Toxic Love (Epiphany 4C)

 

Toxic Love
Reflection on the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
 30 January 2022

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

In last week’s Eucharistic Lectionary’s Gospel, we read about Jesus’ first homily:

 

“Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went, as he usually did, into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:

‘The Spirit of the Noble One is upon me,
    because God has anointed me
        to bring a Happy Announcement to the poor.
  God has sent me to herald liberty to captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to send forth the downtrodden with all debts canceled,
    and to herald the Noble One’s propitious year.’

Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed intently on him as he began to speak: ‘Today this passage of scripture sees its fulfillment, as you sit here listening.’” (Luke 4:16-21; The Ashland Bible)

 

This week, we read of the congregations’ reaction:

 

“And all acknowledged it but were surprised that such gifted speech came from his lips, asking one another, ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ He said to them, ‘You will surely quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ and say, ‘Do here in your homeland what we heard you were doing in Capernaum.’’ And he said, ‘Believe me—no prophet is accepted in his own homeland. I assure you, there were many widows in Isra’el in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many suffering from leprosy in Isra’el during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Na‘aman the Syrian.’ When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the ridge of the mount upon which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he slipped through the middle of them and went away.” (Luke 4:21-30, TAB)

 

The congregation’s reaction is seemingly positive: they “acknowledge” (Gr. “bear witness to”) the sermon, seeing it as “gifted speech” (Gr. “words of grace”).  But their real reaction is puzzlement at such a homily coming out of the mouth of this man who grew up as a local boy: “Wait, isn’t this Joseph’s kid?” they ask each other.   Mark’s telling of the story makes their concern explicit, in words passed over by Luke: “Where did this fellow get all this? What sort of wisdom has been given him?” (Mark 6:2, TAB).   

 

Jesus reacts to their palpable but unspoken (at least to him) puzzlement by pointing openly to the elephant in the room.   “Go ahead—quote to me that proverb about a sick doctor.  You can’t accept me because you know all my quirks.  You’ve heard of my acts of power in Capernaum, and how people there may think I am a prophet.  But haven’t you noticed?  Prophets are never accepted in their home towns.”   This aggressive naming of the real nature of the congregation’s puzzlement most certainly must have shocked them.  Luke pauses in his narration, and then has Jesus add separately, “Haven’t you noticed that the people most blessed by the prophets were always strangers and foreigners?”  He cites the examples of Elisha and Elijah, two prophetic figures that popular imagination had fixed on for finding the hope for the future that Jesus has just said “is fulfilled today as you sit here listening to me.” 

 

This enrages the congregants, who see it as a grave insult and slight to their town and their nationality: “Since when did gentiles and foreigners get preference?”  They try to push Jesus off the ridge on which the town is built, but he escapes. 

 

Why do they have such a violent reaction?  Jesus has merely told them the truth, pointed out to them obvious elements of stories that they knew all too well.  I imagine he could have ended his criticism of their local-pride induced skepticism by adding, “Just saying.”  Their reaction seems way over the top. 

 

Luke provides a clue to the answer by the way he frames his stories: after the infancy narrative, he breaks his account of Jesus’ ministry into two great sections: the Galilean Ministry followed by the Journey to Jerusalem, the city where Jesus will meet his fate.  Both of these sections start with a story of rejection:  the Galilean Ministry with Nazareth’s rejection of Jesus (4:16-30), and the Journey to Jerusalem with the story of the Samaritan village that rejects Jesus (9:51-56).  The Samaritan villagers reject Jesus because he has set his face resolutely to go to Jerusalem, the holy place of their deepest enemies, the Jews. 

 

In both cases, it is one’s own attachment to tribe and loyalty to one’s own people that causes rejection of Jesus, who is seen as siding with those outside the ambit of one’s own circle.   

 

In a way, it is the otherwise praiseworthy love of one’s own people that causes both the people of Nazareth and the Samaritan villagers to reject Jesus.  Such “love” is toxic. 

 

The puzzlement of Nazareth at its own native son is summed up in the apothegm, “familiarity breeds contempt.” But its anger at Jesus using the blessings enjoyed by outsiders as an example of this is summed up by “unfamiliarity also breeds contempt.”  This is classic case of a structural conflict between two basic moral imperatives:  the obligation of showing special benevolence to those who share your family, religious, and national ties and the obligation of showing general benevolence to all people.  The people of Nazareth and Samaria both may have been motivated by love of tribe, but such love was not praiseworthy. 

 

If we let attachment to our own family, co-religionists, or nation express itself by exclusion or malevolence to those outside, we make a serious error.  We turn something praiseworthy into an ugly denial of our own humanity, into an abandonment of true prophetic witness, into a rejection of Jesus.  That is why White evangelicals who strive to maintain “the old-time religion” and “our honored traditional ways” and in the process bolster White privilege if not White supremacy, are actually working against Jesus and his proclamation of God’s Reign.  It is why “conservative” religionists who prescribe a “separate role of women” actually seek to subjugate them.  It is why those defending “traditional morality” when this means the exclusion, if not the persecution, of LGBTQIA+ folk, are rejecting Jesus and his teaching.  It is why a civil religion that praises Americanism over all other nations is idolatrous. 

 

It is why we must learn true love and benevolence, why we must seek to rid our love of grasping and controlling tendencies that belittle our familiars, and why we must eschew exclusion of “the other” and come to see inclusion as a core daily spiritual practice.

 

Thanks be to God.