. . . WENT HIS WAY

Nazareth Village: the synagogue

Yesterday’s New Testament reading is one of the fascinating ones, especially if one has been to Nazareth, where the Nazareth Village project has reconstructed the synagogue of Jesus’ time, where you can sit on one of the tiered benches and imagine him standing at the front, reading from a scroll. He reads the passage from Isaiah; then, as the congregation waits for the commentary, he says, simply, “Today what’s written here is being accomplished” – in other words, it’s happening now.

The locals’ reaction is depressing but so understandable. This isn’t some exotic preacher come into town from Away: this is Eddie Josephson, the garage owner’s eldest! We’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper; who does he think he is? The Meshiach or something? If you’re so great, do some healing here, convince us!

He looks at them with a kind of infinite sadness. This is Jesus in his full humanity, completely disillusioned. If we needed proof that God doesn’t – can’t – use his omnipotence to convert everyone, here it is. Uh, huh. Prophets don’t cut it back home. Happened to Elijah; happened to Elisha. No better here, no better today. Sorry, guys.

So they get seriously mad. Go to hell, Eddie! He’s a charlatan; worse, he’s a blasphemer! (For us, it’s easier to imagine this happening in a strict Muslim environment, where blasphemy still merits the sword.) So they rush him, and haul him off to the local escarpment, a kind of provincial Tarpeian Rock that’s useful for executions.

All the commentaries I’ve seen in the last few days more or less stop here, and explain the locals’ reaction. How odd. Is nobody astonished by the story’s ending? Here is a wild crowd, in the grip of mob reaction, enraged, clutching the bad guy and about to throw him off a cliff. And what happens? “But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way.” (Luke 4:30)

This leaves me speechless, and breathless. It’s at least as astonishing as his walking on the water of Tiberias.  How to envisage it? The clutching hands drop; in the heart of the roaring mob there is a sudden focus of intense silence; and suddenly, there on the cliff-edge, they have nobody, and in the distance there is the man himself, striding for the horizon.

It is precisely what the disciples hoped he would do on Good Friday, but then he did not. The contrast should give us furiously to think. But meanwhile, let us at least marvel at this hometown miracle. He, passing through the midst of them, went his way. Just like that.