When passions run high, all bets are off. When passions run high, we become capable of speaking or acting in ways that we would not in other circumstances. Or, conversely, when passions run high, we might become fairly paralyzed, incapable of accessing our thoughts, or putting our thoughts into words, or putting our words into actions. We might tremble, with fear, anger, or joy, but lack the place to go or the word to say, or the thing to do.
“When the people in the synagogue heard [Jesus], they were all filled with fury.” Luke 4: 28
The failure of the people to understand Jesus left them incapable of accepting him whom they already knew, in part precisely because they felt they knew him! In the tradition and experience of the Prophet Jeremiah whom we read today, and of Elijah and Elisha whom Jesus references while speaking, Jesus will not be overwhelmed or defeated by their failure. God has made a definitive choice to address our failures, even our failure to claim his love as we might and as we ought.
God’s grace will penetrate the depths of our hearts even as it flows abroad to penetrate the wide places of our world, the diversity of minds and hearts in the human family. The complexity of a world of rich and poor, of satisfied and hungry, of strong and of those bowed low, of courageous and of fearful is the very world into which the Word of God is Incarnate. At times we will be calm and still, and we will be prepared and long to absorb the Word addressed to us. At times we will be so wound up, at the very edges of or even in the swirling eye of ‘fury,’ angry or dejected, convinced or determined beyond reason, Jesus will seem missing from the picture. But it is precisely then when he reaches toward us. Though he had to ‘pass through their midst’ in Nazareth, he would take their place, our place on Calvary outside the city of Jerusalem.
Why and how does God do this? Love. What does God ask of us in response? Love. What does true love look, sound, and feel like? Christ.