Today’s readings: Nehemiah 8, 2-6.8-10; 1 Corinthians 12, 12-30; Luke 1, 1-4. 4, 14-21.
Christianity today is going through a transition that, negative as it may look on certain counts, may be rich and positive in outcome. In the wake of the fall of so many empires that always provided shelter for religion and culturally upheld the faith, from the time of Constantine to the prolonged era of Christendom in the West, Christianity is today in search of its soul.
For so long in the West, we lived as if our religion was our culture and our culture was our religion. With modernity, culture, politics and the State all claimed more and more autonomy from religion. The divorce between religion and culture, at first resisted by Catholicism, was finally endorsed in Vatican Council II. Now the separation between Church and State is here to stay and is considered a major achievement of modern times.
All this is a blessing in disguise. It is a moment of grace for Christianity and a call to go back to its roots. It is like Jesus returning to Galilee, going to Nazareth where he had been brought up and to the synagogue on the Sabbath day as he usually did, but at the same time doing something radically different from what those around him expected.
In a radically changed context, Christianity needs to be reborn. This is the same passage of rite Judaism went through with Ezra and Nehemiah, as recorded in the first reading. Some Jews were at the time returning from exile. Others refused to return and opted instead to remain in Babylon where exile was for them no longer all that tragic. There were successions of generations born and brought up in exile and who had practically lost all connection with the roots of their belief.
The morale of the Jewish communities after the exile was at its lowest. Drastic measures were needed to avoid further disappointment and disillusionment. A thorough reform of the nation’s life was needed, spiritually, socially and civilly.
Ezra and Nehemiah were two providential figures at the time who implemented the reforms that would save the nation and provide the necessary stability. Ezra reorganised and reformed the nation’s spiritual life. Nehemiah reconstituted its civil government.
This losing of identity and losing connection with one’s proper roots are major issues today in churches and societies. Our churches today have a major challenge in rebuilding a true sense of community, in giving once again a sense of belonging, in going back to the essentials.
In this same vein this is what Jesus represents in today’s gospel text from Luke, where on a Sabbath day in the synagogue of Nazareth he is addressing Israel in search of a soul. He was the one anointed no longer to stay in the temple to offer sacrifices but to bring the good news to the poor, to those excluded, to all those categories left out from a Judaism that had lost its soul.
These Scriptures today serve as a sure point of reference in the metamorphosis of the faith we are experiencing as a Church and on individual levels. Our preaching has for too long been locked up in doctrine and it has lost its liberating element so highlighted in the proclamation of Jesus. In this sense the Church is called at this moment in time to come closer to the essentials of the gospel precisely by coming closer to the people and to their needs.
Ezra and Nehemiah, in a most solemn liturgy, assemble all those “old enough to understand” and read out the Scriptures. It was in the light of that experience that Judaism was reborn and that after the exilic dispersion things started falling into place. “This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen,” proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue.
The word had become flesh, no longer remaining a promise. It has come true, addressing each and all, touching people where they were, becoming good news to those in captivity, freeing the downtrodden and proclaiming the time of grace.
We live in times when again we need a reformation, starting from a new vigorous proclamation of the Word, perceiving the times we live in not as decadent but as a time of grace.