Jesus’ Homily in the Synagogue at Nazareth
The homily Jesus
gave in the synagogue at Nazareth may be taken as the prototype or pattern for
any homily (Luke 4:16-30). The Introduction
to the Lectionary identifies four aims for the homily (§41) and at Nazareth
Jesus addresses all four. These aims are
·
to lead the hearers to an
affective knowledge of Holy Scripture
·
to open them to gratitude for
the wonderful works of God
·
to strengthen the faith of the
hearer
·
to prepare them for communion
and for the demands of the Christian life.
How does Jesus’
homily at Nazareth meet these aims? First, he chose a text from the Book of
Isaiah, the passage which speaks of the Spirit of the Lord coming to anoint the
Lord’s messenger, deputing him to evangelise the poor, to proclaim liberty to
captives, to bring sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free and to
proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. ‘Today this Scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing’, Jesus says, and we are told that they ‘wondered at
the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth’ (Luke 4:21-22). Literally
it means the words about grace that he spoke. The passage from Isaiah tells of
the grace, or favour, of the jubilee year in which a fresh beginning makes new
life possible. They are heartened and encouraged by this. Later in the Gospel
of Luke we hear of disciples whose hearts burned within them as he opened the
Scriptures for them (Luke 24:32) but already at Nazareth all spoke well of him.
‘Today this
Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’. This may be taken as the
fundamental task in preaching a homily, to show how the Scripture that has just
been read is being fulfilled in the lives of those who are listening. The second aim of the homily is to open
people to gratitude for the wonderful works of God. These works are read about
in the Scripture readings not just to recall great events in other places and
at other times but with a view to showing how they continue to be effective here
and now. The Word of God is ‘sacramental’, therefore, bringing to pass in the
lives of believers the realities of which it speaks. We might say that it is
good news only when those who listen are helped to see how the Word that has
been proclaimed is working in their lives.
Jesus preaches in
order to strengthen the faith of those who hear: this is the third aim of a
homily. The text of Isaiah was presumably already well known to his
congregation and he seeks to interpret its meaning for them. The difference in
his teaching, we are told elsewhere, is that Jesus spoke with authority and
with wisdom, often confirming what he taught by signs and wonders (Mark 1:27;
Matthew 13:54; Luke 13:10). But at Nazareth his preaching breaks down and the
situation becomes complicated.
So what went wrong?
(This is presuming that something did go wrong: perhaps what happened is an
example of how effective preaching can be!) Thinking of the fourth aim of the
homily, we can see that Jesus is trying to prepare them for communion and for
the demands of living according to his new way, but this does not go down well
with them. If there is to be encouragement in the preaching of a homily there
is also to be challenge. Gracious words call to generous living: to be holy as
God is holy, compassionate as God is compassionate, loving one another as Jesus
has loved us.
On the one hand
Jesus in his homily says that the promises of God’s grace are being fulfilled
even as they listen. These promises are being fulfilled in him, in his presence
among them with his teaching and his works of power. Who would not be
strengthened and encouraged?
On the other hand
he begins to explain the implications of this time of grace by showing how it
calls his listeners beyond their place of comfort to reckon with deep and
demanding aspects of God’s gracious work. He reminds them of how earlier
prophets brought God’s word and power beyond the confines of Israel. His
preaching breaks down as he invites them to break open their hearts and lives,
to be receptive once again to the grace of the Living God. The ancient text has
come alive and its blessings are welcomed but its demands are not. The mood
turns from wonder to anger and he must pass through the midst of them to get
away.
The Evangelizing Word, Ancient and New
What might we learn
about the homily and the new evangelization from this experience of Jesus at
Nazareth? A first point worth pondering is that he is at home, ‘where he had
been brought up’ (Luke 4:16). Home ought to be the place where he is most
welcome but it becomes a place that rejects him. We can take ‘home’ to refer to
places where the liturgy of the Church continues to be celebrated and where
homilies continue to be given. We might think that such places have no need for
the ‘new evangelization’ but are rather places from which it is done. ‘Home’ in
this sense refers to countries, individuals, parishes, religious communities,
and so on that have become content with their appropriation of the Word of God.
When one speaks within a liturgy is one not preaching to the already converted?
Won’t the new evangelization be done elsewhere, on the road, by the lake, on a
mountain, on television and radio and the internet, but not in synagogues, or
temples, or churches where people have already been evangelized?
It is true that the
homily is part of the ordinary teaching and life of the Christian Church. As
such it becomes routine and can be predictable.
