The region around Lake Galilee, far to the north of Jerusalem, was known as ‘the Galilee of the Gentiles’. [Matthew 4.15] There were profound cultural differences between north and south; it was Peter’s distinctive northern accent that revealed him as one of Jesus’ disciples on the night of Jesus’ arrest. [Matthew 26.73] On foot the journey from north to south required several days. [cf Luke 2,44-46]  Most especially, to the Pharisees, zealous for the purity of the law, Galileans were presumed to be acculturated to Gentile, non-Jewish ways.

‘Prophets do not come out of Galilee’ one of the senior Pharisees reproved Nicodemus.  He had once come to see Jesus secretly, under cover of darkness, probably during Passover. [John 2.21]  John is subtle in his portrayal of Nicodemus, but today’s Gospel reveals that this earnest Pharisee has recognised in Jesus his own teacher [cf 3.10] On the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, Nicodemus came with an expensive array of spices to give Jesus a proper burial. [19.39-40] Though a ‘secret’ disciple, Nicodemus had found in Jesus his own Way, Truth and Life. 

‘When the Christ appears no one will know where he comes from.’  The notion that the Messiah would appear suddenly from a place of hiding was a commonplace among Jews of Jesus’ day.  Indeed, throughout John’s Gospel people find and recognise Jesus in secret encounters: so Nicodemus the Pharisee comes to Jesus by night [3.1-21]; a woman of Samaria meets Jesus in territory that well-bred Jews assiduously avoided and she declares him the Messiah of pious expectation [4.29-30]; and in a burial garden, a place avoided instinctively by the devout, Jesus reveals the Glory of God. [11.41-44]  

The deepest truths are made known to us in concealed and out-of-the-way places; as the motto on St John Henry Newman’s cardinalate coat of arms put it ‘Heart speaks to heart’.  The most important things we will never understand superficially, but only when the depths of God can speak to the depths of our own hearts. [I Corinthians 2.10-11]

Yet secrets are meant for revelation. [cf Matthew 10.27] When we understand the truths of God we find that our own interiority will not suffice to contain them.  We learn eternal truths not for ourselves alone but so that we can transmit them to others.  Having been transformed by a Will and Purpose that is deeper than the universe itself, we are bound to witness to that Truth before the whole world.

‘My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.’  [John 4.34] Many of the signs are followed up in John’s Gospel with explanatory discourses which amplify and deepen the meaning of the sign.  In this teaching Jesus asserts that his Father ‘will show him even greater things than these’, greater, that is, than the healing of a man paralyzed for 38 years.  On another occasion he declared that ‘the works I do in my Father’s name are my witness.’ [10.25b]  

More remarkably, speaking to his disciples just before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus asserted that ‘whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself; he will perform even greater works.’ [14.12]  By observing and being spiritually built up by the signs Jesus performs we will become in truth his disciples and continue the work of our heavenly Father until it is completed. [cf Philippians 1.6]

Jesus makes reference to Deuteronomy and the other books of the Pentateuch in todays homily to his disciples. Not one jot, not one iota are to be forgotten. These 'diacritics' in the written form of Hebrew, I am told, make a huge difference to the meaning of words: they were of key importance.

But - Jesus has a marked directness of application of all those laws. For example, we must love our neighbour to the same level as love of God (Leviticus 19:18 and Deuteronomy 6:4 in Mathew 9:13). This keeps all of the meaning of the old law, but makes it clear that it all must be applied. One can not pick and choose what one likes to live by!

Note however that an over-legalistic, harsh application of the law is equally wrong. Todays reading is a good example from Deuteronomy explaining how the Law allows us to Love and to be Loved by God.

The Law of the Lord is Perfect - it revives the soul.(Psalm 19).

Any community built on Love, will find that forgiveness is key to that Love. The parable uses outrageous sums of money - 10,000 Talents would make the UK's GDP look trivial - to show how important it is that we forgive each other.

It does not mean that forgiveness is easy - we know that it is not. But it is essential, otherwise we are going to be judged by the standard of forgiveness that we can muster. We have the opportunity every Mass during the penitential rite. We ask each of our neighbours to pray for our forgiveness, and we depend upon each other to do so.

