. . . 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.  

BRIGHT SHINING AS THE SON

Today, on the feast of the Transfiguration, I had to write something if only because my daughter was married on the summit of Mount Tabor, where we are told it occurred. And the reason I chose Giovanni Bellini's painting is because it is the only one I've seen where Jesus and the others are all on the same ground plane: Jesus is not perched high above, or floating in the air. The Gospels tell us only that as they were talking he was "transfigured": he shone brightly, and his clothes, now white, shone also. The Greek word is metamorphosein, to change form or shape. And Moses and Elijah turned up and were seen talking with him. I love to think of the three disciples as remaining on the same bit of ground, at the same distance, and suddenly stunned with the bright light, the white and gold, and those two great men, the patriarch and the prophet, in front of them, on the same level.

What does it mean? The shining white raiment, someone wrote, is that of the Angel at the tomb also: the sign of Resurrection. And Jesus tells the disciples not to mention this until he is resurrected. So it is a kind of foretaste in the story. A foretaste of the Resurrection; but also a taste of Jesus's divinity, and of his fulfilment of the Scriptures. He is speaking with the man who led Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land; and with the greatest of the prophets, who ascended into Heaven without dying. 

It is a strange, uncanny, numinous and entirely wonderful moment, charged with meaning -- a meaning that is not explained. It is left for the disciples, and for us, to work out. It gives us furiously to think -- which is not a bad thing, in a world where too much of religion is associated solely with either feeling or good works. I used to hang out with some delightful and very devout Charismatics, but eventually left them because, as I told their leader, they behaved as if God had created every bit of them except their intelligence. We are to love him with our heart, our soul, and our mind . . .