Today we begin meditating on the Gospel of Luke. Luke was not one of the Apostles. He was a Gentile, a doctor by profession and a convert to Christianity. He has the unique distinction of being the only New Testament writer who was not a Jew.

This makes his Gospel easy to read. He was not writing for Jews but for Gentiles like us. In his writings he omits all references to Jewish traditions and customs.

Some of the great Bible stories are in this Gospel – the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan. Luke also gives special prominence to women who, at that time, were not considered. He writes with reverence of Elizabeth, Anne, the widow at Naim, the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus and several others.

In this story, we meet Jesus at the start of his public ministry. Jesus “came to Nazara, where he had been brought up and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day as he usually did.” Jesus was an observant Jew, going regularly to the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, very much like so many Catholics in Trinidad who go to Mass in their parishes every weekend.

Jesus “stood up to read and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll he found the place where it is written…” Jesus was looking for the Scripture text of the day. We follow this Jewish custom in our Sunday Lectionary. We also have a set pattern of readings for every day.

The text read by Jesus had been written by Isaiah about 400 years before Jesus was born. It was written for the Jews who were returning from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem. But Jerusalem had been totally destroyed by the Babylonians so the people were very discouraged and demoralised, very much an oppressed community. Isaiah wrote these words to give his people hope and to encourage them to start living again, to rebuild their city and their lives.

In Jesus’ own time there were many who were poor or marginalised: the leper, the widow, the tax collector, prostitutes and Samaritans. We have all read their stories. Jesus allowed the reading to do the same thing it had done in Isaiah’s time – to bring good news to the poor - to reach out to all those who were marginalised, poor and disenfranchised, to proclaim liberty to captives – to liberate people from the habits and addictions, beliefs and systems that kept them captive; to the blind new sight – to give people a new vision of life, to open their eyes to new possibilities and opportunities, to free them from all forms of blindness and prejudice, to set the downtrodden free -  to lift up people who had experienced discrimination or oppression or who were downtrodden by their own poor image of themselves..

Who is Jesus for us? Who or what, like Jesus, brings the Good News to us, gives us hope and encouragement, helps us to grow and develop our potential, does not give up on us? Sometimes parents or a good teacher. I also think of adult literacy programmes and education programmes such as HYPE and ALTA that offer additional opportunities to so many people who have been marginalised by the school system. They bring good news.

Recently I was privileged to attend the launch of the NEDCO sponsored Fashion Entrepreneurs of Trinidad and Tobago (FETT) that showcased the talents and creativity of many of Trinidad and Tobago’s fashion designers.

This NEDCO initiative brings good news and offers new sight to many local talented dress designers by opening them to otherwise inaccessible possibilities and opportunities to expand their clientele even beyond our shores.

Last week we celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King, leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, a man like Isaiah and Jesus, a man who proclaimed liberty to millions of people in the United States who were held captive by racial and colour prejudice, a man who gave new sight to those who were so blind that they could not see beyond the colour of a person’s skin.

We are reading these words of Isaiah today more than 2400 years after it was first read. In the midst of the chaos and crime in our society may we read it with the same hope that filled those early Jews so that we can say with Jesus “This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.”
Amen

Gospel Meditations for January are by Patricia Elie of Santa Rosa parish, Arima