(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.
The Gospel according to Luke devotes two chapters to the conceptions and births of John the Baptist and Jesus. It then devotes half of the third chapter to the ministry of John and the baptism and genealogy of Jesus. Our passage today picks up the ministry of Jesus, beginning in Nazareth.
Can a hometown boy or girl make it at home? I have lived in small towns where local kids have grown up to become something in sports and the towns’ leaders celebrate them and make a big thing of them. The town also gets revenue from their fame.
Prophets, however, do not help the finances of their towns. Jesus returned to his hometown and spoke inspiring words about freedom from debt and oppression, about the word of God being larger than his hometown. Such a message, however, would not bring renown but hostile armies to Nazareth. The people turned against the prophet.
This is the work of the Spirit of Lord. The Spirt proclaims freedom, liberty, glad tidings and times acceptable to the Lord. In a space where a conquering arming could take its pleasure on a captured people, in circumstances where the poor are predominantly the only ones in prison, in a time when health care is lacking for those without financial power, the Spirit of God declares an end to oppression of all kinds. This is the work of Jesus.
This is also our work. I know our military has tried to bring freedom from imperialism and oppression to other peoples, usually at great cost, but this must also be the work of us individuals.
A woman tortured from within by rejection from her family longs for freedom from that hostility. The child bullied in school longs for freedom from that prison. An elderly person longs for freedom from loneliness. Many people are starved for friendship by the separation imposed by the pandemic. Many people we meet every day need the freedom given by the Spirit. We are anointed by the Spirit of the Lord to bring the freedom of the reign of God to those who long for it.
Even if we must proclaim the word in our hometowns, we must proclaim the reign of God. The proclamation includes social justice as it also includes economic, relational and personal justices, but it primarily means God’s merciful justice overtaking the world through the person of Jesus and his followers. All this the people of Jesus’ home town did not understand just as the people near and dear to us may find it threatening.