The eyes of all in the synagogue ...

Who is your favourite director of motion action films? Cecil B DeMille? Kathryn Bigelow? Steve McQueen?

Whenever I hear this Sunday's gospel passage (Luke 4. 14 -21) I find myself wondering what an inspirational and creative director would 'do' with it. The first time I remember having this thought it was Stephen Spielberg who came to mind.

We're in Nazareth, where Jesus spent his childhood. We're in the synagogue, surrounded by those who knew the family and knew Jesus when he was growing up. We're at the point in the liturgy when the attendant hands over the scroll of the scriptures and a passage is found to be read aloud .. and it's going to be read by Jesus of Nazareth.

The text says that Jesus 'found the place where it was written': did Jesus decide this was the passage he wanted to read and was scrolling through until he found it; or (like many of us when we are presented with a reading from one of the more obscure books of the Apocrypha) was it the reading set for the day which he was scrolling through to locate. And then he says: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me".

By this point the author has already narrowed the scene down from town, to synagogue, to Jesus; and slowed the pace of the narrative until we're just watching an individual scrolling through a scroll. And then, at the end of the quotation from Isaiah, the narrative comes to total full stop: "he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him."

Then, and only then, when the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him; then, and only then, the full stop shatters and fragments of history and prophecy, present and future, theology and (what will become known as) ecclesiology sway with surprise, dance with delight and weave themselves into a known unknown future made present in their very midst: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

What would Cecil B DeMille, Kathryn Bigelow or Steve McQueen do with that? I'd love to see.

Dan Tyndall

21 Jan 2022

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