Galilee Anointing

In this episode, Fr Richard Healey reflects on the significance of Galilee as the starting point of Jesus’ public ministry. He explores the region’s geographical, historical, and cultural context, drawing on insights from the historian Josephus. Fr Richard highlights the role of synagogues in Jewish life and Jesus’ profound reading from Isaiah 61, proclaiming liberation and good news for the oppressed. He emphasises that Jesus’ mission extends beyond personal salvation to encompass social justice and community transformation. As we approach Australia Day, Fr Richard invites us to embrace Jesus’ message of hope, love, and liberation in our lives and communities.

00:00:00 So Galilee of the nations. That’s the place where Jesus decides to begin his public ministry. He could have gone anywhere within Israel, and yet he goes back to the region that presumably he knows pretty well. Now Galilee is derived from a Hebrew word, Galilee, which means either circle or region. And it’s most likely a description of the fact that Galilee was a bit of a enclave. So it’s up there in the north. It’s about 80km from the north to the south, about 40km from east to west. But it’s surrounded on all sides by pagan territories, the Philistines and Tyre and Sidon along the coast to the west, the Samaritans down to the south. They have the Decapolis, the ten cities of the, the pagans, the Roman cities, the Roman settlements that are there to the east and then to the north. You have the, the Syria and that the Golan Heights. So this region was very influenced by the areas, the communities that surrounded them. We have in the writings of Josephus, a first century Jewish historian, who for a period was the governor of Galilee.

00:01:28 So what he says about it, you know, it should be taken with due historical weight. And Josephus tells us that there were 204 different villages and hamlets and towns that made up the region of Galilee. Now historians maybe question the accuracy of the 204. Josephus goes on to say that every single one of those 204 towns were also very large settlements, no less than 15,000 people in each, which makes that number of very difficult. Number two to agree on. Now that there’ll be 3 million people living in that area. So we don’t think that was historically accurate. There’s not a whole lot of settlement in that first century before Christ through to the first century after his time, but it certainly was a very rich and lush area. It’s about the only place in the whole of, of Israel where there is sufficient rainfall between 800 and 1200 millimetres of rainfall there every year, so it’s well watered. It has the the Jordan River flowing through it. So the sea or the Lake of Galilee is to the east of the eastern border of Galilee.

00:02:49 So the most of the lake would be part of the territory. But the eastern shore isn’t part of of Galilee as such, because it’s the pagan Decapolis region. So it’s been said that it was easier to grow a whole grove of olives in Galilee than to raise just one single child down in Judea, because it was so barren and rocky, and there was all kinds of difficulties down there in the south. So Galilee began to be a place where life was flourishing. The Romans saw the potential there, and they began to build settlements there in that period, and under the rulership of the leadership of King Herod and and then his sons, who took over after his death in four BCE. So this period is this whole region is very vibrant. It’s on the trade routes from north to south, so there would have been lots of movement. When you go on the hill that’s not far from Galilee, from sorry, from Nazareth. Nazareth itself is on the bottom of the plain, with some of the settlement would have been on the side of the hill.

00:03:58 It’s not actually on the hill as such. It’s not built on top of the hill, as Luke will go on to describe later in this passage. But it’s. There’s a hill nearby. And from that hilltop, I’m told you can see really the whole of that area and lots of very significant historical events unfolded within that region that you could see from there. So all of this is part of the consciousness of Jesus in going back to his hometown. Now, in every town, we’re told according to the law, if there are at least ten families, they had to have a synagogue because you needed somewhere to be able to pray. The temple was still the focus, but the temple is ultimately a place of sacrifice. A place where you go and do that function of rendering sacrifice and offerings in order to, to receive freedom and and forgiveness of your sins. But the synagogue is something different. The synagogue is primarily a place of teaching. A place where you would gather together in order to pray and to listen to the teaching.

00:05:08 There would be three major parts within the ordering of the synagogue service, you would begin with ritual prayers that you would pray, and then there would be a series of readings that different people from the community would read a total of seven different readings. So presumably Jesus was one of those chosen to do one of those readings, and he chose the prophet Isaiah and rolled it and rolled it to the towards the end of the prophet. The writings there on Isaiah 61, as we would call it, they didn’t number it at that stage. And then somebody would get up and teach about one of those readings. Now, again, it wasn’t one of necessarily the synagogue official. He wasn’t ordained necessarily to teach, although that was usually his day job during the week that the person would teach the look at the local school. But at that occasion, he was able to invite anybody to be able to come up and to to teach on one of the readings that they had just heard. And so this is what Jesus does.

