This photo was the winning entry in the ‘Irish Examiner Readers’ Photography Competition taken by Padraig Molloy of New Ross, Co.Wexford.
Entitled ‘Got Ya’ it features a kingfisher captured at the point of emerging from a river with its catch.
Thought on Sunday – February – 31/01/2016
Gospel Text for today Sunday (Luke: 4:21-30) The Thought For Today follows it below
Jesus began to speak in the synagogue, ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen’. And he won the approval of all, and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips.
They said, ‘This is Joseph’s son, surely?’ But he replied, ‘No doubt you will quote me the saying, “Physician, heal yourself” and tell me, “We have heard all that happened in Capernaum, do the same here in your own countryside”‘. And he went on, ‘I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.’
‘There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you, in Elijah’s day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six months and a great famine raged throughout the land, but Elijah was not sent to any one of these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town. And in the prophet Elisha’s time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.’
When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.
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Thought For Today is by Jane Mellett called ‘Facing The Truth’
In today’s Gospel Jesus invites the people of his home town to come to the truth of themselves and to stop hiding. This could have been a real moment of grace for them, if they were open to it, but it is often hard to hear. This passage, read together with last Sunday’s, is the entire Gospel in miniature.
The references to Elijah and Elisha may confuse us; they are reminders that the prophets of the past did not focus only on their own people. Elijah for example, did not provide miraculous food for the Israelites but for a pagan widow and her son in a foreign town. This talk of divine favours to foreigners is that last straw for the Nazarene community. The final verses foreshadow the fate of Jesus, but the time is not yet.
It seems that Jesus has committed the ultimate political blunder of finding fault with his own people. The message is one of a call to a radical reversal of perspective; something with which the Gospel of Luke is very concerned. Jesus will proclaim a new kind of freedom and his openness of heart is too much for those who hear him. Where do we see this in our communities today?
‘Although they heard you Lord, they failed to listen. They heard only what they wanted to hear. The truth hurt them, you made them feel uncomfortable, and they rejected you. Show us how we may seek your Kingdom and help to bring peace to a troubled world’.
~Christian Aid – Tony Singleton
