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I salute you with the words of the Apostle Paul:
“Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”

The Gospel for this Sunday is the end of the so-called Manifesto of Nazareth which starts by Jesus reading a scroll from Isaiah chapter 61 that talks about the release of captives, good news to the poor, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor. And he concludes with the astonishing affirmation: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” People in the synagogue to whom he was preaching were amazed for audacity of that statement.

Yes, such scripture might be fulfilled in the hearing. But not that time in the synagogue of Nazareth. The people wanted more. They wanted the preacher to show, to demonstrate not only for the ears but also for the sight. Jesus anticipated the next question that would have come: Show us here what is said about you, what you have done elsewhere. Seeing is believing. Is not this what we all go by? A picture is worth a thousand words, right?

There is an old Latin saying that relates to this story: Hic Rhodus, hic salta. The expression can be traced back to an old fable by Aesop, five centuries before Jesus was born, so it is even plausible that Jesus knew the story. It goes like this: A man comes home after a long travel in which he claimed he had performed some feats. Among them was a record setting jump he did in the isle of Rhodes, which no Olympic champion has ever been able to equal. While he boasted his accomplishments and said he could call upon witnesses from the island of Rhodes, one of his fellow citizens turned to him and said: “No need for that. Here is Rhodes, here you will jump.” To hour day, this is the response you get if you boast about something one has done at another place and time, which you will not match in front of those to whom one is boasting.

Seeing is believing. Or so we are told. But not so for Jesus. Jesus’ words that no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown, casts doubt on the ability to discern something by sight alone (even though sight is by far the dominant sense employed by the sciences). This is the reason that like in Jesus’ time we also hear about miracles that happen elsewhere yet not in front of our eyes, and thus we become skeptics (we say: oh, really…?).

But if we happen to witness something marvelous, that we did not expect, it is only because we have invested our vision with what only faith can do, and what faith can do comes through hearing. Prophets are not welcomed in the hometown because people have seen too much of them and do not listen to them anymore, have decoded them. They do not listen because they do not believe that something new could come from that which people assume they already know. So, Jesus is nothing but the son of Joseph, the carpenter. When the gaze is saturated by that which is all too familiar we do not listen anymore. And we do not even want to listen because that would disturb the ready made image we have; because that would shake the preconceptions. The images we make of someone are similar to pictures we collect. Any good photographer is able to tell you that most of the art in photography lies in the cutting, in the frame chosen to include something and therefore exclude so many other things that lie outside of the frame. People we know, places we visited are similar to an album of pictures we have in which what we know comes frozen with a frame that excludes a lot that does not fit in the frame chosen. But every life, every person is always greater than the frame we have imposed on them, and lies beyond the field of vision And what lies, therefore, beyond the field of vision. And what is beyond the frames needs to be believed (for it is not immediately available for the gaze), because faith the assurance of things not seen, and this can only be known if we listen even when what we listen does not fit into the frames we work with.

The most amazing fact is that miracles happen, because they happen elsewhere outside of the field of vision, somewhere beyond the frame. Or they happen somewhere close to us when we allow another person to touch our life but comes as a stranger, as someone who has stepped outside of the frame with which we currently operate. Strangers can be angels as the book of Hebrews remarkably notes: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have hosted angels without knowing.” Angels can touch us not because we have seen them before but because they utter words that tell us something that a camera cannot capture but the ears listen to, and belief is kindled in our hearts. And you will see through your hearing.

The oldest spiritual exercise that we know of and are familiar with is to close one’s eyes in prayer. It is almost a natural gesture because we instinctively know that prayer is as much about speaking as it is about listening. And we close our eyes exactly because we need to listen attentively and not be distracted or encapsulated by the images that we have. This is why prophets and angels are so often strangers, people who we need listen to, insofar as they do not fit into the pictures we frame. We can only “see” them for what they are when we first listen. But when we take someone for granted, as they did with Jesus, who was for them just the son of Joseph, the carpenter—when we take someone for granted we no longer listen. And when we do not listen, we don’t believe, and if we do not believe, we miss wonders.

When Jesus told them that and gave the examples of two foreigners that listened to the prophets of Israel, and because they listened, their lives were changed. As Jesus told the story his own people in his own town got angry at him and attempted to kill him. Why this fury, you may ask? Why, if Jesus only reminded them of two stories that were written in their sacred book? Because with these stories Jesus reminded them that it takes a stranger for someone to listen. But that was an inconvenient truth. Those folks of the town of Nazareth were convinced that they had the right of entitlement. They were entitled to know that young man, the son of the carpenter who had just to fit into the picture they had of him. But now he became a stranger. And strangers are so often ignored and are not entitled to be heard. Even someone who is for us familiar needs to become strange as to be listened to; has to become someone who we suddenly had not figured out entirely; has to become someone who tells us something that surprises us, as something that has not been framed by us before, something that we can receive truly as a gift. However, it takes some vulnerability to do that; it takes faith, it takes trust in the giver, the trust that underneath the wrapping there is something that will enrich us and not do us harm. It takes vulnerability because in that which is said and cannot be immediately verified, lies are also fabricated. But we will not know that if we do not listen and shrewdly, yes shrewdly probe into it until we are allowed to see. But a bigger lie is not to probe it by accepting that pictures don’t lie. They lie in the truth that their frames exclude.

And we know all this too well when we look at the segregation in many of our communities, or the current national debate over immigration, or the profiling of people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Yet if there were some wonders that truly happened here in this country as in many other parts of the world—which we still celebrate on Thanksgiving—is that strangers have been received from the time of the Mayflower to these days and they were often listened to, even as they have also been and are still being framed and profiled.

The beautiful passage that Jesus said was fulfilled in their hearing was really not fulfilled, not on that occasion not in that place, because they did not listen. Indeed, it takes some ears; it takes hearing, attentiveness to others for us to have eyes to see awesome sights and amazing things happening in our very midst. Listen, and you will believe and then you will find a greater vision. Amen.

Last updated: 2007-01-29 Copyright 2007, The Rev. Dr. Vitor Westhelle