14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Japanese culture is one of the most highly stratified and hierarchical on the planet. I have been told that until you know a person’s social ranking relative to your own, you cannot talk to them, because you do not know how to address with the correct protocols of respect. Japanese culture is perhaps the most extreme form of an all-too-natural human tendency to pigeon-hole people and establish forms of social ranking systems. I think that a very similar thing happens here in Zimbabwe, one simple example is when you meet someone for the first time, one of the first questions you get asked is which school you went to. The answer to this question is tacitly evaluated in terms of whether you went to a private, mission or government school and is used by your interlocutor to pigeon-hole you and know what to expect of you and where you are headed in life.

The same sort of tendency must have existed 2000 years ago in Nazareth. Like most ancient cultures, what was most valued and respected would have been the ability to teach and instruct with eloquence and wisdom, founded on sure and proper authority. Financial wealth would also have been highly regarded, but the local celebrities would have undoubtedly been those who could command the attention of a crowd with the compelling nature of their message and their ability to entertain. We can’t imagine that Nazareth had very many people like this, we can’t even be sure that the village rabbi had this kind of eloquence. So it was that Nazareth must have looked forward to the arrival of itinerant preachers, prophets, miracle workers, perhaps even would-be Messiahs. If nothing else they would provide a couple of days entertainment. In a backwater town like Nazareth, the hottest thing in town needed to come from out of town.

As Nazareth went – it was a pretty run-of-the-mill town and his social hierarchy didn’t go very high, everyone was pretty much on the same level. When everyone is on the same level as you, you can get comfortable in your own mediocrity. When you are a backwater town, you accept your mundaneness go on with life, content that everyone else born in the same circumstances as you shares the same fate as you.

But then suddenly this idyllic experience of contentment with their own mediocrity is shattered as Jesus begins his meteoric rise to popularity and fame, and does it not in his own home town, but rather in the neighbouring town of Capernaum. The Nazareeans hear of his fame and are befuddled by it. Finally he comes to his home town and his own are incensed by it. They ask – well where did he get all this from? What they are struggling to account for is how someone who had the same upbringing as them, who came from that same backwater town as them, who was just as uneducated as them had suddenly come to be so eloquent, so full of wisdom, so gracious, so compelling attractive that crowds flocked to him from as far as the Decapolis and beyond.

You see when someone who has the same background as you suddenly starts to do amazing things with her life, an inescapably question arises: “well what about you, why haven’t you done something with your life?” Instead of rejoicing that God has blessed one of their very own with such grace, their jealousy gets the better of them and they refuse to believe that it is possible for someone like them to have risen so high, to be so favoured by God. They are blinkered by their own individualism, and they fail to realize that God’s gift to their brother Jesus is actually God’s gift to them all. Jesus’ excellence, Jesus’ eloquence and simply outstanding graciousness doesn’t necessarily have to show up their own mediocrity. In Jesus, God wishes to raise all the people of Nazareth to the same excellence and graciousness. But people don’t like change, people don’t like such an overturning of the social order, especially so close to home. I think this is why it is easier for us to accept the giftedness of others further afield from us. Precisely because their giftedness does not challenge our own mediocrity. Because to accept that God had so highly favoured someone like them, their brother, their son, their nephew, their childhood playmate, would be to accept that God could also potentially do the same with them, and lift them out of their mediocrity. This is a scary thought. It is quickly brushed aside, as they dismiss Jesus, and refuse to believe that he is anything more than the carpenter’s son, James’ brother and Mary’s son.

Thus ironically, because God’s grace has landed so close to home, the people doubt its authenticity. They believe it is a scam, that Jesus is putting on a show, and they will have none of it. Tragically, this doubt and refusal to affirm God’s grace present in their brother’s life paralyses Jesus himself. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They probably say to Jesus, what’s this we’ve heard about you working miracles, healing the sick eh, giving sight to the blind, calming a storm even? Well let’s see then, prove to us that it’s not just all a scam, some magic tricks that you were taught by a traveling salesman. Now we might imagine Jesus saying: “well fine then, if you don’t believe in me, you’re not going to get any miracles, and pronouncing an oracle of condemnation on his hometown as he did on Chorazin and Bethsaida. I don’t think this was at all Jesus’ attitude, in fact it was very likely just the opposite. Jesus probably desperately wanted to perform a miracle, he really wanted them to believe in him, not in order to vindicate himself and restore his battered ego, but rather because he loved them and wanted them not to miss the opportunity to receive God’s grace through him. But no matter how desperately he tried to perform a miracle, he simply couldn’t – he had been paralysed by their doubt and cynicism. It is worth highlighting that in Mark’s gospel, Jesus leaves Nazareth, never to return again.

I think that this incident in Jesus’ life teaches us firstly that God’s grace is given to individuals for communities. We should not let jealousy get the better of us and fret over who exactly gets the grace. The more we obsess over who has got God’s grace and why, the more we miss the chance to benefit from this grace. The sooner we can accept that God does not distribute God’s grace equally and some are more favoured than others, for no other reason that God decided it should be that way, the happier we are going to be in life. For it does not really matter who exactly in our community receives God’s grace, what is essential is the distribution of the benefits of that grace. We must note that in order for God’s grace to be distributed, we need both the wiliness on the part of the gifted person to share that grace, AND faith on the part of everyone else to affirm that gift in this person and receive the grace God wants to give us through them. We thus all have our role to play in ensuring that God’s grace flows through our societies and communities. The key to this flow is thinking communally, not individually. If Jesus’ kith and kin and fellow townsfolk had been able to think communally, they would have seen and benefited from his wisdom and the power of his miracles. As it was, they benefitted from neither, at least not during his earthly life. Let us pray for the grace not to let the same thing happen to us, by acknowledging the grace we see in others, even when they are right under our nose.

Questions for reflection:

1. How do I react when I see someone very similar to myself doing amazing things for God and for society? Do I rejoice at my connection to them and encourage them, or do I disparage their efforts, choosing to dwell on their shortcomings instead?
2. Am I comfortable with a God who distributes God’s favours unequally?
3. When I meet someone new, am I anxious to pigeon-hole them and find out where I rank in relation to them? When was the last time I was surprised by someone who I had pigeon-holed wrongly? How did I react?