FOURTEENTH SUNDAY
IN ORDINARY TIME CYCLE “B” July 8, 2012
In
the Gospel today, Jesus is amazed. I
found that curious, because Jesus doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who
amazes easily. I think of Jesus as
pretty wise, who really knows the depths of the human heart, who is really
aware of what is really going on, who is not easily surprised or amazed. And yet in today’s Gospel Jesus is amazed. What is going on?
Jesus returns to His native place,
to the people He grew up with, to His family and His neighbors, to old friends
and acquaintances; to the buddies He played with and studied with, to the
people who helped to form and shape Him.
Certainly Jesus was anxious to share with them the Good News that God
was now breaking into history, overcoming sickness, sin and death, and
providing a new way to the future where God’s Will would be done. Jesus cared about these people and was eager
with expectation to share with them the great gift of the Gospel, the Good
News.
But instead of acceptance, He finds
rejection. Instead of welcome, He
encounters resistance. Instead of faith,
He discovers lack of faith. And He is “amazed.”
Have you ever had the experience of
picking out a special gift for someone you care about, something you think is
really neat, maybe spent more on it than you probably should have, anticipated
the person’s reaction when they get this very special gift, only to have them
go, “Oh, that’s nice” and then ignore it?
Or worse, they actively dislike it.
How did you feel? Were you
“amazed”? Well, maybe somewhat, that
they did not appreciate what you considered the ideal gift: but also you felt disappointed, hurt,
deflated, even crushed. And I think the
same is true for Jesus. He was not just
amazed, but hurt. So hurt and upset that
He was thrown off His game. Mark tells
us: “So he was not able to perform any
mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying hands on
them.” Jesus was really thrown for a
loop. … Amazed.
What are we to make of all this? Well, faith, as wonderful as it is, is not easy. Faith challenges our assumptions about how
the world works: That the peacemakers, not the strong and invincible, are the
ones who are blessed; That the meek - not the arrogant and powerful, the movers
and shakers and the rich - will inherit the earth; That it is better to give
than to receive; That God is in charge and we are not; And that we
must
die to ourselves to truly come to life.
The way of Faith is often uncomfortable and difficult.
And the people of Jesus’ own kin and
house are like the rest of us: lazy. They don’t want to be inconvenienced, much
less challenged and stretched. They have
grown comfortable with the way of the world.
They have made their compromises and accommodations with evil and
sin. And they don’t want to be jerked
out of their narrow little ruts that they have fallen into. Because Generosity, Compassion, Forgiveness, Fidelity
and Love are all hard work.
Add to that their jealousy that this
Jesus kid, who does not come from any special family, should now think He is
something special: the Messiah, huh!
And the natural skepticism that comes from getting knocked down every
time you get your hopes up, so that you protect yourself from disappointment
and hurt by learning not to expect too much.
Put all that together and it is pretty understandable why the people of
Nazareth react the way they do.
They said, “Where did this guy get all this?
What kind of wisdom has been given him? Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and
the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here with us?” And
they took offense at him.
In the older translation we used to
use at Mass, it says “They found him too
much for them.” He was a challenge.
The people use the excuse that they
know this guy, and He is nothing special, to avoid the challenge of Faith. They box Jesus in with their so-called
knowledge of Him. They constrain and restrict Him with their limited
expectations, because they have already made up their minds about who Jesus is,
and they will not open their minds and hearts to see something new, something
different, something challenging.
They so restrict and confine Jesus
by their negative attitude that Jesus can’t even work any miracles, “apart from curing a few sick people by
laying his hands on them.”
It can be terrible how our
belittlement and stereotyping constrains and restricts others from developing
and growing. And this is what happened
to Jesus in His native place and in His own house.
The
challenge today to us is clear. We must
not be like the people in today’s Gospel.
We must not box in each other with our low expectations and negativity, holding
others back from true human flowering.
We must not restrict and confine ourselves by our poor expectation
and negativity about ourselves, limiting the power of the Holy Spirit in us to
make us into Saints. Everyone of us here
has the potential and the power to be a Saint!
And we must not box in Jesus with limits and small expectations,
limiting His power to establish the Kingdom of God in our hearts through
faith.
Rather, let us amaze Jesus by our
openness to His Word in the Gospel and by the strength of our faith. That is the right way to amaze Jesus. AMEN.
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