Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30
Say ‘NO’ to Injustice, Say ‘YES’ to Happiness: How Christians can Transform the World
It suffices to turn on our TV sets or read print media to notice that our times has more than enough wars going on for political, religious and economic reasons. On the one hand, Boko Haram, ISIL, Al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda, etc. wish to enthrone Islamic laws in the name of Allah, and people have no say in how that gets done, so people are killed willy-nilly; their argument: God alone is free, human beings are in chains, Allah’s chains. On the other hand, the global West legitimates the rule-of-law from the perspectives of liberal democracy and free market; for them, the essence of the human person is freedom, and God has no place in the control of this freedom. Today, Christianity is offering a middle ground between these extremes, but are Christians ready to follow through with the realization of the principles of Christianity?
Yes, the rule-of-law is very important for inter-human relationships; yes, freedom is part of the human constitution; yes, God is very important for human lives; indeed, our first reading shows the importance of God for human lives via the Law, Divine Law; Ezra reads it (God’s Law) out in the hearing of the people in order to heal their amnesia of God’s ordinances. But what is the usefulness of any law, divine or human, if everything is right and nothing is wrong? Who determines what is right or wrong anyway – humans or God?
Ezra tells us, in our first reading, that the realization of “sin,” not just because God prohibits certain human actions, but fundamentally, that wherever injustices exist, somebody is breaking the law of inter-human relationships, which is the basis of God’s involvement in human affairs as the creator of existent reality, to that degree does sin exist. When human beings lose their happiness, when God is estranged from human laws and freedom, when a human being becomes an exploitable tool and not an end, sin or wrong occurs.
The problem with religious fundamentalism is the negation of the presence of the divine in his creatures, and the danger of liberal democracy is the deification of humans while denying the existence of the divine or the creator of human beings. Ezra reconciles these two extremes with a sentence – “the joy of the Lord is your [our] strength” (Ezra 8:10). The restoration of the Law, according to Ezra, is not for punitive purposes, but to bringing about happiness. Foundational, therefore, to divine Law is the happiness of human beings – God wills and plans for your and my happiness, through his Law.
A significant dose of happiness is disappearing on earth because human beings are exploited on religious, economic and political fronts. To rectify these situations, Ezra suggests that happiness be the lot of human beings, notwithstanding the presence of sin/injustices. But our second reading provides the grounding principle for this happiness – communal and not individual happiness. The argument of our second reading to the effect that there is only one body reminds us that the bad actions of each one of us impinge on the happiness of everyone else. That the happiness I seek is the happiness I need to create, and it is the happiness that my brothers and sisters seek and deserve to have as well.
A quintessential point, from our second reading, is the realization that the “body” Paul talks about is not an imaginary body, but a concrete one: “whether Jew or gentile, whether slave or free persons” (1 Corinthians 12:13). The malaise of our world is that of social, religious, economic, ethnic, and gender discriminations! These discriminatory brackets affect real human beings, not imaginary people: these real people make up the body Paul talks about in our second reading; these real people want happiness and not bombs and exploitation of all sorts; these real people need prophets of happiness and liberators who respect and defend their right to happiness.
The best way to bring back happy days is not through spilling blood for religious or economic/secular purposes, what our world needs are prophets of happiness. A prophet is not just someone who predicts the future, but also someone who spends his/her time, here and now, bring about and enjoying this future joy among those with whom she/he lives. This is exactly what Christ does in today’s gospel: the future promise of liberation of captives, sight to the blind, and other goodies, Jesus says – “today, this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21).
“Today,” is now and not in the future; happiness is now, not in the future; being a prophet is now, living with and accepting to build one community of happiness. Indeed, the Christian attitude to sin is to correct the context of sin wherever it is found. Happiness, for a Christian, is not given but created: do not ask who will make you happy; ask rather, who should I help to wear a smile today!
In sum, from the statement of the first reading, “the joy of the Lord is your strength,” each one of us has to see human “happiness” as originating from God; from the statement of the second reading, “the eye cannot say to the hand I don’t need you,” each one of us must see himself or herself as a conduit for the transmission of God’s happiness to everybody else; from the statement of the gospel reading that “today, this gospel is being fulfilled,” all of us should see every moment of our lives as opportunities to be prophets of and crusaders for happiness in words and deeds.
