Homily for the3d Sunday of Ordinary TimeJan. 24, 2010
Luke 1: 1-4; 4: 14-21
Christian Brothers, Iona College
“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4: 14).
Now that the dust has settled—Advent and Christmastide are over—we get a kind of re-introduction to the year of St. Luke, the featured gospel of this C Cycle of readings. Way before Eusebius, much less Bede, Luke was the 1st Christian historian, the 1st historian of the Church, at least in the sense that any work discernible historical narrative has survived for us, for he does allude to predecessors (1:1). So he’s a patron of ours, Matt and Joe.[1]
Yet, after stating his purpose as to investigate everything accurately and write it down in an orderly sequence (1:3), he seems to violate one of the canons of historiography. He appeals to the invisible, the intangible, to something incapable of documentation: “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.”
In doing so, however, Luke is doing something else that historians do: interpreting the evidence, explaining what he has seen and heard, or reliable eyewitnesses have seen and heard, telling his readers what he thinks the observable facts mean. To use a phrase popular these days in a very different context, he’s connecting the dots.
Jesus himself said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (4:18), and Luke will offer evidence for the accuracy of that claim in the words and deeds of Jesus’ public ministry, and most of all in his resurrection and in his continuing presence in the lives of his disciples, in the acts of his apostles. Luke’s summary explanation for all of that is that Jesus spoke and acted “in the power of the Spirit.” His very presence made God present.
Jesus returned to Galilee. His return is from the Jordan Valley, where he was baptized “and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove” (3:22), which we celebrated 2 weeks ago; and from the Judean desert, where the Spirit led Jesus after his baptism for a period of prayer and testing, testing that he passed because he was filled by the Spirit of God (4:1-2).He returned to Galilee, he taught in their synagogs, and he was praised by all (4:15). When he taught, he held their rapt attention (4:20). The Spirit of God so filled him, he was so charismatic that he grabbed everyone’s attention. And he didn’t even need a teleprompter. No doubt the program that he outlined for himself—his mission statement, one commentator calls it[2]—is one to grab our attention: liberty for captives and the oppressed, recovery of sight for the blind, good news for the poor. Note that we’re not told yet that he’s done any of this, hasn’t worked a single miracle (Luke knows nothing of the wedding at Cana that St. John told us about last week).
How could he hold the people’s attention and receive the praise of all when he taught? He had the power of the Spirit. Probably very few Galileans had witnessed the Spirit’s descent upon him in bodily form like a dove, and certainly no one had witnessed his combat with the devil in the desert. But because Jesus was a man who totally submitted to God’s will and totally rejected evil, totally rejected self-seeking, he was powerful. People could tell that he was a man of integrity, a man whose actions backed up his works, a man who lived to serve others—that program he announced—a man who was truly in touch with God, which is what being filled with the Spirit means.
Can people tell that we are filled with the Spirit? When we enter a classroom, a community room, a chapel, do we enter “in the power of the Spirit” and cause people to notice, to pay attention? Most of us probably don’t. And, heaven knows, we all know people who make others pay attention to them, but it’s definitely not the Spirit at work. When historians—or at least whoever writes our formal obituary—looks back at our lives, will they witness words and deeds that can be explained as the power of God at work?
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