Message of Abbot Paul - Sunday 4th July
Message from Fr Paul for Sunday, 4th July 2021
Badgers never stray more than 500 metres from their sets and only leave that area when they need to move on and create a new set. In a way, humans are pretty much the same. There comes a time when we leave the nest and move elsewhere, either for study or for work, often never to return apart from the occasional visit or a funeral. Sometimes our parents move elsewhere, so that home is no longer home. To return to the place where we were born and brought up, populated now by new people whose unknown faces simply ignore us, is to return to a ghost town, where gardens have disappeared and every space taken up with parked cars. You don’t want to linger, just run away as quickly as you can, back to what has now become familiar. Today’s Gospel passage from Mark, (Mk 6: 1-6), recounts a visit made to Nazareth by Jesus and his disciples. It would appear that he stayed for a few days.
“Jesus went to his home town and his disciples accompanied him. With the coming of the sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue and most of them were astonished when they heard him.” As we know, Jesus set up his base at Capernaum, so had moved from his hometown and from his family. Guests and people returning home were always invited to say a word at a synagogue service or perhaps give a commentary on one of the readings. But Jesus is teaching in the synagogue, so he might well have trained among the Pharisees, rather like St Paul and other early followers, and many called him Rabbi or teacher. Amazement and astonishment among the crowd often accompany the teaching of Jesus, but in Nazareth there is more. The people know him and his family. Many will remember him as a boy or a young man. “They said, ‘Where did the man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been granted him, and these miracles that are worked through him? This is the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joset and Jude and Simon? His sisters, too, are they not here with us?’ And they would not accept him.” They recognise his wisdom and his ability to work miracles, but they know him as ‘the carpenter,’ not as a preacher or miracle worker. They know him to be ‘the son of Mary,’ no mention made of Joseph, who was a carpenter. He must be dead by now, yet brothers are mentioned by name and sisters alluded to. Would these be the children of Joseph by an earlier marriage or simply close family members, such as cousins? We will only find out in heaven! Jesus’ response has become proverbial. “‘A prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house’; and he could work no miracle there, though he cured a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.” Perhaps that was already a proverbial saying when Jesus used it to describe the attitude of the people of Nazareth. If they were amazed at the wisdom of his teaching, as he was amazed at their lack of faith. We could ask why they rejected him if they also admired him? That’s human beings for you or, as they say up north, “Nowt as queer as folk.”
Lord Jesus, we know you to be the source of all wisdom and the healer of minds and bodies. Knowing what we know and believing what we believe, please let us not turn aside from you and reject you as did your own townsfolk. May we open our hearts and minds to the truth of your teaching and the gift of salvation you have come to give us. Amen.
