LUKE 4: 14-21

Laterally Luke…Epiphany 3… Revised 2019

(Preachers in OZ may connect with Australia Day - or, Invasion Day as our indigenous folk see it.)

If my train of thought seems even stranger than usual, please ponder before dismissing! Two Sundays ago we celebrated Our Lord’s Baptism by JB. Last Sunday, a wedding at Cana. Today we’re celebrating Jesus returning to Nazareth ‘in the power of the Spirit’. (Next week concluding today’s passage, we’ll be celebrating His surviving an attempt on His life!)

When people in the synagogue hear Jesus telling them IS’s great prophecy from long ago is being fulfilled today in His own person, everyone’s attention is ‘riveted on Him’². Later, as we’ll hear next week, people are at His throat, but let’s explore that then. Today, though, expectations are raised! 

Like Moses before him, IS can only speak his prophecies because he’s a person who speaks with YHWH God - continuously! Prophets who tell us about God before speaking with God - not talking with themselves - are likely to be false! Come back to Jesus’ baptism by JB; John, too, can only speak about God because he converses with YHWH God continuously. Jesus’ baptism happens because JB yields to God’s judgment over his own. And God then confirms this with the proclamation of His Son.

Baptism should always raise expectations. For ourselves & each other. The first words of IS that Jesus reads to the congregation: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me’… is indication Jesus recognises His baptism by JB in Jordan as His own anointing to be God’s promised Messiah. Are we living out our own baptism as the anoint-ing by Holy Spirit of God to be ‘Good news for the poor, pardon for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, YHWH’s amnesty^1. 

There’s a ‘joining of all the dots’ here too good not to explore. The power of Jesus’ Baptism makes its presence felt in Nazareth where we meet up with Jesus today, & in earlier visits He pays to synagogues in Galilee. He is ‘acclaimed by everyone’^2. Isn’t His first Sign, at Cana, also an outworking of being baptised & ‘in the power of the Spirit’ as Jesus is?

A good way to go, is to make ourselves a significant sized Baptismal Candle if we don’t have one already. Check the date of our Baptism, & start to celebrate our being born of water & Spirit all year round with that candle as a down-to-earth reminder in a prominent place in our home to remind us constantly to converse with God. Light it each anniversary, & by all means on other significant days in our life. As I’ve grown into my own baptism over the years, I discern a closing of the gap between theologising, &, practising the Faith! A seed for this train of thought was sown for me years ago in ‘Together at Baptism’, by Fr. Joseph Payne, CSC.¹ Time to start growing today? 

Brian

Afterthought: There’s no escaping that ‘fulfilled today’ bit. ‘Today’ is always today, whenever it happens. As that old wisdom has it, ‘tomorrow never comes!’

¹   Ave Maria,  Ind. , 1971    ² Complete Gospels, Polebridge, ad loc.