As we’ve already heard and experienced, today is the Sunday of the Word of God. Pope Francis established this for the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time a few years ago. It’s a chance for us to reflect on the place of God’s Word in our lives.
Today’s 1st Reading, Psalm and Gospel fit well. In the 1st reading we are in Jerusalem in the 5th c BC, the people have returned from Exile, and they gather to hear God’s Word and renew their covenant with God. Ezra, priest and scribe, the spiritual head of the community, acts as lector / reader. He reads from the Law of Moses. In Jewish tradition, Ezra is the founder of synagogue worship, and the synagogue worship is the ancestor of our Liturgy of the Word. We’re being shown, then, what the Liturgy of the Word can be for us: a moment of change of heart and joy, a reconnecting with God. It’s to elicit from us what it elicited from them: “Amen! Amen!”
In the Gospel, our Lord is at the beginning of his public ministry. He had just chosen to undergo the baptism of John in the river Jordan. He has returned north, to Galilee, “in the power of the Spirit”. He must still have ringing in him the blessing his Father spoke over him: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” And, on a sabbath day, he enters his home synagogue. And what does he do? He plays the part of a reader. He stands up and reads. He doesn’t begin with his own words, but reading from the prophet Isaiah: “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me…”
And then he does use his own word and says: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled.” Only the second time Jesus uses his own words in the Gospel of Luke.
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled.”
This prompts a thought. What is the mission of the Word of God? Why does God communicate with us, speak to us? Why did he inspire prophets and scribes, apostles and evangelists, to speak and write? So that his Word will be fulfilled in us.
Fulfilled in us, as it was first fulfilled in Jesus. At the level of his divinity, Jesus was / is the Word of God in person. At the level of his humanity, he was formed and guided by the Word of God and by the written word of God, by what we call the Old Testament. St Luke drops hints about this all through. At the age of 12, Jesus stays back in Jerusalem. And what was he doing? Listening to the teachers of the Law and asking them questions. In our terms, he was taking part in a Scripture course. A little later, St Luke tells us that the boy Jesus, entering his teens, “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man”. What does “wisdom” mean here? The context is Jewish. It can only mean understanding of Scripture, the written Word of God. It was his “custom”, we’re told, to attend the synagogue every sabbath. There he would have heard the Law and the prophets – and grown in wisdom. Scroll forward a little, and we find the Lord in the desert being tempted by the devil. And how does he respond to these temptations – three of them? Not with his own words, but each time by quoting from the Bible, from the Book of Deuteronomy to be precise, i.e. one of the 5 books of the Law. And coming to the synagogue in Nazareth, here it is once more. He doesn’t begin with his own words, but with Isaiah’s. After the Law, the Prophets. We might move then to our Lord on the Cross, and in the Gospels – Luke too – what does Jesus do on the Cross? Above all, he prays. And what does he pray? Not his own words, but the Psalms. So, Jesus filled full of and filled full by the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms – in Old Testament terms, by the whole Bible. It was alive in him. And when risen from the dead and appearing to the 11 at table, what does he say? “Everything about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” And it was.
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled.” Scripture filled Jesus, and it’s meant to fill us. It’s not meant to return empty. It’s meant to call out the Amen of our whole life. Please God, gradually over a lifetime it does, despite our deafness and rebellion. The words of God are spirit and life. His Word comes from his “mouth”. It communicates knowledge of himself and his will, God’s plan, and brings it about. It’s a force. It’s fire, rain, light, lamp, seed. It’s food and drink, bread, milk and honey. It can be a hammer or a sword. Scripture says all this. It struggles with us, judges us, puts us right. It cleans us inside, teaches, illuminates, guides, gives wisdom to the simple. It makes us one Body. It revives the soul and gladdens the heart. It consoles, calms, and inspires us. In the end, it’s Jesus himself, fulfilling himself in us.
The Word can touch us in all sorts of ways – by chance, through events, through what others say to us. But in a special way through Scripture: i) in the Liturgy of the Word ii) in personal reading, lectio divina, alone or with others, or iii) like Mary when we take a phrase and chew it over in our hearts and minds and let it work on us.
Brothers and Sisters, this is what the Father wants for us – his people here and now – to be a people in whom Scripture is “fulfilled” as it was in his Son. May the Holy Spirit make it so! Amen!
St Mary’s Cathedral, 26 January 2025