The Word that has found a home with us is in danger of becoming domesticated
by us: we think we know what it is about, what its demands are, and what its
reach is. One of the reasons why a new evangelization is needed is because
people seem to have become tired of Christianity. It is aimed at individuals,
communities and cultures that are ‘post-Christian’: they have heard and even
tried the gospel but for various reasons have become lukewarm about it or
perhaps given it up altogether. For them, the gospel message has lost its bite
and its sting.
One challenge from the new evangelisation to homilists is to show
how the Word with which people have become comfortable remains a two-edged
sword. Another is to show how the Word to which people have become indifferent
continues to offer grace, light and life.
Homilies given at
liturgical celebrations of rites of passage provide opportunities to take up
these challenges. People not yet evangelized will be present at such events as
will people whose faith has grown weak or even died. At baptisms, weddings,
confirmations, receptions into the Church, ordinations, religious professions,
and funerals, as well as at Masses celebrated for graduation events,
conferences, anniversaries, jubilees, and so on the one who speaks the homily
has an opportunity to preach the good news to people who have never heard it
and to those who might hear it afresh.
In fact the term
‘evangelize’ is used in the text from Isaiah that Jesus quotes at Nazareth. The
Spirit has anointed him to bring good news to the poor. This is what the term
evangelization means, bringing good news. People may fail to receive this news
either because it does not seem good to them or because they do not regard
themselves as poor in ways that this news can do anything about. Much effort is
put into making the good news seem good again. Part of this is helping people
to see how the ways in which they know themselves to be poor are in fact met
and healed by the Word of God present in Jesus. It may also mean helping people
to realize that they are poor in ways they did not suspect.
An essential part
of the new evangelization is to keep the goodness of the gospel alive and fresh
in those who already believe and have committed themselves to following Christ.
All the great documents on evangelization from Paul VI to John Paul II to
Benedict XVI agree that an essential element in it is the witness of vibrant
and joyful Christian communities following Christ in faith, hope and love. The
routine preaching of homilies is crucial in sustaining the life and witness of
such communities.
The Importance of Failure
The ones most in
danger of domesticating the Word of God, in whom familiarity is most likely to
breed contempt, are those who handle it from day to day. Teachers, catechists,
deacons, theologians, readers, priests, and sisters – all can become so
familiar with the Word and so committed to particular ways of communicating it,
that in them also it can lose its sting and become domesticated.
To be applauded for
one’s ability to present the Word of God is a mixed blessing. Experience shows
that praise is very often quickly followed by rejection or indifference: think
of Jesus, Paul, and all great preachers of the gospel. This is why those
moments in which preaching breaks down are to be welcomed. We have seen how
Jesus’ homily at Nazareth broke down. In the Gospel of John we see that a much
longer homily on the bread of life, which he gave at the synagogue in
Capernaum, also ‘failed’: ‘after this many of his disciples drew back and no
longer went about with him’ (John 6:66).
In the Acts of the Apostles we
hear of Paul preaching at Athens and making good headway with an audience of
philosophers and other intellectuals, until he began to speak of resurrection,
and judgment, and eternal life (Acts 17:22-34).
The breaking open
of the Word cannot happen without the breaking open of hearts and lives. This
applies in the first place to those who would think of themselves as
‘evangelizers’. If the Word is true, and
we believe that it is, then its grace can only flow where the barriers to truth
are being removed. There are countless ways in which human beings defend
themselves against truth, ways in which we are blind, imprisoned, oppressed and
poor. One of the dangers for people involving themselves in the life of the
Church is that they can turn holy things into obstacles between themselves and
God. Saint John of the Cross speaks at length about this in his Dark Night of the Soul. The deadly sins
are never more deadly, he says, than when they have our spiritual desires to
work on.
So we must be ready
for moments when the work of teaching and evangelizing breaks down. It is
admirable and right that we engage with the movements of thought in our
culture, seeking to ‘take all thought captive for Christ’ (2 Corinthians 10:5).
But we must remain alert for the moment of breakdown. Inevitably there will be
something in what we preach that people will find objectionable, offensive,
extreme, ridiculous, out-dated, a threat to common sense, or infuriating for
some other reason. This is the world that is within us also and this adds to
the difficulty: the first people needing evangelization are those who would
evangelize others.