Jesus is starting his 3 years ministry in Nazareth - the town he grew up in. He begins by reminding them of the facts of life - telling truth to power, as we might say. It is not appreciated! Remember that this is how (in Luke's account) he starts out: he has not yet built up a reputation. Missing from todays' short reading, before this Jesus has read the prophesy from Isiah about himself, and tells them that the prophesy is about him, and about now.

His audience will have known him, and we might given the same circumstances not be able to accept the words he said.

But he is protected from harm, and slips away, leaving his home town and heading off into Galilee and we next hear of him in Capernaum, where he begins to heal people.

When Jesus was complained against for ‘welcoming sinners and eating with them’ he replied by telling three parables.  Of them probably the best known is the last, the story of a father and his two sons.

The younger one is a wastrel, a ne’er-do-well, who is so contemptuous of his father that he actively hopes for his death: he demands the inheritance he was one day meant to receive. [cf Hebrews 9.16-18] When he has worked his way through the packet of money he is given, though, he finds himself in the wretched, degrading (and un-kosher!) work of feeding pigs.

Yet the elder brother, dutiful and hard-working but seething with barely-disguised rage and resentment, reminds us that there is more than one way of showing contempt and disdain for the gifts lavished upon us.  Neither son can ‘win’ his father’s affection: love is a gift, not wage or reward.  The younger son seems to have begun to grasp that truth by the end of the story; as for his brother, we are left to hope and pray.

David (c.500-c.589) was probably born at Henfynyw, the son of St Non and the grandson of Ceredig ap Cunedda, king of Ceredigion.  At the Synod of Brefi, around 550, his vigorous preaching against Pelagianism (the heretical teaching of Pelagius and his followers that stressed the essential goodness of human beings and the freedom of the human will) led to his election by acclamation as Bishop of the region of Mwnyw, now known as St David’s.  He is said to have founded ten monasteries, among them Menevia and Glastonbury, where extremes of asceticism were practiced.   He is said to have travelled as far as Brittany and Cornwall.  Stories of his miracles were well known throughout the Middle Ages.  His motto ‘Do the little things well’ remains apt advice for us.

‘The arm of flesh will fail you; ye dare not trust your own’ a once-popular hymn declared in an apt condensation and paraphrase of this reading from the prophet Jeremiah.  

Alongside his scepticism about human achievement, the prophet reminds us that our hearts need to be educated, to be formed.  ‘The heart is more devious than any other thing’ he writes pessimistically.  But the heart (which of course in Hebrew thought is the centre of thinking and decision-making) can be taught, and when it has learnt devotion to the things of God, the heart can bring peace, refreshment and fruitfulness to human life.

The prophet reminds us of the inescapable judgement of God, who will give every person ‘what his conduct and actions deserve’   In the teaching of all the prophets, doing the will of God is not confined to obedience to ritual prescriptions: to love and serve the Lord entails on us a responsibility to attend to the needs of the least and the lost amongst us.

Christian interpreters usually list four ‘major’ prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel.  (Jewish readers don’t usually class Daniel as a prophet.)  Jeremiah’s sustained melancholy makes him particularly apt reading for the season of Lent.

Jeremiah insisted that the Babylonian sacking of Jerusalem and the subsequent exile of the best and brightest to captivity in Babylon were the inexorable will of God himself, a punishment visited on his people for their sins and apostasy.  Interspersed through the book of Jeremiah are autobiographical anecdotes which reveal that Jeremiah wasn’t a popular figure; indeed he only barely escaped the death penalty and only survived being thrown down a disused cistern by a dramatic rescue.  He contended against kings, priests, false prophets and the nation itself to proclaim a divine message which he complained burned within him. [20.7-18]

The book of Jeremiah as we have it is a bit of a jumble, with the various oracles not always in chronological order.   But though his words often seem harsh and bitter there is a fundamental thread of hope that runs through them: the prophet’s conviction that the Lord’s punishment of his people would come to an end, and that out of their travails would emerge a New Covenant (New Testament), ‘since I will forgive their iniquity and never call their sin to mind.’  [31.31-34]