Thursday, September 25, 2014
Luke 4:14-30
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is presented in the same terms as the great prophets of the Old Testament, who acted as commentators on the social injustices of the time. Prophets often walk a lonely road, because their message is rarely a comfortable one. Though Jesus’s sermon strikes the listeners as a rejection, if we go deeper into the words, he speaks of a great deal of hope: of the far-reaching goodness that God brings to the oppressed – those known and unknown to God.
Hope is a paradox, because it requires a measure of despair to be true. One cannot hope without a hint of uncertainty in the back of the mind. The great prophets felt great despair at the sight of the people of God turning from God. Yet they continued to call out these dark truths and spoke of the forgiveness of God, wondering if one day that forgiveness might not come, and hoping that some day the people would change.
Jesus’s sermon is an opening to follow him on a way forward. I don’t know if he knows which way “forward” is. But I do know that he trusts and hopes that it is good.
- Joshua Zentner-Barrett
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