4 Sunday Ordinary Time, C, 3 February 2013, Luke 4:21-30

When I turned 17 my parents gave me a birthday present: insurance on my Mother's car. I still remember that car, it was a 1994 Ford Fiesta.When I was 18, I bought my first car. It was a 1992 Toyota Corolla. It wasn't much bigger or faster than the Fiesta, but I thought it was fantastic! I fitted an aftermarket exhaust that made a rumbly noise, alloy wheels and a new CD player. It had power-steering and central locking. It never broke down and I was very pleased with myself. It got more polish on it than most cars see in a lifetime, and I took pride in being able to change the oil and spark plugs. I even changed the radiator, which was a relatively big job! The Corolla carried me to Maynooth in August 2001, and it ferried many's the seminarian to the cinema and back... I loved that little car, and I suppose I still do love my cars, as I have shared with you before.

During the week in Maynooth I had reason to read the following story from St Augustine:

Suppose we were wanderers who could not live in blessedness except at home, miserable in our wandering and desiring to end it and return to our native country. We would need vehicles for land and sea which could be used to help us to reach our homeland, which is to be enjoyed. But if the amenities of the journey and the motion of the vehicles itself delighted us, and we were led to enjoy those things which we should use, we should not wish to end our journey quickly, and, entangled in a perverse sweetness, we should be alienated from our country, whose sweetness would make us blessed. Thus is this mortal life, wandering far from God, if we wish to return to our native country where we can be blessed we should use this world and not enjoy it, so that the invisible things of God being understood by the things that are made may be seen, that is, so that by means of corporal and temporal things we may comprehend the eternal and spiritual. 

On Christian Doctrine (I, iv)

I was immediately struck by Augustine's reference to 'vehicles for land and sea'! Little did he know what developments there would be in the world some 15-1600 years later! I think that there is something amazing about that vehicle reference in Augustine. Just listen to what he says about it again:  "But if the amenities of the journey and the motion of the vehicles itself delighted us"... Those things in life that tantalize us, the things that tickle our fancy – Augustine tells us that these things distract us from our one true love; these lower loves call us away from the highest love: God. For Augustine, the good things of this world are to be used but not enjoyed, because in some sense our joy is only to be found in God. They are a means to an end.

So, what tickles your fancy? Is it clothes? Or cars like me perhaps? Or is it Sky TV, or hours spent on the internet? For Augustine, this is not about the bad things that we might do, its not about those things that might be clearly sinful – it is about the good things that are given to us to use in this world. And for Augustine these good things are meant to lead us to even better things – to God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The passage of Luke's gospel that we have just heard follows immediately on from the passage we heard last Sunday. Just to jog your memory: Jesus arrives home to Nazara – to Nazerath – and he enters the synagogue. He stands up to read and they hand him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah – and he reads from the prophet Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me... " And then he says: "This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen." That sentence must be very important, because it is repeated in the liturgy this Sunday – it is the beginning of this Sunday's passage, and the ending of last Sunday's: "This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen."

Very often we might wonder what Jesus would be like if we were to meet him face to face. Would he be a political leader? A social revolutionary? Would Jesus be a financial whizz-kid, able to predict the markets with certainty and save us from economic woes? Would Jesus be a great General in a Salvation Army, fighting for justice in the world? What would Jesus be like if we were to meet him?

For Luke, Jesus is a prophetic Messiah. That is not to say that Jesus is merely a prophet, not at all. No, it is to say that if we are looking for the characteristic that would best describe our Messiah, our Christ, our anointed one, it would not be that Jesus was a social revolutionary; rather it would be that Jesus was prophetic.

In our gospel last Sunday Jesus quoted from the prophet Isaiah. This Sunday, continuing on from that Jesus makes a profound statement: "I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country." He then illustrates that by telling his listeners  about the prophets Elijah and Elisha. This story that Jesus tells is a prophetic story. And what follows is a standard response to prophecy by the people: they move not only to hustle him out of town, but to throw him over a cliff! No mistaking the taste then: this prophetic man was not accepted by his own people.

For us followers of Jesus, he is the culmination of all prophecy. And so, if we are to be prophetic – and we are all called to be prophetic by our baptism as priest, prophet and king – if we are to be prophetic, then that means that we are to imitate the prophetic character that Jesus shows us. If we are really prophetic then we may well be shunned as Jesus was shunned by his own people. A prophetic message is not a popular message – it doesn't serve to gain the prophet brownie points with his or her listeners.

The preacher's task then is not to entertain the people – it is not even to relish in his own eloquence or ability to draw people in. No, the preacher's task is to transmit in a faithful way as possible, for no personal gain, the message of Christ in all its fullness. The preacher's task is to proclaim the love of God, and to remind people of their true homeland – their heavenly homeland. The preacher's task is not to be popular, but rather to remind people of God – to point towards God because God calls him to do just that.

For St Augustine, battling with these questions many centuries ago, there are clearly higher and lower loves. Loving God is the highest love for him, and it is the love that will bring the greatest blessings into our lives. But, on our journey to loving God we must make use of material goods to get there. These goods can entrap us – tantalize and fascinate us – and so we forget the greatest love of our hearts and settle for a lesser love. For Augustine, we might say, this is what sin really amounts to in our lives – it is settling for some-thing less than God.

We might say that there is something prophetic in Augustine here. In other places he says that he does not seek the money, the power or the authority that great knowledge would grant him. Rather, he seeks to be a servant of truth, for truth's sake – not to be greater than others, but to serve them.

For us today, as preachers and witnesses to Christ, we must not go after the lesser love of popularity, the lesser love of people's approval. Our task is to remain true to Christ, true to our calling, true to our homeland in heaven.

So, here we are – this first Sunday of February 2013. We have reflected extensively on the gospel for this Sunday. We also remember our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah – the call of Jeremiah by God to prophesy in his name. And then listen to St Paul in the second reading: "If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everything, and if I have faith in all its fullness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all."

Love is the highest gift. And that was the aim of all of St Augustine's work – to love. To explain true Christian love and to share it with others. To love God, to love neighbour and to love self. These three together. And, if we love our neighbour then we want the best for them. If we love our own self, we want the best for our self. And if we truly love God then we have some awareness, some sense of how much God has loved us first by sending us his Son to die that we might live.

So, don't let some lesser love get in the way of the higher loves. Make use of the good things of this world to gain access to the higher things – and don't be afraid to share that with others, because this really is a message of liberation – it is a liberation from the distractions and half-joys of this world in anticipation of the great joy that is to come; it is to believe in the task of making the kingdom come alive in the here and now by committing ourselves truly and completely to Christ, now and forever. Amen.