4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Jer 1:4-5, 17-19
Ps 71:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 15, 17
1 Cor 12:31--13:13 or 13:4-13
Lk 4:21-30

A favorite Christian writer of mine, Frederick Buechner, once wrote that there’s no record of anyone inviting a prophet home to dinner more than once. Buechner’s quip was his way to define the role of the biblical prophets—certainly they were controversial figures!

Today we hear God choose Jeremiah for that role. God warns the prophet that his message to the kings and priests of Judah will be so challenging that he’ll meet with opposition. Biblical prophets weren’t out to make enemies, but felt impelled to speak the truth, God’s truth, with love. It just so happened that their message was often "tough love."

Jesus, in our Gospel today, is a prophet visiting his hometown. He anticipates resistance, stating clearly that no prophet is ever accepted in his native place. His words prove true as the people rise up to throw Jesus over a cliff!

Few of us are called to be prophets—but I suspect we can identify some contemporary figures who fit that role. Pope John Paul the Second has often challenged the Church and the secular world with his teaching of the Gospel, on a variety of subjects from abortion to capital punishment to social justice.

How do we accept the prophetic message we hear proclaimed each Sunday? And would we invite the bearer of that message home for Sunday dinner?

I’m Father Greg Friedman with the "Sunday Soundbite" for St. Anthony Messenger Press, on the Web at FranciscanRadio.org.

Scripture:

•Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. (Jeremiah 1:5)

•On you I depend from birth; from my mother’s womb you are my strength. (Psalm 71:6)

•It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:7,8a)

•And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that flowed from his mouth. (Luke 4:22)

•…to hurl him down headlong. But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away. (Luke 4:30)

Reflection:

•Does Jesus have a different “world view"; from the townspeople who were so outraged at his words that they wanted to kill him?

•Can you look past the expectations (consciousness) of others— of the world—to find God?

•Is the love of a mother as a metaphor for of God’s love, beyond the ordinary expectations of the world?

•Why does Jesus leave? Where may he be found after he departs from the mob?

In brief, this form of consciousness assumes a totally different kind of self-awareness from that of the Cartesian thinking-self which is its own justification and its own center. Here the individual is aware of himself as a soon-to-be-dissolved in self-giving, in love, in “letting-go,” in ecstasy, in God—there are many ways of phrasing it. The self is not its own center and does not orbit around itself; it is centered on God, the one center of all, which is “everywhere and nowhere” in whom we are all encountered, from whom we all proceed. Thus from the very start this one consciousness is disposed to encounter “the other” with whom it is already united “in God.”