The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 28, 2007
12:45PM Meditation
Luke 4:21-30
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
In the decade before the American Civil War many southern politicians and slaveholders attempted to justify slavery by drawing attention to the supposed benefits to slaves of being owned by other people. They noted that slaves had the assurance of food, shelter, and clothing. They had masters who cared for them, but if they were freed, deprived of their caretakers, society would not be as kind. Their enslavement, so the argument went, was a sign of the slave owners’ affection for the slaves. This rhetoric was exposed for the lie that it was after the Civil War, when the emancipated slaves were attacked by the same people who had ostensibly loved them. Within fifteen years of their emancipation most blacks in the South had been disenfranchised, strict segregation of blacks from whites was the norm, and terrorist organizations like the KKK had free reign to keep blacks from improving themselves socially, politically, and economically. In other words, the slaveholders ‘loved’ the slaves only insofar as they could love them on their own terms.
Slavery has, of course, been abolished in this country, but this does not prevent people from acting like they own their family members, friends, and neighbors. In the Gospel we will hear today Jesus is treated in this manner by the people with whom he had grown up. After his very short sermon at the synagogue in Nazareth the people of his hometown offered him platitudes, speaking well of him to a point. Their condescension, however, was revealed when they asked, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22). Jesus knew what they meant by asking this rhetorical question – they meant that such things couldn’t possibly be true of Joseph’s son. So Jesus challenged them, and within minutes the people who supposedly loved Jesus, supposedly knew him better than everyone else, were trying to throw him off the edge of a cliff.
Jesus’ hometown folks were showing how they loved their hometown boy on their own terms. Their love was one conditioned on Jesus knowing his place and playing the part of a subservient and inoffensive young man. It is essentially the same mentality that slaveholders had towards their slaves, one that does not permit a man to rise above the station in life that the people in power have assigned to him. Jesus’ mission required that he rise above this station, so he was not content to be ridiculed and looked down upon by people more concerned with what he had done than with what he was going to do. His townsfolk were stuck in the past, attached to the old dispensation, so they could not see, they did not want to see, how the future would be different if they let Jesus do what he was called to do. Not only did they not want to let him fulfill his mission, they actively tried to prevent his success. When he made clear his intentions they tried to murder him.
Love that is conditioned upon us doing what we have always done, or doing what others expect us to do, is not in fact love. In perhaps the most beautiful chapter of the New Testament, St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 provides for us the definition of love. Within that definition St. Paul asserts that love does not insist on its own way. Slaveholders, for example, who give orders and love only when the slave is obedient do not love the slave but themselves. Likewise, neighbors who speak well of you only if you do not talk about a new way of doing things do not love you but their current circumstances. To insist on our own way, for others to insist on their way, represents not love arrogance, pride that desires to put oneself in the place of God, a manifestation of Adam’s original sin.
If we are not to insist on our own way, what then do we insist upon? Jesus, to be sure, was as insistent as his fellow townspeople, but his insistence had a different basis. Whereas the people of Nazareth insisted upon having the privilege of looking down their noses at the Son of God, Jesus insisted upon the fulfillment of the will of our heavenly Father. He told them that the prophesy of Isaiah had been fulfilled in their hearing, and demonstrating that they had no power over him, he escaped their clutches and preserved his life from their evil designs. Jesus did not insist on his own way but upon the truth, the pursuit of virtue, and the fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption for His people. Jesus spoke the truth, thwarted wickedness, and pressed ahead with his missionary activity, all in one short visit to his hometown.
The same is expected of us. When we are given the opportunity, we are to speak the truth, not insisting on our own interpretation of words and events, but looking to the Church and Christ’s Vicar on earth for guidance and wisdom. When we are witnesses to the commission of crimes, the flouting of God’s law and Church teaching, we are to do what is in our power to right wrongs and offer ourselves that mercy and justice might prevail. In doing so we are not insisting on our own way, but pointing to the wisdom of the ages, certain that the sanctity of human life demands we thwart evil. Finally, when we are met by those who would halt our mission of bringing the Gospel to those God has assigned us to aid, we are to press on, insistent that God’s love requires we do what we have been called to do. That is, we do not insist upon what we want but on what God wants, and in humble obedience to our father in Christ, we trust the leadership of our bishop to help in our discernment of what God desires.
True love, then, distinguishes itself from false love in its desire for the truth, whatever the cost may be. False love may require the sacrifice of others, but is unwilling to sacrifice itself, unwilling to submit to the judgment that a greater good may exist outside its desires. Whereas false love desires its own good, true love always desires the good of others and emulates the self-emptying of Christ as the means of insistence.
To determine friend from foe, to distinguish real love from the false variety, we need answer just three things, “Does he honor the Truth, does he pursue virtue, and does he submit to God’s will for his life?” If the answer to any of these is no we have found someone who desires to be our master. But if we the answer to all three is yes, we have found a fellow servant. Love both, but place your life in the hands of only the latter.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.