“A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.” Mark 6:4.
In Nomine, etc..
What a scene it must have been! Jesus has returned home, with a reputation as a healer, a wonderworker, a teacher of wisdom! Not only that, he had a following, his disciples, and the Twelve. When the sabbath came, “he began to teach in the synagogue!” But “many who heard him were astonished!” Who did he think he was? Who gave him the right to teach? It appeared that Jesus took his right to teach for granted. Since when? Reputation or no reputation, the locals, who knew Jesus and his family, refused to be impressed. He was a carpenter, no more. Now a carpenter was a respected, important skilled worker, close to a contractor in our terms, but not necessarily a scholar of the Torah, after all. And there was nothing distinguished about his relations. All in all, he was speaking to a skeptical, not very receptive audience. They couldn’t imagine him learning wisdom in their community, in his family, of all people, and the “mighty deeds...wrought by his hands” could not possibly have happened in the environment that they knew. “And they took offense at him.”
At this point in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus was practising what amounted to a continuation of the ministry of John the Baptist. John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; Jesus came to John for baptism, to make himself part of the work that John was doing. We remember that Jesus and John were cousins, so there is a suggestion here of what we may call a ‘family vocation’ of prophecy and proclamation. “After John had been arrested,” Jesus took on John’s preaching of repentance, and added to it a proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom of God. After this, he called his first disciples, cured many of sickness, cleansed a leper, healed a paralytic, and so on. He selected from among his disciples Twelve, “whom he also named apostles” and gave them authority to preach and to drive out demons.
So, with all that and more as background and preparation, he returned to his home, Nazareth, and brought his followers with him. Perhaps he intended to make Nazareth his base, his headquarters, from which he and his disciples would continue their work. Perhaps he expected understanding, respect, support, from his relatives and neighbors, who would accept his teaching and even help him in the work. Not an unreasonable hope, perhaps, but one that turned out not to be realistic.
So Jesus said, “a prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.” This remark is interesting for a few reasons. First, Jesus identifies with the prophets, and calls himself one. Second, he owns property and feels at home in it, in his “native place”. And third, it’s a version of the old saying, “you can’t go home again!” Accomplishments, reputation, talent, have perhaps created distance between Jesus and his neighbors and relations, and they can’t accept them. After all, who wants a prophet in the family, or in the neighborhood? This was probably something Jesus needed to learn, to experience.
“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.”
Do we perhaps feel something like this? Do we imagine ourselves among Jesus’s disciples as he returns home? Are we as surprised as he is to discover that he, and we, can’t make any headway among our neighbors, our relations, in the place where people know us best, where we feel we belong, where we are supposed to be, where we are at home? Are we surprised that we can’t do much,”apart from curing a few sick people,” especially in this time of pandemic, when the need, in world terms, is so great? Are we amazed at the lack of faith, that we see and hear and encounter every single day, at home or not? Well, if even Jesus was amazed, then we are allowed to be amazed as well. The question then becomes, what do we do next? We can learn from what Jesus and the Twelve did next.
What did Jesus do next? He didn’t spend any time wallowing in amazement, or stewing in disappointment, or yearning for the comforts of home. “He went around to the villages in the vicinity teaching.” In other words, he did not give up. He did not allow himself to be distracted. He got on with it. He did not look for approbation, for approval from his neighbors and relatives. “He summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits.” This is a way of saying that “unclean spirits”, all the obstacles and situations that get in the way of the Gospel are in the end no obstacles at all, that in the end the Kingdom of God will overcome them. The authority of the Twelve, which is our authority, is the confidence that we have in the teaching of Jesus. That is all the authority we need.
“He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick.” In other words, no props, no security, no shortcut to gratifying their needs, nothing but their authority, their confidence, their faith. Leave the standard comforts of home behind, food, money, more clothes than we really need.
And what did the Twelve do? “So they went off and preached repentance. They drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” In other words, by remaining true to the commission that they were given, by being willing to leave behind comfort and safety, they were free to do the work that Jesus, and John the Baptist before him, had given them. May we always maintain the faith, the confidence, the trust, of the Apostles and the disciples, in the Gospel of the Kingdom.
In Nomine.
No comments:
Post a Comment