Word to the Wise
Friday, July 30, 2010 - Friday in the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
[Jeremiah 26:1-9 and Matthew 13:54-58]Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue. They were astonished and said, "Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter's son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Are not his sisters all with us? Where did this man get all this?" And they took offense at him.
It's not easy to play to the hometown crowd! Jesus is perceived in that small Middle Eastern community as "getting above his station!" The common belief was that you were born to a particular "station" in life and if you rose above it, there had to be a sinister reason. People who displayed the kind of knowledge required to teach had to have been educated somewhere and these hometown folks knew that Jesus had grown up in a carpenter's household and not in Jerusalem! We know from the Gospel of Luke that they threatened to throw him off a cliff! Today's gospel says that Jesus did not work very many mighty deeds there because of the lack of faith! The same process we observe in this gospel passage can be at work in us when we have fixed notions about who people are and how they should behave. The people in Jesus' village are tragic in that they do not realize that more than any other people they have the Lord close to them but their blindness and prejudice make it impossible for them to accept him! Do we suffer the same tragedy because we think we "know somebody" and feel that they have no right to be "preaching" to us about our faith and conduct? AMEN
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