You Have Words of Eternal Life by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [Balthasar, Hans Urs von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898703085
Published: 2013-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

48. The First Provocation

Mark tells the story (Mk 6:1-6); Luke adds some details later (4:14-30). Jesus is teaching in the synagogue in his hometown. Both Gospel writers describe the shift from marveling to astonishment to rejection. Initially the approving applause is spontaneous. Then, hard on its heels, comes a moment of reflection: “Where does he get that?” We know him, we know his parents, his relatives live among us, he is one of us, and thus we can put our finger on the contours of his intellectual equipment—which he has clearly surpassed in this talk. He undermines long years of proven experience; he dismantles the categories he has occupied for decades.

Luke heightens the paradox by having Jesus open the Scriptures to a messianic passage from Isaiah and read it, applying it to his own person: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled.” Even this application gains him applause, obviously on the basis of the “words of grace” of a speech undeniably inspired by God and marking him as prophetically endowed. The people cannot help but be astounded, yet at the same time they are alienated. So they insist on a proof that would make the incomprehensible easier to accept: Isaiah spoke of miraculous healings, and rumors have been making the rounds that you did something of that sort in Capernaum—therefore, why don’t you show us what you can do (Lk 4:23)?

At this point both Gospel writers employ the same phrase: “Nowhere does a prophet enjoy less respect than in his home city, among his kin, in his own house.” Familiar assessments are too well entrenched, and obvious signs of a divine calling are missing. How many called to the priesthood and to the religious life must experience this same thing, even if the wounds eventually heal after a time of rupture and rejection. Yet the examples Jesus offers—of Gentiles healed in foreign lands through prophets from Israel—indicate that sometimes the wounds never heal.

One might ask why Jesus has to begin with such an undiplomatic provocation. The answer is that genuine calls from God permit no gradual transition. He himself announced this when people who wanted to follow him tried to construct such transition stages: let me at least say good-bye to the folks at home, especially since my father has just died. Jesus’ reaction to this request is harsher than anything else in the Scriptures, for it not only contradicts all custom but also runs in the face of what is specifically required in the law. He says, “Let the dead bury their dead” (Mt 8:22). The words ring out from one graced with divine authority, echoing from an incomparable summit towering over all the law’s contents.

When life-changing vocations are involved, any mitigating mediation invariably disappears. Yet Jesus uses words of the same level of intensity to reply to his relatives and his Mother when they came to fetch him home. Put in Paul’s words, at stake here are a dying and a rising as a new man—something that has no transitional stages.

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