Third Sunday after Epiphany; 23 January 2022; Epiphany 3C (RCL); Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 414-21.
The book of Nehemiah gives an account of the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah used a form of conscripted labor for the work, which placed some hardship on the community (see chapter 5). Once the work had been completed, the people requested some form of covenant renewal. The pattern is familiar (see Joshua 24, among other examples).
There is a recitation of the covenant clauses and then a meal. Apparently, Ezra read from something like Deuteronomy (note that he reads for six hours), and the people are grieved. Reading Deuteronomy today, it is easy to see why. Again and again, Deuteronomy threatens the people with punishment (even to the point of Exile) for failure to remain faithful to God. The deuteronomistic history provides no shortage of examples of the people whoring themselves at the high places. As returnees from Exile, the people hearing the reading of the law would be only too painfully aware of the punishment inflicted.
But Ezra declares the day as sacred to the Lord, and inappropriate for grief. Instead, the people should feast, and invite to the meal those for whom nothing had been prepared. The complaints of the people in Chapter 5 about their creditors extracting land and making slaves of their sons and daughters in payment of debt would certainly indicate why there would be those without means to bring anything to a feast. The joy of renewing the covenant will renew the strength of the people.
In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah the passage announcing the Jubilee, the seventh sabbath year (the 49th year) in which all debts were to be forgiven and land alienated from its owners should be returned and debt-slaves released. When he says, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” he is announcing the commencement of the Jubilee. No wonder the townspeople want to throw him off a cliff. The Jubilee would upset the whole economic apple cart. And when he adds the stories of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, and Elisha and Naaman, indicating God’s favor to Gentiles, they can’t take it.
How odd that the reading of the law, which brings a sense of guilt, should instead bring joy, and the announcement of the Jubilee, which should bring joy, instead brings anger.
And the reading from Corinthians perhaps gives the ground for the good news in each of Nehemiah and Jesus’ first sermon. We’re all part of a single organism. What affects one affects all. If we saw life that way, we would see the joy in the law (meant to protect those at the margins) and the Jubilee, meant to restore the community to its initial conditions.