Nehemiah 8:2-6,8-10; 1 Cor 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21
Jerusalem: probably around 80 years after the decree of Cyrus, allowing the Jewish exiles to return home from Babylon. A Second Temple, much inferior to the First, is more or less up and running. But the Jewish people remain dominated by enemies all about. If some of them inhabit the holy City, they do not possess it. They have anyway not at all succeeded in restoring proper religious observance according to the law of Moses.
But a great revival is coming. The scribe Ezra sets up a public pulpit, and he reads to the people, who listen attentively. Ezra reads out the five books of Moses, the foundational text of Israel. As he reads, Ezra explains the text, and points out its application. In response the people are moved to tears. They bless God, they bow down in worship, and they resolve henceforth to change their ways.
This is lectio divina. Ezra believed, the people believed, we all still believe, that in the scriptural text we have God’s holy word; God’s self-communication; God speaking to his people. When we read God’s word, we hear God’s voice, his call to us. Through the scriptural text, God reaches out to bridge the gap between Himself and us; and he shows us how to live in right relationship with him.
Jump ahead now to the beginning of St. Luke’s Gospel. Here Luke writes in the first person. Before he gets going with his story, he first describes his method, on the model of the best classical scholars of his day. Yet from the beginning the Church has always believed that Luke wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so that his text also is God’s word to us. As one of the four canonical Gospels, it’s even a privileged form of God’s word: always treated with special honour; always chosen for special attention in public and private lectio divina.
Luke addresses himself to his otherwise unknown friend or patron Theophilus. The name means “lover of God” or “loved by God”. Surely that’s an invitation to all of us to put ourselves in the place of Theophilus, and to read the Gospel as if addressed directly to ourselves.
Luke goes on to tell Theophilus the reason for his writing. It is so that he may know that what he has been taught about Jesus is true, well founded, trustworthy. The word Luke uses as punchline for his long opening sentence is “a-sphaleia”. We get our word “asphalt” from it. At root, it means “no tripping-up”. The ground on which our faith stands is firm, solid: guaranteed by reliable testimony; guaranteed even more by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Let us then walk along this path with complete confidence.
Another jump ahead: to the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, according to St. Luke (4:14ff). We are in the synagogue in Nazareth, and Jesus reads God’s holy word to the Assembly. The passage Jesus reads is from Isaiah Chapter 61. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me... The Hebrew word for the one anointed by the Holy Spirit is “Messiah”. The proclamation of liberation and “the Lord’s year of favour” which follows is a clear reference to the Jubilee of Moses, as set out in Leviticus Chapter 25.
The very brief comment of Jesus after this reading shows the essential difference between his reading and that of Ezra the Scribe. For Jesus is himself the prophesied Messiah. He is the fulfilment of what Isaiah wrote, and of what Moses wrote. He is the fulfilment of the whole religion, and the whole expectation of the Jews. He is himself God’s word, God’s revelation, God’s salvation; he is God’s reaching out to us in mercy and love; and his coming is for all of us a joyful Jubilee of liberation.
There’s an American Biblical scholar called John Bergsma. Among many other books, he has written on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and on the Jubilee. The Dead Sea scrolls, as we know, were first discovered at Qumran in 1947. They were produced by the sect of the Essenes, of whom the New Testament speaks not one word, but who were certainly all about at that time. Bergsma’s interest falls particularly on a scroll from cave 11, labelled, somewhat inelegantly, “11QMelchizedek”. This scroll focuses on the Isaiah text read by Jesus, and its related Jubilee text in Leviticus. It also links in the prophecy of Daniel Chapter 9, where we read of an Anointed Prince who is to come “70 weeks of years” from the restoration of the Temple. 70 weeks of years would be 490 years; that is, the equivalent of 10 Jubilee cycles of 49 years each. That brings us to New Testament times. All the more then can we assume an atmosphere charged with expectation as Jesus read this passage from Isaiah.
For 11QMelchizedek, the coming Messiah will be a new Melchizedek, who is at once both King and Priest. His coming will finally fulfil the Mosaic Jubilee. He will bring not just a political liberation, but liberation from Satan and from sin. Bergsma suggests that St. Luke may well be referring to this when he places as the first miracle of Jesus in his Gospel a delivery from demonic possession (4:33), followed soon after by a declaration to the paralytic of delivery from sin (5:20). Bergsma concludes that Luke was writing certainly for the Gentiles, but no less certainly for the Jews, and maybe especially for the Essene Jews.
We have today a special Sunday of God’s Word, occurring also in a special year of Jubilee. These things are given us as reminders, or ways of putting before us in a heightened manner the great truths we hold. So let me affirm again now what we all believe: that in Holy Scripture we have God’s own word, and we read it as addressed directly to ourselves. We believe also that Jesus Christ our Lord is the fulfilment and ultimate meaning of all Holy Scripture; he is at once the mediator and the fullness of all Divine Revelation. Knowing that we meet Jesus when we read his word, it’s good to renew our resolve to spend at least some time every day reading that, and especially the holy Gospels. But Jesus is also present in his Church, and in her Sacraments. For he came in Spirit and in flesh; not only divinely but also humanly. So we have direct access to him not only in the Holy Spirit, in reading, in prayer, but also in other people, and especially in our fellow Christians. But the place where we meet Jesus, above all, is this great Sacrament of his presence, of his self-gift, of his saving love: here, in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.