Word to the Wise
Saturday, January 24, 2009 - St. Francis De Sales, bishop and doctor of the church
[Hebrews 9:2-3, 11-14 and Mark 3:20-21]Jesus came with his disciples into the house. Again the crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."
Hmmmmm! Is this the "holy family" we celebrated a few weeks ago? They think Jesus is crazy? They want to "seize him?" At verse 31, we even see that his mother is in the group on the way! This will prompt Jesus to make discipleship the criterion for a relationship to him. This trumps all tribal, clan or familial relationships. Still, it had to be galling to be rejected by his own family and by the religious authorities! What is at issue here and remains at issue even in our own day is perspective. Do we see our relationship with Jesus from the perspective of our own situation in life? Or do we see our own situation in life from the perspective of Jesus and the gospel? Even the apostles had personal agendas that colored their understanding and expectations of Jesus. Jesus rebukes Peter by telling him he is thinking from the human perspective and not from God's. Well, can we blame Peter? Really, isn't it the normal thing to look at life through our own prism, created from all our experiences and DNA? Obviously Jesus' own family had an "agenda." One can imagine them saying, "Hey! We have to live around here! We can't have him disgracing us or bringing all these crowds with all their sickness and questions!" Taking up the prism of the gospel to look at life, especially our own life, can be very threatening. It's much easier to look at the gospel through our own prism and then manipulate it and shape it according to our own perceived needs. Picking up the gospel prism and putting down the personal prism is something that takes time, perhaps a lifetime, to do consistently, but it is the price of discipleship. AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
80 ms
4
