One of President Barack Obama’s first speeches as President was his ‘Dream’ speech about the America he wanted. It was interspersed with the refrain, “Yes we can!”
He is soon to finish his Presidency mired in lost dreams. It would be easy to become cynical. This is especially so given the political circus he leaves behind.
But our own landscape of public office is only marginally more sane. We seem to want our own version of the lunatic fringe!
Into this present day opera, Luke’s gospel introduces Jesus, also speech making in the synagogue, proclaiming a God of love and life.
The refrain here is: “This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen”.
But then the Obama-like predication: “…no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.” Even here there is impatience and restlessness that cannot easily be remedied.
Then two stories are told: about Elijah (also a prophet) when there was a great famine in Israel; Elisha (another prophet), when skin disease broke out in Israel.
The net effect is that people become agitated with Jesus and his talk. “They hustle him out of the town with the idea of dropping him from the cliff.”
This impatience with faith and shaky hope that scripture presents is true of today.
Christianity seems to promise so much but many people find it delivers little and ‘drop’ it.
People find it difficult to persevere in a promise of grace and happiness when their lifestyles and other engagements fill their lives more immediately.
There is less patience with delay, postponement and waiting.
We live in a world of prosperity and endless summers of satisfaction.
The hope for a good life is better managed by entertainment and distraction than the life of the Spirit in which grace takes its time.
What is missing in the listeners in the gospel, also in some of us is patience and perseverance.
It is true that God’s Kingdom, even His presence is mute, at least for the moment.
Human cynicism and international turmoil just go on. But something deeper is on the move, so to speak.
The signs of the Kingdom, love, peace, joy and justice are, admittedly, a hope. But no need to give up on them.
There is a grace that only God can give, beyond human dreams and projects. Not even Elijah and Elisha could rid the land of famine and disease.
Jesus wins the initial approval of the people but then, to a generation without patience for anything beyond their immediate, these are wasted words.
If we cannot, for the moment, in the Church, continue the quest to preach and live the values of Christ, we will reinvent the anger of the crowd and threaten to execute our Lord, who came to give life.
If we feel that we must re-define the agenda, with our vision, we will short-change the gospel of Jesus.
If we cannot keep hope alive then it is the end of all Christian humanism.
Regrettably, Obama could not quite keep the flame alive, but that seems the way of all human visions. All the more reason to persevere with the Christian vision of a world built on gospel values and the recognition of culture of love and life.