00:06:14 And remember, we’re told by Luke that it was his habit to go to the synagogue each week on the Sabbath. Imagine how difficult that would have been for him. You know, so much of what was happening in the synagogue would have been very wonderful and very pleasing to him. But a lot of it would have been very confronting because he would have seen the hypocrisy. He would have seen how false a lot of that was. And so it would have been a lot of, you know, very jarring experiences that were there. And yet he faithfully goes to the synagogue each week. And it’s a good reminder for us, even if we think that the person speaking at the front of the church is full of all kinds of lovely and other things that might be there. We’re invited into this surrender. We’re invited into this encounter just to be faithful to what God is calling us and inviting us into. And so what does Jesus read? It’s a very powerful moment in the prophet it, Isaiah. And it becomes even more significant for us as we ponder this, the power of those words, as Jesus declares that these words are being fulfilled even as you listen.

00:07:29 That he realized that this was what was unfolding. That the spirit of the Lord God was given to me, for he has anointed me, and he has announced, he has decreed to me to go and to announce the good news to the poor, to the oppressed, to the prisoners, to those who are captives in in all kinds of different ways. And he announces this liberation, this freedom that we’re able to find only in him. Only in Jesus do we find that possibility of of that release, that the year of the Lord’s favor is this declaration that we can indeed find our purpose and place in God, that we no longer have to be bound by judgment. It’s interesting that if you read Isaiah 61 verse two, we only get the first line of it quoted by Jesus. But that goes on to declare this year of wrath, this punishment, this judgment of the law of the Lord against his people. But Jesus doesn’t bring that. He doesn’t read that line of the scriptures, because the only wrath that he brings, the only declaration that he brings, is this announcement of love, that he’s inviting us into this place of freedom, this place of liberation.

00:08:55 If only we could actually live that. If only we could have that expansive vision. The Christianity calls us not through just this little sheltered world where we’re simply about our own salvation, but about this moment of breaking in, of declaring what God is calling us into, that we’re meant to bring this freedom to announce this utterly, Amazingly good news to all those who need to hear it. So often though, within our world we continue to see the stinginess of our leaders that so often we get this very compressed vision of what Christianity was meant to be. And it’s a very just about me and my faith and my relationship to Jesus. But this message is about the call to justice, the call to live within a world in which we have found favor with God. Only because the Lord has done that work for us and invited us into this freedom and invited us into this space. If only we can also make that same declaration and announce this good news. We can indeed allow this transformation to happen within us.

00:10:07 So let’s be people that receive this news and let this word transform us and change us so that our country, as we celebrate Australia Day, might indeed be a nation where people are able to experience the splendor, the wonder of God, and the liberation of all things that oppress us.

Timestamps

Jesus Begins His Ministry in Galilee (00:00:00)
Discussion on Jesus’ choice to start his ministry in Galilee, a region surrounded by pagan territories.

Josephus and Historical Context (00:01:28)
Reference to Josephus’ writings about Galilee, including its villages and population estimates.

Geographical Significance of Galilee (00:02:49)
Description of Galilee’s fertile land and the challenges of life in Judea compared to Galilee.

Role of Synagogues in Jewish Life (00:03:58)
Explanation of the synagogue’s function as a place for teaching and prayer in Jewish communities.

Jesus Reads from Isaiah (00:05:08)
Details on Jesus’ reading from Isaiah in the synagogue and its significance in his ministry.

The Power of Jesus’ Message (00:06:14)
Reflection on the impact of Jesus’ message of liberation and good news for the oppressed.

Invitation to Embrace Freedom (00:07:29)
Encouragement to accept Jesus’ declaration of freedom and the transformative power of his message.

Call to Justice and Community (00:08:55)
Discussion on the broader implications of Jesus’ message for justice and community engagement.

Transformative Vision for Society (00:10:07)
A call for listeners to allow Jesus’ message to transform their lives and communities.