All the people were weeping
as they heard the words of the law…
How do we respond to the Word of God?
The first time the entire Torah is presented to the people of Israel, it is quite a momentous occasion. The Book of Nehemiah recounts that a large crowd gathers – men, women, and those children old enough to understand – and listens as Ezra the priest reads out of the book from daybreak till midday. When Ezra opens the scroll, the people bow down and prostrate themselves before the Lord, for they know that God is revealed in its words. Indeed, hearing their own story causes the people to weep, but Nehemiah calls them to rejoice: Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks, for today is holy to our Lord. Thereafter, when the people of Israel look for truth and wisdom to be revealed, they look to the Torah — the law – because they long to be in right relationship with God. And, as Psalm 19 clearly explains, if you are in synch with God and attentive to his words, that relationship refreshes the soul, gives wisdom, rejoices the heart, and enlightens the eye. The psalmist knows that God’s words are Spirit and life!
Where the people of Israel found God’s law in the Torah, we see the Father revealed in Jesus, his Son, the Word of God Incarnate. The evangelist Luke knew how crucial it was to present a comprehensible narrative of the truth of Jesus’ life, death and rising, that his readers might realize the certainty of the teachings they have received. When Jesus goes into the synagogue in Nazareth on the sabbath day, he opts to read Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming hope, a prophecy fulfilled in their hearing: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. In this reading, God is revealed – although, unlike the people of Nehemiah’s time, the people of Nazareth will not hear the Word, will, in fact, fail to recognize Jesus for who he truly is.
When we hear – truly hear – the Word of God, it is fulfilled. If we take the Word into our hearts and speak it with our mouths, as the psalmist did, then we can be a source of sight for the blind, a source of freedom for the oppressed, for we are the hands, the feet, the Body of Christ. And all of those parts, as Paul tells the Corinthian community, are necessary: God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended. To be effective, to effect real change in our world using the gifts of the Spirit, we must first listen attentively, as the people of Israel did, embracing the Word with the whole of our being, heart, body, soul and mind, that we might then be that Body, truly, in our world.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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