By Rev. Canon David b. Tabo-oy
“Jesus said to them, “Prophets are respected everywhere except in their own hometown and by their relatives and their family.” Luke 6:4
Amidst continuing struggle for a better existence in any given society, the church continues its role as conscience pricking of any government leadership. As long as there is blatant contradiction to Jesus Christ’s promise of abundant life to all, the church if it remains to be faithful to the Lord’s command in the scriptures will continue undaunted in its prophetic ministry. This is the primary reason of existence of any church. Faithfulness to the Lord’s command to uncompromisingly proclaim His Good News to all people in all conditions is a continuing challenge to the Jesus movement today. This is prophetic ministry which Jesus exemplified. Even in the face of brazen rejection by his very friends and kinfolks in his very hometown Jesus unwaveringly did his job as a teacher, healer and prophet.
Jesus walked all over Galilee with his disciples. He helped a crippled person walk, a blind see, and sick people feel well again. He taught people to love and forgive each other. Last Sunday we learned how he even made a woman suffering from haemorrhage for twelve years well again, and, a dead girl live again.
Most recently Baguio City and the Cordillera region were in the limelight because of the daughters and sons excelling in various fields in the international arena. They made every Cordilleran and Baguio residents proud of their accomplishments and the honors brought home by these lads and lasses that we paid tribute to them with ticker parades around the city streets.
But that is not what is done to Jesus in our gospel reading this week. The people were amazed, the people could not comprehend his teachings – they were upset! They say to each other, ‘Is this not the son of Joseph the carpenter? Did he not grow up here? How can he know such things? Where does he get all his ideas?’ They think they knew Jesus that well. And their pride and familiar knowledge of him blinded their vision on looking to the truth and wisdom on what Jesus taught and did. From another instance, the people of Capernaum thought he was wonderful. The members of other synagogues throughout Galilee invited their friends to come and hear him. What in the world did he say in Nazareth that was so different? So infuriating and inexcusable? What he preached in Nazareth was nothing special. What was so different was that it was nothing different! What was so inexcusable was that they’d heard it all before. What was infuriating beyond their belief was that Jesus was not saying anything new. Jesus was telling his friends and family all over again, that God was continuing to make the same amazing, abundant, glorious promise: that when they got their act together and began living as they had covenanted with God to, God’s kingdom would emerge from behind the veils of the world and Shalom would erupt in glory into creation. The captives would be free of bondage, those who had been broken and wounded by the world would be healed, and the oppressed would know dignity and equity of justice. What Jesus told them, all over again, was exactly what God has been telling them from time of the first covenant with Abraham: “I can do it FOR you, but I will do it WITH you.”
This is prophetic ministry. Prophets, unfortunately for their wellbeing and comfort, do not tell us anything we don’t already know. Whether we hear prophecy as good news is not determined by the words of the prophet, it is determined by the state of our ears and hearts. When we give up some other more exciting activity to come to hear a sermon on a Sunday morning, we are looking for something different and exciting message from the pastor or priest. We want to be told something we don’t already know. We certainly don’t want to hear that old, familiar story filled with implications and pronouncements that we would rather forget.
I learned from my Scripture professors in the seminary that if the words are repeated often in the passage and consistent with other books in the Bible these are important and true to God’s statutes. Fake news, lies and half-truths are common nowadays in the social media. Even legal syntax or enticing semantics are employed to deceive – and worst the Holy Scripture is (mis) quoted and misused to justify one’s view point or decision. The prophet’s responsibility is to debunk these abominations even it means to be annoyingly repetitious of the truth that the Word proclaims. Heed these words, ‘The world is full of false prophets who pose as “angels of light”; they lure the weak souls by their tactics from that which is truthful and right.”
Like the people in Jesus’ hometown, we do not want to hear the law of God imposing in our lives. We do not want to be told that there are entirely predictable consequences to our actions and choices. We want to hear something that will provide a neat solution to all the world’s problems without us having to change our comfortable behaviour by one bit or without our active participation. Thomas Merton wrote: “Repentance is at once and the same time a complete renewal, a discovery, a new life, and a return to the old, to that which is before everything else, that is old… ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’… the new is within the old because it is the perennial beginning of everything and emerges from the old, transcending it, having no part in it, eternally renewing its own life. The Gospel is handed down from generation to generation but it must reach one of us brand new, or not at all. If it is merely ‘tradition’ and not news, it has not been preached or not heard – it is not the Gospel.’
The motto of prophetic ministry will always be, “Truth stands eternal, unchanging and forever new.” We have to be aware because the enemy may add few grains of truth to what is false. **
