There’s No Place Like Home | August 31, 2015

 August 31, 2015

There’s no place like home. Every now and then I feel the need to reconnect with my roots and one of my favorite ways to do that is to go to daily mass at the parish I grew up in. My family was very involved in the parish and I was a well-known and well-loved youth in our community. Growing up in a vibrant parish family has been a tremendous gift and a major contributing factor in my own spiritual formation and success as a youth minister. When I do go to mass at St. Pius, I immediately feel like I’m home. The smell is so familiar and stirs up wonderful memories of faith, family, and friends. I click right back into being well loved and it’s like a blanket of comfort for me to know that I still belong there. The people that attend daily mass are older for sure but in my eyes, they’ve stayed the same after all these years. They always greet me with hugs and kisses and of course a, “We sure do miss you.” Let’s face it, when I need an affirmation fix, I go to my home parish and let my elders love on me until I feel well again. There’s no place like home.

Jesus, in today’s gospel, was observing the Sabbath at his home synagogue in Nazareth (probably visiting his mom for the weekend). I’m sure you can picture the scene when a handsome single man comes to church with his mom: the ladies swoon and immediately start playing matchmaker, the men are impressed with his stature and confident presence, the young women blush and covertly check him out through corner of their eye, and the young men remember what a great guy he was. I wonder if Jesus just chuckled to himself whenever this kind of buzz was happening, because unlike a random strapping young bachelor who THINKS he is the center of the universe, Jesus actually IS the center of the universe!! And Mary must have also done the same kind of inner chuckle because while the other Jewish moms bragged about their sons being doctors and lawyers, Mary could have actually come back with, “Well, my son created the universe.” Bam!! That’s probably one of the many reasons why God did not choose me to be the mother of his son. Just sayin’.

Back to the story…When Jesus stood up to read in the synagogue his incredible knowledge of scripture became evident. Scrolls had no punctuation and were read from right to left, and it took a tremendous amount of training and in depth knowledge of the story to be able to read them in the synagogue. In fact, if you made a mistake, you were required to start back at the very beginning and after three mistakes; they would take the scroll away from you. Scrolls were huge and held between two rollers that would contain the entire book (in this case…Isaiah). A detail to back up Jesus’ expertise with scripture says, “Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written…” Remember there was no punctuation, no chapters or verses, and the scroll contained the ENTIRE book, but Jesus knew his Torah well and was able to find the right place easily.

Next picture yourself in front of all your best friends, your entire class at school or coworkers, and your family reading the following: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon ME, because he has anointed ME to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent ME to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Three times he emphasizes ME in the scripture that every Jew knows is about the Messiah!!! I can tell you right now that that would not fly with my friends and family. I mean I’m sure they think I’m pretty great, but the Messiah?? Yeah, no. At first, everyone was pretty darn impressed with his eloquence and the way he knew his scripture and it says that they were all looking at him intently. At this point, Jesus knew he had their attention and since he was the last reader, he had the privilege to preach or comment on the scripture (similar to the priest giving a homily after the last reading in our church). Then he says in case you were wondering, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing”, because I was talking about ME (I added the last part, by the way)!! The crowd is still taken by his eloquence. Raise your hand if you ever been swooned by an eloquent preacher and they had your attention from the first word out of their mouth? Jesus was a gifted speaker. 

The skeptic in the crowd (there’s always one), started to get all puffy and said wait a minute, “Is this not the son of Joseph?” In other words, he’s just the son of a gritty carpenter, how does he even know what he’s talking about. As with any negative bandwagon, people love to jump on for the ride. Jesus understands that they want proof and they want him to perform some of the miracles they have heard about through the rumor mill. Jesus knows that even if he did “perform” for them, they would still reduce him to being just Joseph’s son and so he says, “No prophet is accepted in his hometown.” He uses both Elijah and Elisha to back this argument up and then the people get really pissed. So what exactly would it take for your close personal friends and family to actually want to chase you to the edge of a cliff and kill you? Well, all Jesus had to do was first allude that he was the Messiah and then put himself in the same category as two of their most beloved prophets. Yes, they tried to chase him off of a cliff to his death!!! He managed to escape and the gospel says, “But he passed through the midst of them and went away.” I always picture Harry Potter under his invisibility cloak here, but the point is that he left his home for good.

We are all called out on a mission and that requires stepping outside of our comfort zones. Even Jesus, the Messiah and Savior of the world, was rejected not only by strangers, but by those closest to him. When we know the story well enough, we will be able to proclaim it with the kind of eloquence that draws people in to listen. When we stay close to Christ, even if we are persecuted and chased away, we will be able to pass through the storms of life and onto the next place that needs to be told about the truth. And let’s not forget the words that Isaiah uses to describe The Christ (The Anointed): bring glad tidings to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives, and restore sight to the blind. Christ leads the way in bringing joy, freedom, and vision to the poor, the oppressed and the blind. Through, in, and with Christ alone can this be accomplished and united to him we can truly say, there’s no place like home.  

Reading 1 1 THES 4:13-18

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
about those who have fallen asleep,
so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose,
so too will God, through Jesus,
bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord,
that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,
will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself, with a word of command,
with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God,
will come down from heaven, 
and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive, who are left,
will be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air.
Thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words.

Responsorial Psalm PS 96:1 AND 3, 4-5, 11-12, 13

R. (13b) The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all you lands.
Tell his glory among the nations;
among all peoples, his wondrous deeds.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
For great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
awesome is he, beyond all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are things of nought,
but the LORD made the heavens.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
let the sea and what fills it resound;
let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Before the LORD, for he comes;
for he comes to rule the earth.
He shall rule the world with justice
and the peoples with his constancy.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.

Alleluia SEE LK 4:18

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel LK 4:16-30

Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,
and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

Rolling up the scroll,
he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They also asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph?”
He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb,
‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place
the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’”
And he said,
“Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.
But he passed through the midst of them and went away.