Mass Readings for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Bible Sunday):
Nehemiah 8.2-6, 8-10 Psalm 19.7-9, 14 1 Corinthians 12.12-30 Luke 1.1-4; 4.14-21
In today’s gospel we have Jesus making an assertion that challenges us all; and by “all” I mean every human being. We hear his words, the words of the incarnate Word of God, and we have to respond, we have to make up our mind about him. What Jesus means by saying, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” is something we had better understand because what he says is the basis for what we might call the Christian revolution; and that’s a revolution still underway by the power and working of the holy spirit; but know that this is no revolution as the world knows revolution with all its violence, score-settling, betrayal and corruption; “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” is where all worldly revolutions end up.
Christ by his passion has absorbed all that in his person, the blood spilled in his revolution, is his own; and so that price has been paid. So, what he calls us to has little to do with the revolutions of human history, but is something divine, something to which our bloody political revolutions bear little resemblance. And yet, it still calls for us to have a revolutionary commitment.
But isn’t that the character of Jesus, to demand this: to make of your decision about him an all or nothing matter? He says elsewhere, in the gospel of Matthew (12.30), “he who is not with me is against me.” And in Revelation (3.16) we are warned about being “lukewarm” toward him.
What we hear today is stunning: it is the “mic drop” moment per excellence.
A “mic drop” moment is in reference to the practice of rappers, at least in the early days of popularity of rap music, when the rap artist finished his performance with a dramatic dropping of the microphone to the stage floor.
The term is now used metaphorically. A “mic drop moment” is any kind of gesture or action by a performer to stun the audience into sudden silence; and then, the expectation is that there follows a burst of applause.
Jesus did it long before rap music. He left a crowd in a synagogue in silent awe when, instead of the expected sermon from the man people had heard so much about, he sits down. Then from his seat he declares that the scripture was fulfilled even as they listened to it.
Now I imagine it took some time to process what he had said, that the silence would be more than justified as those present had to think, “now just what does he mean by that?” It’s the question we need to ask. The answer comes through our study of the word of God.
And so, there are a couple of things to note: one, that this prophetic passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah is in reference to the proclaiming of the Jubilee. If we want to find a better word than “revolution” that captures what Jesus wants of us, it may be this word “Jubilee.”
As some of you know, the Jubilee was the provision in the Torah (found in the 25th chapter of Leviticus), for what today we might call a “reset” of society that was to occur every 50th year.
Those who had fallen into slavery were to be freed; debts were to be forgiven; land sold was to be returned. And because it happens every fifty years, it really means that should one generation mess things up, the following generation experiences the reset. Society gets another chance; and children don’t bear the consequences of their elders’ foolishness, sinfulness and pride.
Sadly, we know that was a part of the law more honored in the breech than in the observance. Indeed, no one is sure if it ever was fully observed by the Israelites.
Now we also know that it was understood that only a person of authority could declare the Jubilee. By the time Jesus reads this, everyone would have understood that authority as the king.
So, is Jesus here publicly claiming to be the king? The question is almost beside the point because the king is only carrying out the law in proclaiming the jubilee. It’s not the king’s jubilee; it is God’s. God has ordained it, and so this isn’t a royal project, or a matter of regal largesse. The Jubilee is a mandate to the nation that came from heaven, not the king.
More subtly yet more profoundly, what Jesus is saying is not so much that there will now be a Jubilee, rather that he is the Jubilee. In him, and through him, the longed-for release from bondage, debt, poverty and disenfranchisement is possible. So, no longer is it a matter of a long-ignored law left unenforced by the king or other authorities, but the Jubilee comes in a person. Jesus enacts it wherever he goes, wherever he is present, for whomever identifies himself with Jesus.
And I don’t think that occurred to people right then and there in Nazareth. What happens from out of this famous incident in the Nazareth synagogue is a lot of private reflection afterward, discussion, and at last realization that this is what Jesus meant. And in that, there comes the many who enthusiastically embrace him, but also the many who must have rejected him as a madman.
We are still struggling with this famous declaration; and too many societies that claim to be Christian or at least claim that their values align with those of the gospel pull back from the Jubilee; too many people who take the name of Christ, pull back from enacting the principles of the Jubilee in their own lives.
However, there are a great many people today talking about a “reset” – a Jubilee of sorts, but one I fear will bear little resemblance to what God intended for Israel of ancient days, or the New Israel, the Church. This reset appears very much to be strange top-down revolution, but with likely the same consequences of all revolutions: massive suffering, scapegoating, injustice, and our coming to know a new boss, same as the old boss.
The Church as the New Israel has a basic commitment to live out the Jubilee, to model it for the world, and by that, invite the world to participate in it. So we best find out what the Jubilee is to be in our times.
I wouldn’t say the Jubilee is socialism, or free market capitalism, for that matter. We know that under both systems, history demonstrating this, recent events making it plain: power and wealth in both instances accrues to a few. Like the boardgame monopoly, the game always ends with one player having everything.
Life, our complex society and economy are not so simple as a boardgame. To untangle the knots we’ve tied ourselves into will not be an easy matter, yet I believe we all have a sense that we can’t keep going as we are, the situation is unsustainable.
As I said before, to understand Jesus is to listen to him, reflect, discuss, and find our way to new understanding.
Today we celebrate Bible Sunday, and that is a call to open our Bibles where the Word of God is found and to read, discuss and open our hearts and minds to it.
What is the Jubilee in our times? What does it mean to fulfil these words of scripture? We must answer that and do so with urgency. Urgency because we are always to live in anticipation of Christ’s return. Urgency because if we fail to translate the gospel into principles of community life as well as individual behavior, we risk being overtaken by the revolutionaries who will plunge us into further chaos.
There is certainly no time now to go into what a Christian economics really looks like, how a democracy framed by the gospel would work, but asking ourselves about these things is necessary to rebuilding our civilization that is driving fast to bankruptcy, both in economic and moral terms.
Our first reading is a somber one if you know the larger story. Nehemiah is relating the story of the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the years of exile that followed its conquest by Babylon. The city was largely a ruin; and the Temple a wreck; and the people had forgotten God’s law, they did not know his holy word, and they had fallen into sin. And so, the prophet Ezra spoke to the people gathered on that particular day. He read them the law, opened to them again the great gift of divine wisdom; and the people wept over how far they had fallen, how far they were from the Jubilee that God had called them to.
And yet Ezra would have none of that. Even as he stood amidst the ruins, and looked upon a people defeated, divided, impoverished, he insisted that there was reason for hope. Why? Because they had what was essential. More important than new foundations for rebuilding, even more essential than blocks of stone to build up new walls to defend the city, is the Word of God to guide them in reconstructing their society, repairing their community, restoring Jerusalem – and this they had.
“…eat the fat and drink sweet wine” he tells the people. Put off your mourning on this holy day, he says to them.
And so too does Christ tell us to rejoice as on the day of Jubilee for we possess not only His word, but possess him as surely as we give ourselves into his possession. The scripture is fulfilled, it is for us to live it out through Christ, guided by his holy word, giving thanks in the Eucharistic feast.
Amen.