Reflections for the Third Sunday of Epiphany, the 26th of January 2025, in the pew notes at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne. Written by Philip Harvey.
Being read to is one of life’s minor pleasures. While one of the few places nowadays where it is required, and generally the norm, is church. The other public place where we regularly read aloud and are to read to is school. The synagogue was both these things, a place of sabbath worship and teaching, which is where we logically and audibly find Jesus.
Today we hear him taking his turn reading to the local Nazarenes (Luke 4: 14-21). This event itself is an example to us of why we read Scripture aloud to one another in church, to hear, ponder, and interpret. He is the one giving permission, indeed requiring this be done, which is why in any church we expect the Gospel (at the very least) to be read, or even sung, at worship. The precedent is written into the story, an encouraging model.
The verses from Isaiah are an epiphany. They enact one expectation of poetry, that it state sufficiently in a brief space the best words to declare a revelation. No syllable is wasted. Listeners may have different reactions, but they understand what’s being said.
Like all witnesses to this moment, through time, we are told the Holy Spirit is upon him, that he is anointed and brings good news to the poor. God has sent him to proclaim release of those captive, recovery of sight to the blind, freeing of the oppressed, and proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favour. It is a jubilee moment with a difference. They are words we hear in church.
This text within a text, this poem within the narrative, is read to us as if for the first time. The poem is an icon, an icon of the one who is reading the words to us. Having scrolled down, he rolls it up, then sits down again, rather as we might turn off our screen when we’ve had enough, job done. What next then?
As we know from hearing the Gospel each week, the showing forth of Jesus is not simply beautiful words but the true living out of the actual prophetic words we have just heard in the icon. Very soon he will say and do other things in the synagogue that will cause the temporary wonder of his hearers to turn to anger, such that they will be ready to throw him over a cliff. It gets nasty, as the living truth of his words take hold in their minds. Just as, today, we are confronted with the actual expectations that Jesus’ presence places on us, in our own particular and peculiar places and ways.
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