January 31: Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
People are fickle. One minute they love you and the next moment they hate you. Jesus experienced this phenomenon in the gospel passage from Luke today. Immediately after Jesus proclaimed the text from Isaiah in the synagogue, Luke tells us that “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came out of his mouth” (Luke 4:22).
Jesus must have felt good to be so affirmed. But instead of basking in the glory of the crowd’s admiration, Jesus chose to push the envelope a little bit. In his references to the prophets Elijah and Elisha, he suggests that his powers are meant not just for the people of Nazareth, but for others as well. In other words, he challenges what he has perceived to be the crowd’s mindset: “Wouldn’t it be great if our own hero from Nazareth performed some miracles around here?”
Upset that they cannot bend Jesus toward their own ends, the crowd gets angry and tries to hurl him off a cliff. Seemingly unperturbed, he “passed through the midst of them and went on his way” (Luke 4:30). In other words, Jesus didn’t seem to let their rage toward him get to him. He knew who he was – the beloved son of God- and he didn’t need to react to the crowd’s anger.
The crowd’s reaction is an excellent example that so much of what we perceive has everything to do with what’s inside our heads and little to do with the person or thing perceived. The person of Jesus hadn’t changed from the time of his proclamation in the synagogue to when he escaped from the crowd’s anger. But the crowd’s perception of Jesus had changed. Mildly rebuked by Jesus for wanting to use his power toward their own ends, their admiration ended abruptly and they wanted to kill him.
Anyone who has ever experienced the sudden change of heart people can have towards another for no good reason knows what it feels like to be unjustly persecuted. During times like these, when we haven’t changed but people’s perception of us has veered toward the negative, we can feel dismayed, disheartened, bewildered. We may start to question ourselves, our motives, our values. We may even start to internalize others’ negative opinions of us, even if they are unwarranted.
But these are precisely the times we need to hold onto our “belovedness”, as Henri Nowen reminded us in his sermon “Being the Beloved”. We need to remember, as Jesus did, that we are not what people say about us, but that who we are is special and worthy. After all, we were known by God before we were even “formed in the womb”, as Jeremiah tells us in today’s reading. We need to allow God to tell us as God told Jeremiah, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you” (Jeremiah 1: 5).
Then we, along with the Psalmist can say, “I have been sustained by you ever since I was born; from my mother’s womb you have been my strength; my praise shall be always of you” (Psalm 71:6).