Word to the Wise
Wednesday, January 31, 2024 - Wednesday in the 4th Week in Ordinary Time
[2 Sam 24:2, 9-17 and Mark 6:1-6]Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands! Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon: And are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kind and in his own house." So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith. [Mark]
JANUARY 31 ST. JOHN BOSCO, sdb
It's tough on anyone to be misunderstood and rejected, but when it's one's own family and hometown folks, it's painful. Jesus was "amazed at their lack of faith." Palestinian society of the time was very class conscious. Jesus was getting above himself. The old oriental proverb was very much in force: The nail that stands out gets hammered down. In the version of this event recounted in the Gospel According to Luke, the townspeople were about to throw him physically off a cliff!!! But this is just one more example - a particularly neuralgic one - of the rejection Jesus experienced and is a major theme of the Gospel According to Mark.
There may be a challenge in all of this for us to consider. The town folks and Jesus' family thought they knew him and had him "put in his place." But they were mistaken because they were locked into their socio-cultural context and could not accept something or someone completely beyond that context. It was more than their faith could bear. I've experienced this, pastorally, in folks who could not accept the changes that occurred after the Second Vatican Council, or even now, in the resistance Pope Francis is experiencing from some Catholics. The work of the Holy Spirit can be thwarted just as Jesus was in his own hometown because of a hardness of heart. [Mark 3:5]. The work of preaching the gospel cannot be locked into one period of history and imprisoned in nostalgia. The folks in Nazareth and Jesus' own family are teaching us an important lesson. AMEN