Reflection on Luke 4:16-30

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Monday, August 31, 2020

In today’s Gospel, Jesus begins his Galilean ministry with a prophetic message: 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. 

With those words, the Lord announces that the appointed time has come, that the privileged time has arrived, that God has remembered his people in a unique manner, that God himself has stepped in to right the wrong. Jesus announces that that which the human race has been longing and yearning for has finally appeared. In Jesus of Nazareth, divinity and humanity have come together. In him heaven and earth have met; the perfect and imperfect have embraced. Through him and with him and in him God the almighty has entered the human community to offer and accomplish the long awaited reconciliation, restoration, and healing. 

The one persistent theme in the Scripture is the desire for deliverance and salvation, the cry of the human spirit to God, the quest to reconnect with God from whom the people feel estranged. In his first sermon in Galilee, and throughout his life and ministry, Jesus demonstrates that the wild quest of the ancient and of his ancestors for God is officially over. He shows that the people’s hope of glory, the desire for salvation, the longing for intimate union with God has been realized and accomplished. Throughout his his life and ministry, he radically demonstrates that it is something that can be seen, heard and touched. Therefore, the search for God in the mountains, hills, forests, highlands, lowlands, caves, books etc is officially over. God is now here in Jesus of Nazareth. On him God the Father has set his seal (Jn. 6:27b). 

What then shall be our response? Our response is to believe in the Lord Jesus (Acts. 16:31), accept him as our Lord and Savior, see him as the only hope of glory (Col. 1:27b) and the only Door to eternal life (Jn 10:9). Our response is to do what the Galilean did in today’s Gospel: to keep our eyes intently fixed on him. Not on the goods of this world, not on power, or fame, or politics, or honor, or wealth, or pleasure but on Jesus of Nazareth. He is God’s finest and greatest gift to humanity. Anyone who has Jesus has everything for he is everything.