Breaking the Word – Page 2532 – Rev. Dr. Victor Antonyraj SDB

31.01.10 DO HERE IN YOUR NATIVE PLACE

Posted under Reflections on January 30th, 2010 by

‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.'” And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Lk 4,23-24

They want him to do some mighty deeds for a show. They want him to be a magician. They even challenge him with proverbs: “Physician heal yourself”

Probably, in the mind of Jesus, they are like the devil that tempted him to do mighty deeds (Lk 4, 1-13)

Magicians are those who do tricks to get money or fame for themselves. Jesus has not come for that. He has not come for himself. He has come to do the will of the Father, to bring the Kingdom of God. He has come to reveal God.

So when he was tempted by the devil (Lk, 4,1-13) he uses the WORD of GOD to answer the devil:

Deut 8,3
Deut 6,13
Deut 6,16

Jesus answers the devil saying that he has come to fulfill the Word of God and not for a show.

Similarly he tells his own people (in this passage) that he has come to do the works of the prophets who preached and practiced the Word of God. He has not come for a show.

He says that prophet Elijah was sent only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. (not in the land of Israel)

Again Elisha, the prophet, healed, Naaman the Syrian -and he was not an Israelite.

So prophetic activities does nor exclude a non-Israelite or a non-Israelite territory.

Jesus bases his life on the Word of God and models his life on the prophetic activities.

The prophetic activity is based on the one belief: that there is only one chosen people of God, only one chosen race: the human race.

30.01.10 ASLEEP ON A CUSHION

Posted under Reflections on January 29th, 2010 by

A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Mk 4, 37-38.

Sea was a symbol of the dark power of evil. It aways threatened to destroy the creation, destroy God’s people, and destroy God’s purposes.

Jews were not seafaring people, but there were few fishermen among them. They were mostly shepherds and farmers.

At the back of the mind, the Jews accepted that only God could control the sea and its dark forces.

We know the story of creation, wherein God established his power over the sea in creating the world. At Noah’s time, it is God who was in control of all that was happening. When Jonah, instead of doing what God wanted him to do, by taking another direction, was faced with a storm. God saved him and brought him back to do, what He wanted him to do. Israelites, when they were leaving Egypt, it was God who made the way through the waters. Also in Psalms we read, in many places, where God is in control of the sea.

So in this passage the writer is telling us that by the arrival of the Kingdom of God, God’s power is in action over against the evil forces symbolized by the sea.

It is the creative power, the power of control and the power that rules the nature. So in Jesus the power of God is active.

That is why the disciples say: “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”