The soul of religion

Today’s readings: Nehemiah 8, 2-6.8-10; 1 Corinthians 12, 12-30; Luke 1, 1-4; 4, 14-21.

If religion is not liberating spiritually and bodily, then we would do much better without it. This is what comes out clearly from today’s Scriptures where the book of Nehemiah, very rarely read, accounts for the birth of Judaism, and the gospel points to the real beginning of Christianity. When Jesus said: “This text is being fulfilled today as you listen”, this ‘today’ of God is not a calendar day, it is the time that pertains to interiority.

In the gospel, Jesus returns to Nazareth where he has been brought up and which, as his hometown, gave him identity. But he returns with a prophetic anointing to announce something new. His reading from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue marks the smooth and much needed passage from the old to the new in the Judaic religion and in the lives of those listening to him.

Two identities of Jesus emerge here: one linked to family roots, the other to his prophetic mission. But in the perception of the people, blocked as it was with his family story, it was still hard to grasp who Jesus really was. It happens very often even with us, when we remain blocked in our past, even if that hurts, rather than letting go to experience the transforming power of the Spirit we have received.

We all need a place to belong to, yet we also need to move on in life to become the people we are meant and called to be. It’s often hard to believe that real change is possible. We are all born and grow up into a particular memory which gives us a sense of identity and belonging.

Nazareth, in today’s gospel, stands for where Jesus belonged to. But he was anointed to belong elsewhere and to go beyond the provincialism of Judea.

Jesus was born to go beyond the routine of religion. When religion becomes provincial, it stops letting the Spirit in and it becomes suffocating. Jesus was the Word made flesh, which means he was not only meant to bring freedom from all forms of captivity, but he himself was meant to personify God’s prophecy of liberation.

These were the two identities of Jesus which were sort of his shadow wherever he went and whatever he did. Many perceived only his surface identity, but very few had the deep insight to grasp who he really was. It was for these few that the text from Isaiah was fulfilled the moment they were listening.

We seem to be living in a perpetual metamorphosis of the faith in our times with people still wanting to cling to the residues of primitive religion while others envisaging the fresh air that the Spirit can bring to life and society alike.

This is the dilemma that persists in our way of projecting religion, particularly when we remain closed to the challenges of prophecy which speaks loud and clear about God but also about what concrete response is demanded of us as believers.

Nehemiah and Ezra as depicted in the first reading were those who gave back soul to the people’s religion, lost while in exile. What they did was a liberating gesture for people who were “old enough to understand”. Faith has to be vibrant, a liberating force, a proclamation that is not wishful thinking.

Are we old enough to understand, as at the time of Nehemiah? Are the institutions that rule our lives, both Church and politics, treating us as such? In what we are going through in the country at present, the politics we are made to breath all day is soul-less. If as believers we fail to give back to the country its soul, then our religion is futile.

Our calling, like that of Jesus, is to make the passage from an identity received to an identity that really inspires and connects with the real issues and needs of people, irrespective of the fantasy promises being made daily. We need inspiration because where there is no wisdom, the people perish.