25 September Orthodox Gospel Warns Against Hearing Only What We Want to Hear

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On 25 September, the Greek Orthodox Church reads a Gospel in which admiration for Christ turns with startling speed into anger. The people of Nazareth are initially impressed by what Jesus says. Within a few verses, they are trying to drive him from a cliff.

The reading, Luke 4:22-30, takes place in the town where Jesus had grown up. Those gathered in the synagogue marvel at the “gracious words” coming from him, but their admiration is accompanied by a familiar question: “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

They know where he comes from. They know his family. They have also heard reports of what he has done at Capernaum and expect to see something similar for themselves.

Jesus understands the expectation immediately. “Physician, heal yourself,” he tells them, anticipating the proverb they will use. In other words, if these remarkable things have happened elsewhere, surely he should demonstrate them here, among his own people.

Instead, Jesus tells them that “no prophet is acceptable in his own country” and reaches back into Israel’s own Scriptures for two examples that change the atmosphere in the synagogue completely.

The first is the prophet Elijah. During a severe famine, Jesus reminds them, there were many widows in Israel, yet Elijah was sent to a widow in Zarephath, in the region of Sidon. The second concerns the prophet Elisha. There were many people suffering from leprosy in Israel during his time, but the person who was healed was Naaman the Syrian.

Neither was an Israelite.

The point is not lost on the congregation. The people who had moments earlier been impressed by Jesus are now, Luke says, “filled with wrath”. They force him out of the town and lead him to the brow of the hill, intending to throw him down. Jesus passes through the crowd and leaves.

What makes the passage so striking is not simply that Jesus is rejected in his hometown. It is the speed with which approval becomes hostility once his words stop being comfortable.

The congregation is willing to admire him. What it is not willing to accept is a message that unsettles its expectations.

Jesus’ examples of Elijah and Elisha challenge the assumption that familiarity or belonging gives anyone an exclusive claim on God’s favour. In both stories, divine help reaches people beyond the expected boundaries. The widow is from Sidon. Naaman is Syrian. The people in Nazareth have heard the Scriptures before, but hearing Jesus apply them to the present is something different.

There is an important distinction here between hearing what confirms us and hearing what challenges us.

The people of Nazareth are not indifferent to Jesus. Quite the opposite. They begin by wondering at his words. Their problem emerges when those words ask them to reconsider what they believe they are entitled to expect from him.

That tension gives today’s Epistle, Ephesians 4:17-25, particular force.

Saint Paul is writing about what it means for someone who has encountered Christ to actually change. His language is stronger than a general call to become a better person. He tells the Christians at Ephesus to leave behind their former manner of life, to “be renewed in the spirit of your minds” and to “put on the new nature”, created in righteousness and holiness. He then gives the idea an immediate practical consequence: put away falsehood and speak the truth.

The emphasis is on transformation. Hearing about Christ is not presented as the end of the process. Paul expects what has been heard to alter the way a person thinks and, eventually, the way that person lives.

That theme has a particular place within Orthodox Christianity. A Greek Orthodox Archdiocese reflection on renewal draws directly on this passage from Ephesians, describing Christian life as an ongoing process rather than something secured simply by belonging to the Church.

Read alongside Luke’s Gospel, Paul’s words become more searching.

The people in Nazareth have heard Jesus. They have even admired him. Yet when his message challenges an assumption they hold closely, admiration is not enough.

There is something recognisable in that reaction. It is relatively easy to listen to an idea that confirms what we already believe about ourselves, our community or the world around us. It is considerably harder to listen when the same authority asks us to reconsider something we would prefer to leave untouched.

The Gospel is also a warning about familiarity. The people of Nazareth know Jesus as Joseph’s son. Their proximity to him should, perhaps, make recognition easier. Instead, what they think they already know becomes an obstacle.

For Christians, that possibility does not disappear simply because Scripture, worship and religious tradition have become familiar. A person can know the words of a Gospel, hear them repeatedly and still resist what they demand when those words become personally uncomfortable.

That is where the Epistle and Gospel for 25 September meet.

Saint Paul calls for the mind itself to be renewed. Luke shows what can happen when people refuse that disturbance and cling instead to an existing understanding.

The crowd in Nazareth begins by praising what it hears and ends by trying to silence the person saying it. The change occurs when Jesus stops giving them the message they expect.

That leaves a difficult question at the centre of today’s readings.

It is easy to hear what agrees with us.

Faith also asks whether we are prepared to hear what does not.

Read also 18 September Orthodox Gospel Teaches Compassion When There Is Not Enough

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