, gathered the people of Israel for the solemn reading of the Torah. This was a proclamation of the five books of the Law that God had given to his people through Moses. It is very likely that this was the first gathering of the people since they had returned to Jerusalem from their exile in Babylon. Three generations had passed since the chosen people of the Lord had gathered in the holy city. When the people of the Lord heard the word of the Lord and the explanation of his holy word, the people wept. They wept because they knew that they had not lived as the Lord had invited his chosen people to live. Yet the word of the Lord given through Ezra is not a word of condemnation. The word of the Lord is a message of joy and a message of hope.
“Do not weep . . . Today is holy to the Lord . . . Do not be saddened, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength.” The word of the Lord called the chosen people of the Lord to life in his Spirit.
Luke takes us to the synagogue at Nazareth. Jesus preaches for the first time in the synagogue of Nazareth. After his baptism by John and his time of temptation in the desert, he returned to the town where he was raised. Taking the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, Jesus read, “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 bring liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
When Jesus finished reading, he rolled up the scroll. There would be no long day of the reading of the scriptures as in the days of Ezra. There would be no extended commentary on the passage of prophecy. The message of Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth was simple: “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
The prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled because Isaiah was talking about Jesus. The Spirit of the Lord was upon him. He had been anointed to bring glad tidings to the poor, to bring liberty to the captives, and to bring the recovery of sight to the blind. The Lord Jesus, at the beginning of his public ministry, was announcing that he had come to bring the Spirit and he had come to bring life. The Lord Jesus had come into the world to bring the good news of the love of the Father to those whose hearts were broken. He had come to set us free from the power of sin and death and to heal the blindness of our souls by the light of his glory. The Lord Jesus had come to break the forces of oppression with the power of his word and the blood of his cross. And the Lord Jesus did this for us, not so that we might live for ourselves, but that we might live for him. We share the sacred task of bringing glad tidings to the poor and healing to the brokenhearted. But we can share the good news and the healing power of the Gospel only because we have received the good news and the healing power of the Gospel. We give what we have been given.
As we now enter into the mystery of the Lord’s love and his healing power in the Eucharist, we place our poverty of spirit before the Lord. We admit our blindness and our need for liberation. We receive with joy the Spirit of the Lord and Jesus himself will nourish us to fulfill his word in our lives. Amen.
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