Assignment for the Week
Could you come up with an idea to make someone feel good this week?
An Exegetical Commentary on Luke 4:1-4, 14-21 for Third Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C, 2016
Step I: What does the Text Say?
Jesus was a Prophet in his Days, Can you be One Today?
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, (Luke 4:1 NRS) where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. (Luke 4:2 NRS) The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” (Luke 4:3 NRS) Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.'” (Luke 4:4 NRS) Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. (Luke 4:14 NRS) He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. (Luke 4:15 NRS) When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, (Luke 4:16 NRS) and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: (Luke 4:17 NRS) “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, (Luke 4:18 NRS) to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:19 NRS) And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. (Luke 4:20 NRS) Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21 NRS)
Step II: What does the Text Mean?
1. We are back to our linguistic analyses of our gospel reading, from last week’s narrative analysis. Faithful to our predominant style, we study the verbal and nominal structure of our text. Today, the first part of the gospel, Luke 4:1-4, pits the devil against Jesus in the so-called temptation of Jesus, and the second part of the gospel, Luke 4:14-21, pits Jesus against the prophecy of Isaiah. The constant element in our gospel, apart from Jesus, in both sections of the gospel, is the Holy Spirit: he led Jesus to and fro temptation unscathed; he leads Jesus to the synagogue with a prophetic agenda. Now, the question to be asked is why the Holy Spirit in both sections, and why does he lead Jesus? The relationships created by the verbs in out gospel will help us to answer this question, the answer to which will be the meaning of our gospel reading.
2. Here are the few statements in present tense/time in our gospel, everything else is crafted in past tense/time: 1) “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread;” 2) “One does not live by bread alone;” 3) “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor . . to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, (Luke 4:18 NRS) to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
3. One point is clear from the all these statements in present tense/time – they are quotations from Scriptures. Here precisely is the where the role of the Holy Spirit in our gospel text is very important: with the presence of the Holy Spirit, there is no past time or future time, there is only now. This simply means that the realization of God’s plans is the work of the Holy Spirit, who uses human agency or medium.
4. Actions of the past, which the past tenses of out text establish, become present because of the Holy Spirit: the promises of Isaiah for a new social structure, the promise of God that bread is not the essence of the human life, the demand by the devil for Jesus to prove that he is the Son of God, after God had said that at Jesus’ baptism, all point to a God who keeps working and acting in every generation. According to Prof. Ernest C. Burton, “There is no sharp line of distinction between the Perfect of Completed Action and the Perfect of Existing State. To the latter head are to be assigned those instances in which the past act is practically dropped from thought, and the attention turned wholly to the existing result; while under the former head are to be placed those instances in which it is evident that the writer had in mind both the past act and the present result.”
5. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21 NRS): this happy ending of our gospel, though structured in perfect indicative, show the permanent state of God’s action through the Holy Spirit. God’s “today” never turns to yesterday or tomorrow, it remains “today” forever because of the Holy Spirit.
6. The verbs in past tense/time of our gospel link the action of Jesus-the-prophet to the same Spirit that came upon him at his baptism, a past reality, but with a present impact. It shows that a life led by the Holy Spirit is not free of hitches, but it has a guarantee of victory.
7. The Holy Spirit Christians received at Baptism and Confirmation make them the prophets of today to continue the works of social justice outlined by Isaiah and adopted by Jesus in today’s gospel. When Christians allow the Holy Spirit to lead them, then, the action of the Holy Spirit will continue to be a present reality into every generation.
Step III: Points for Homily
1. The role of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus and, by extension, Christians’ lives is a possible topic for homily today. The role of the Holy Spirit helping our weakness at moments of temptations (Romans 8), so we may triumph.
2. The fact that Jesus identifies with a prophetic agenda suggests prophetism as a topic for homily. Our world needs prophets, those whose lives and actions will challenge our world to the consciousness of God and bring back moral rectitude.