Jesus' goal is to accept excluded people

Today we begin the meditation on the Gospel of Luke, which will extend three months until the end of the liturgical year. Today’s Gospel (Luke 4:16-30) speaks about Jesus’ visit to Nazareth and the presentation of His program to the people of the synagogue. At first the people were amazed. But immediately, when they became aware that Jesus wanted to accept all, without excluding anyone, people rebelled and wanted to kill Him.

Urged by the Holy Spirit, Jesus returns to Galilee (Lk ‪4:14‬) with a proposal. He begins to announce the Good News of the Kingdom of God and goes to the community, teaches in the Synagogue and arrives in Nazareth, where He had grown up. He was returning to the community in which He had participated since He was small and for thirty years. The following Saturday, as was the custom, Jesus went to the synagogue to participate in the celebration, and He stands up to read. He chooses the text of Isaiah which speaks about the poor, of prisoners, of the blind and the oppressed (Is 61:1-2). This text is an image of the situation of the people of Galilee at the time of Jesus. The experience which Jesus had of God, the Father and Mother of Love, gave Him a new perspective to evaluate the reality.

In the name of God, Jesus takes a stand to defend the life of His people and, with the words of Isaiah, He defines His mission: (1) to announce the Good News to the poor, (2) to proclaim liberty to captives, (3) to give sight to the blind; (4) to release the oppressed, and taking the ancient tradition of the prophets, (5) to proclaim “a year of grace from the Lord.” He proclaims the Jubilee Year!

Jesus applies to himself the words of Isaiah, that he was bringing care for people who are poor, sick, and oppressed. At first people accept Him but later dislike him because of his criticism of their mistakes.

This passage is a summary of the life of Jesus and why he was rejected at the end of his life. But in addition, in this biblical passage, Luke helps us understand a paradigm of radical discipleship and the radical church that Jesus prefers. It is here that we learn that the rejection of prophetic voices by their own was a common phenomenon in the past and continues to be so today. This rejection was something that Jesus predicted would happen to his followers as well, simply by proclaiming the vision of Jesus' life. His vision of life was “to bring good news to oppressed and excluded people with the word of God not to submit or surrender themselves to that oppression or exploitation, but rather to experience God's project of liberation that includes the transformation of the personal, interpersonal, and collective. All this so that we can bring heaven to earth.

Jesus’ objective is to accept the excluded. Do we accept everybody, or do we exclude some? What are the reasons which lead us to exclude certain people? Where are the prophetic voices in my life and in our world today? What is their message? Am I inclined to accept it or reject it?

Blessings

Fr. Luis+