3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Jesus, a Sign of Contradiction

At our parish Men’s Group yesterday, we discussed the different elements of this Gospel. It gives us a formal introduction to the Gospel of St. Luke, which we will be hearing from primarily in the Sundays of this liturgical year. Then it gives us Jesus’ very first appearance of his public ministry.

He showed up at a synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. And as we heard, he spoke that beautiful proclamation of God’s justice: Good news for the poor, for the oppressed, for those who suffer. And as we’re told, the people looked at him and reveled in his words with what sounds like dumbfounded amazement.

That’s where today’s Gospel reading ends, but there’s more. If we continue reading, we learn that no sooner than they had expressed their praise and wonder at his powerful words, it all changed, when he began to tell them even more of God’s great plan of justice. The second part of his message was not well received. They went from being wow-ed to suddenly becoming so enraged that they intended to kill him.

It made me think of something that had been said about Jesus when he was only eight days old. You’ll recall, Mary and Joseph had gone to the Temple to dedicate him to God. There they encountered a mysterious man named Simeon, who took the baby Jesus in arms and told Mary:

“Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted…” (Lk 2:27-25).

As our Catechism says it: “Many of Jesus' deeds and words constituted a ‘sign of contradiction’” (CCC, 575).

Jesus was indeed a sign of contradiction for the people of Nazareth, who marveled at him, but also wanted to harm him. And I think he can be for us too. Jesus comforts us, but perhaps he also makes us uneasy.

Yesterday morning I was asked to help at a nearby parish for children’s first confessions. It made me think of what I experience pretty much at any parish I go to for first confessions, including our own: that the children tend to want to go to their pastor for their confession, while the parents tend to want to confess to any priest but their pastor.

Most of the children are pretty care-free in that encounter with Jesus, but so often the parents are anxiety-filled, some of whom are grinding through their first confession in years. The children are coming with sins that are like cotton-balls, while the parents lumber forward with sins that may well feel like bowling balls.

By the way, kudos to those parents who witness to their children in doing that, because there are too many parents for whom Jesus isn’t even on their radar. But for all of us, for whom Jesus is part of the landscape, we know within that we shouldn’t have that fear of Jesus, or the life he calls us to—even though to live the way he demands is not necessarily easy or without sacrifice.

In whatever way Jesus is a sign of contradiction—bringing us comfort in some ways, but also causing us anxiety—it may well be that our anxiety is the result of the fact that we’re hearing his voice somewhere in the mix of all the noise, calling us, calling us to something more. And yet we don’t know how to answer that call, or we fear what it will demand of us. In that anxiety, like the town-folk of Nazareth, we may rather just be done with Jesus: Just go away. You’re disrupting the happiness I’ve made.

I remind us that our children don’t instinctively have that fear. If they develop it, they’re likely getting it from us. In that, we’re getting in their way, when in fact, our task is to lead them to Jesus, as we ourselves are trying to move toward him.

For whatever ways he causes us fear, trepidation, please know that he doesn’t want to cause that feeling, and actually, it’s not from him. He wants us to find and feel peace. Furthermore, that fear will remain unless we either drown him out and do away with him, or unless we start taking steps in the direction he’s calling us. Only then will he cease to be a sign of contradiction to us.