When we think of a prophet, we may think of someone who can foresee and foretell the future. We also may consider them to be heralds of peace and prosperity or doom and gloom. Prophets are sometimes viewed as spectacular figures, known for eye-popping signs that provide extraordinary passageways into ordinary life and into the future. There is nothing particularly wrong or incorrect about this; however, it can be limiting.
We see the limitations of having this particular outlook in today’s scriptures. In the Second Book of Kings (2 Kgs 5:1-15ab), we hear the story of how Naaman, the Syrian leper, is instructed to present himself to the prophet of Israel, Elisha, in order to be cured of his leprosy. Following this instruction, Naaman is not only baffled but outright furious when Elisha simply tells him to go and wash himself seven times in the Jordan River. It appears that Naaman expected Elisha to invoke the Lord’s name and heal him himself. To be asked to go wash in a river, especially the Jordan River, seemed ludicrous to Naaman, and indeed quite beneath him. How could he be cured by washing in the Jordan River, when there were other rivers of ‘better water?’
It is Naaman’s own servants who confront him in his indignation, in the line from that passage that strikes me the most:
“if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary,
would you not have done it?
All the more now, since he said to you,
‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.”
A similar experience occurs when Jesus returns to Nazareth after having been preaching and healing abroad. The opening lines of today’s Gospel are: “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place” (LK 4: 24-30). It is important to know what has just transpired prior to this statement. Jesus has just read aloud in the synagogue the Isaiah passage about the mission of liberation:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
He concluded by claiming that “today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” Immediately, the hearers grew indignant and pointed out how this was the son of Joseph. In addition, there was also the expectation that he would perform here in Nazareth the same type of miracles that they heard were going on in Capernaum.
Like Naaman, the people of Nazareth expected something a bit more from Jesus – something extraordinary! On top of that, hometown resentment for a native son shows its face as the Nazarenes feel that they are being challenged by someone they have known all their life. This situation was contemptible in their perspective. “Why should we listen to just a hometown boy interpreting a scripture we have known all our life?” “Why should Naaman wash in the Jordan River rather than any of the other rivers that were of ‘better water!’
Jesus then brings up the fact that in the history of Israel, many times it was the outcast or the ‘foreigner’ to whom the prophet was sent and to whom healings were given. And this really angers the people:
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built,
to hurl him down headlong.
We live in a world where spectacle and celebrity reign. Entertainment in many if not most genres is driven by technology, which provides mind-blowing and eye-popping visuals that pique our senses. Technology in general provides faster and sleeker means to accomplish simple and complicated tasks. The lifestyles of celebrities from the political, religious and social arenas dominate the media and titillate our interest.
Amidst the positive enhancements and sometimes forward thrusting energies that these spectacular innovations and celebrities provide in our lives, what seems to get lost is the recognition, much less the appreciation, of the mere simplicity of what many would consider quite boring and familiar occurrences and people. And even more important, this then leads to extinguishing the possibility of hearing much less embracing a prophetic voice that could come from the boring and familiar.
The expectation is eminent: we have heard of this feat or seen what that person can spectacularly do – what’s next? The temptation is to always look for something bigger and better – something more extraordinary. This temptation is driven by expected outcomes based upon our hard-wired patterned perspectives and familiar pasts. Are these the only criteria that we can use to determine whether or not something or someone has value?
When this becomes the only way we take in the experience of our everyday lives, we limit our ability to hear newness, to hear the prophetic voices that are speaking to us right here in the ordinariness of our everyday lives. We see precisely what can happen if we do hear something new from the familiar in today’s gospel. And, when it sounds like something that goes against our time-honored and past-proven opinions, we can become quite furious and violent.
We, like the crowd in Nazareth, in a fit of fury and violence, would rather drive a prophet from our midst. It’s too painful, it upsets the comfort zone, it rocks the status quo, and ultimately it could lead to questioning too much about ourselves, our values, our biases, our privileges. And it is coming from one of our own! That is intolerable.
To be a prophet is not necessarily to be extra-ordinary, especially if that means spectacular and showy. That’s not to say that it cannot be in that form. Prophets have the capacity to heal the wound, but healing is painful. However, I wonder how many missed opportunities for healing occur because of clasping so tightly to pre-ordained outcomes and expectations and even contempt for what is familiar, ordinary and even uninteresting. Who can be prophet to us? Who can be prophet to you?
But he passed through the midst of them and went away.