“Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly.” They were just returning home after a long captivity. Ezra stood “on a wooden platform” “higher up than any of the people.” The people “bowed down and prostrated themselves …(and) Ezra read plainly from the Book of the Law of God.” Centuries later Jesus stands before priests and elders in the assembly and quotes from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” “to proclaim liberty to captives” and “to let the oppressed go free.” Jesus then says, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus is proclaiming liberty – from “higher up” priests bound to the Law. They hinder the people’s fulfillment. Priests did not accept Jesus’ proclamation of freedom, nor fulfillment. They ran him out of the assembly. But Jesus kept on proclaiming the message and bringing it to life – communion. Communion enables the people to achieve their freedom and fulfillment among equals. We can be like the priests of the stories. We can hope and pray for freedom and fulfillment, but then reject it when it looks different than we imagined. We can think freedom and fulfillment are external things, like priests and laws. We can cling to them, certain priests and laws will keep us secure. It is what the people prostrated before the priest Ezra are doing – making certain their priests and laws will protect them from another evil empire. Though freed from foreign captivity under priests and laws, they regress under the captivity of their own priests and law. It is what we do when we regress under a white supremacist political system or a Holy Roman Empire Catholic Church or a Bible based Protestantism. We have no need of such pacifiers to get us through any crisis of certainty. We have need of realizing, ‘Today this passage is fulfilled in our hearing’ – ‘Now, in this moment, we are fulfilled’ At present, we are free.’
“If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead. You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges … And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed … And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared…. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers” frees. (On Freedom – Khalil Gibran)
Prayer: Spirit, we radiate freedom and fulfillment
Question: What are the shadows which I need to step out from and into the light?
January 27, 2019 Gospel: Luke 1-4; 4:14-21 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time