Word to the Wise
Saturday, January 21, 2023 - Saturday in the 2nd Week in Ordinary Time
[Heb 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."
JANUARY 21 ST. AGNES, virgin and martyr
It's a tough situation to be in. Jesus' activities were attracting public attention on a big scale. HIs family is not used to all the publicity and they question his sanity because the Pharisees and scribes are dead set against him. Why is he rocking the boat? The intention of the evangelist is to show how completely Jesus was rejected by religious authorities and his own family! We have to wait until next Tuesday's reflection to see the outcome of their attempted "intervention." [Mark 3:31-35]
In a Middle-Eastern collective society, personal allegiance begins with family, then clan, then tribe. It is still true today. The individualism of western culture was unknown in Jesus' day. An oriental proverb puts it succinctly: "The nail that stands out gets hammered down." The family hammer was on the way to deal with the "outstanding" member.
Even so, I have had the pastoral experience many times of a family member facing ostracism because of a change in faith tradition or even in trade or professional tradition. This is a fairly common problem for students faced with long standing family religious (or even atheistic/agnostic) or professional traditions and expectations. [cf. the motion picture The Dead Poets Society, for an extreme example]. Changes in religious affiliation or belief are particularly painful because the very Christian values espoused in the gospel are forgotten in the conflict that arises when a son or daughter "converts." The strange irony of that is often unnoticed!
Jesus stands with those who experience this kind of rejection. As we will see next Tuesday, he points to a higher value of faith that both family and individual need to remember. AMEN