Paul speaks about
his state of mind and heart when he arrived in Corinth after his bruising
experience in Athens. He came, he says, in fear and trembling, deciding that in
his preaching he would not use arguments that belong to philosophy but would
claim to know nothing except Christ crucified, a foolishness and weakness that
are the wisdom and the power of God. There is sense in speaking of making the
gospel ‘relevant’ to people’s lives, of showing how it connects with them. On
the other hand the gospel is not a wisdom of this age that is passing away: if
it is for this life only that we have hoped in Christ then we are, of all
people, the most unfortunate (1 Corinthians 15:19). We must also, therefore, be
‘irrelevant’ because we are called to preach a gospel that does not just
endorse and confirm all that we find in place but that promises a new life in a
new heavens and a new earth.
Contexts of the Homily
We are considering
the homily in a specific sense, to refer to preaching done within a liturgy.
The Irish Dominican liturgist and theologian Philip Gleeson has written that
‘homilies are worse than useless if they do not humbly serve the celebration of
which they are a part’ (p.144). He quotes the German Lutheran theologian
Wolfhart Pannenberg who says ‘the sermon should serve, not dominate, in the
Church. It should serve the presence of Christ which we celebrate in the
Eucharist’. All that is involved in a
good celebration of the liturgy is therefore relevant to the homily since it is
the context in which the homily happens. Not everything depends on the homily,
however, even for the purposes of evangelization, since many other aspects of
the liturgy – the music, the symbolism, the times of quiet, the great prayers
of the Church, the assembly itself – might well be more effective in calling
people to gratitude and to deeper faith.
Another context of
the homily is the lifestyle of the preacher. In an earlier moment of new
evangelization, the beginning of the 13th century, the Order of
Preachers was established precisely with this conviction: that the credibility
of preaching depended not just on the knowledge and understanding a preacher
might have of the Word and of people’s lives, but also on the witness of the
preacher’s own life. Saint Thomas Aquinas speaks of this when he discusses the
lifestyle of Jesus. How ought Jesus to
have lived considering his mission of bringing good news to the poor?
The best possible
form of life, Aquinas says, is the one whereby a person is called to share with
others, through preaching and teaching, what has been contemplated. Jesus’
mission was to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37) and this required a
public life of preaching. Jesus had to live openly among people, therefore, and
not as a monk or hermit. He had to live a balanced life of prayer and preaching
since preaching without prayer would be meaningless. Because he came to free
people from the oppressions of sin, Jesus had to live among sinners, sharing
the living conditions of the people and conforming to their circumstances. He
lived among them in poverty rather than in power and wealth since poverty is
appropriate to the task of preaching. Jesus taught the apostles that they must
live in simplicity and detachment if they were to carry through effectively the
mission he was entrusting to them.
This wider context
of the homily – living among people, sharing their lives, in prayer and
simplicity – was the way in which Jesus needed to live if he was to fulfill his
mission, and he also lived like this, Aquinas says, ‘to give an example to
preachers’. We can also say that because he passed on to them the mission he
had received from the Father, the bearers of good news in any age and in any
place are best advised to live like this if their work of evangelization is to
be fruitful.
Conclusion
We have been
considering the homily, a particular kind of preaching done within a liturgy.
We have seen how this description applies to some of the preaching recorded in
the New Testament. It may seem that preaching in this sense will more often
than not be to people who are already committed to the faith and are practising
it. But even routine homilies are opportunities to reach others who are not so
convinced as well as to strengthen the faith of believers and challenge them to
a more generous following of Jesus.
For the new
evangelization it is clear that people need to understand the function of the
homily and that those entrusted with it should be very well prepared. We have
seen how St Thomas Aquinas says that this requires prayer, sharing people’s
circumstances, and living in simplicity.
Documents of the
Church on evangelization, on the liturgy, and on preaching, offer practical
advice about the means through which the homily may be done well. Most recently
we have the post-Synodal exhortation Verbum
Domini whose section on ‘The Liturgy, Privileged Setting of the Word of
God’ (§§52-71) is relevant to what has been considered in this chapter. ‘Our
own time must be increasingly marked by a new hearing of God’s word and a new
evangelization’, Benedict XVI says in Verbum
Domini §122. The homily within a liturgy is one of the ways in which that
new hearing, and that new evangelization, are done.
Resources
Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium,
chapter 3, II and III, §§135-159, Vatican Press 2014
Gleeson, Philip, OP, ‘The Homily: Serving, not Dominating’, in
Vivian Boland OP, ed., Watchmen raise
their voices: A Tallaght book of theology, Dominican Publications, Dublin
2006, pp. 135-44
Hilkert, Mary Catherine, OP, Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination, Continuum, London and New York 1997