Friends, today in Matthew’s account of the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth, Christ refers to himself as a prophet.
In
the Old Testament tradition, the prophet is a religious visionary and
truth-teller. The great Jewish
theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel said that the prophet is someone who
feels the feelings of God and then speaks out of that experience. He
stubbornly reads the world through the lens of the word of God and
speaks the divine truth. And this mission implies opposition,
confrontation, and critique, since the keepers of worldly order are
frequently looking through other lenses and listening to other words.
But
Jesus is much more than one more prophet in a long line of prophets,
one more speaker of the divine truth, one more reader of the divine
word. Jesus is the Word made flesh; he is the Divine Truth in person.
Friday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 405
In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim,
son of Josiah, king of Judah,
this message came from the LORD:
Thus says the LORD:
Stand in the court of the house of the LORD
and speak to the people of all the cities of Judah
who come to worship in the house of the LORD;
whatever I command you, tell them, and omit nothing.
Perhaps they will listen and turn back,
each from his evil way,
so that I may repent of the evil I have planned to inflict upon them
for their evil deeds.
Say to them: Thus says the LORD:
If you disobey me,
not living according to the law I placed before you
and not listening to the words of my servants the prophets,
whom I send you constantly though you do not obey them,
I will treat this house like Shiloh,
and make this the city to which all the nations of the earth
shall refer when cursing another.
Now the priests, the prophets, and all the people
heard Jeremiah speak these words in the house of the LORD.
When Jeremiah finished speaking
all that the LORD bade him speak to all the people,
the priests and prophets laid hold of him, crying,
"You must be put to death!
Why do you prophesy in the name of the LORD:
'This house shall be like Shiloh,' and
'This city shall be desolate and deserted'?"
And all the people gathered about Jeremiah in the house of the LORD.
Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue.
They were astonished and said,
“Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds?
Is he not the carpenter’s son?
Is not his mother named Mary
and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?
Are not his sisters all with us?
Where did this man get all this?”
And they took offense at him.
But Jesus said to them,
“A prophet is not without honor except in his native place
and in his own house.”
And he did not work many mighty deeds there
because of their lack of faith.
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