The Gospel from Monday of the 22nd week in ordinary time is taken from St. Luke 4:16 30th verse. Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went, according to his custom into the synagogue. On the Sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He enrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written.

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, and let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down. And all the eyes in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing. And they all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

Then they also asked, is this not the son of Joseph? He said to them, surely you will quote me this proverb, Physician, cure yourself and say, do here in your native place. The things we heard were done in Capernaum. And he said, amen. I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was closed for three and a half years in a severe famine so spread over the entire land.

It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet. Yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.

The thing that was difficult about this message of Jesus was simply that it was so radically different than anything they knew. There’s in you and in me a resistance to change, to something we’ve never seen before, even though at first it may sound like a wonderful thing. But when we realize what it’s going to ask of us, we back off. We have to be open to all the changes that are taking place in our world, in our church, in our culture, and in ourselves. Foreign Father, open our hearts, our minds, to a new experience of who you are, even though it may be radically different than what we expect. We trust in your message and in your help to do what we’re called to do.

And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.