Renewing Our Faith in Jesus Today
Homily for Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - 7 July 2024
In the sacristies of the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity all over the world, one can see a little sign board reminding each priest that he should celebrate each and every Mass with devotion, freshness, contemplation and enthusiasm. The board says: Priest of God, celebrate this Mass as if it is your first Mass, your last Mass and your only Mass. Of course, these words apply to the participants as well as the celebrant.
The saying ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ means too much knowledge or closeness to a person leads to a lack of appreciation, disrespect or even disdain for the other. We might easily fall into the trap of being so familiar with Jesus and the teachings of the Gospels that we fail to appreciate the shocking newness of his presence and the power of his words. We might easily ending up domesticating Jesus into someone who is just nice and who doesn’t challenge us too much, or whose words can be taken with a pinch of salt.
The readings for this Sunday’s Mass address three groups of people. Firstly there are the stiff-necked, obstinate and rebellious Israelites, to whom the prophet Ezekiel was sent to prophesy, as we hear in the first reading, from the Book of Ezekiel. Then, there are the people of Nazareth who took offence at Jesus, as we hear in the Gospel for today. Finally, we are the third group; we are those who hear the Scriptures proclaimed today, and we need to consider our response.
We are familiar with the importance of Nazareth. From the Gospels we know that this was where Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation, asking her to be the mother of the Messiah. And Nazareth was the town to which Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned after their exile in Egypt. And then Jesus spent most of his earthly life there, probably close to 30 years. That’s why today’s Gospel passage opens with the reference to Jesus returning to his own country.
To visit Nazareth is an extraordinarily experience. Not only are the churches magnificent, but there is a powerful sense of the Christian Faith beginning there. When I was last in Nazareth, not far from the Basilica of the Annunciation, I was shocked and upset to see a huge billboard poster with anti-Christian propaganda rejecting Jesus. There is a certain irony that in this place which produced the most famous person who has ever lived, that there would be this kind of rejection of his identity. So the rejection we see in the Gospel passage for this Sunday is not something new; it continues to play out in Nazareth and around the world today.
At the time of Jesus, Nazareth wasn’t nearly as famous. In fact, people used to insult the town or make disparaging comments about it. When Philip, who had discovered Jesus went to Nathanael to tell him about Jesus of Nazareth, Nathanael responded, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” It’s a bit like how we might joke about little places like Pofadder. The total population of Nazareth would have been only a few hundred. Most people would have known each other.
We know that Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth only after he was already popular. He had begun his public ministry in other areas of Galilee, starting in Capernaum, and had worked miracles and had made a deep impression on the people. You would have thought that the people of Nazareth would be proud of their most famous son. But the gospel text for today tells us how the people of his hometown rejected him, despite the wisdom of his words and miracles he performed. Because they were so familiar with his ordinary origins, his history and his background, they rejected him.
They couldn’t get beyond his ordinariness and the ordinariness of his family. Their familiarity with him made it impossible to see him with fresh eyes, despite his words and miracles, which were clearly impressive. The humble ordinary background of Jesus was a scandal to the people of his hometown and to critics of Christianity in the first few centuries.
Even the reference to him being “the son of Mary”, carries in it offence and ridicule. In the culture and tradition of the time, people were referred to as being sons or daughters of the father, not the mother. By calling Jesus the son of Mary, they are insulting him and saying that he does not even know who his father is; Who does he think he is? Where did he get all this from?
To be fair to the people of Nazareth, in a sense they are asking all the right questions. We might easily have reacted in the same way as these people, in the same circumstances. We are still meant to ask these same questions but with openness to the answers. The reaction to Jesus on the part of the people of Nazareth is not unlike the varied reactions to Jesus in our world today, and it also reflects, to a certain degree, our own struggles and doubts of faith. Many people in our world outrightly reject Jesus. And we who have encountered him, and have experienced his beauty and mercy, might still be weak in faith at times.
We would need to be honest and say that we have the capacity to be like both groups represented in the readings for today. At times, we are like the rebellious Israelites to whom Ezekiel in the first reading was sent to prophesy. Our personal history is like the history of the people of Israel. Consider our weaknesses and failings, our sinfulness and selfishness.
And isn’t true that we can be like the proud, hard-hearted people of Nazareth that we hear about in the Gospel today. Despite being astonished at Jesus’ wisdom and mighty works, they were scandalized by his ordinariness, and the simple, ordinary family he came from. Consider how easily we become blasé and indifferent to what we know about Jesus and the teachings of the Scriptures. Think about how easily we take the Eucharist and the other sacraments for granted.
We are like the people of Nazareth when we fail to be sensitive to the presence of God in the ordinary everyday aspects of our lives, preferring to to do God part-time or keep him partitioned off to limited parts of our lives. We are like those people who rejected Jesus, when we fail to accept that we are known and loved beyond measure by the God who gave us Jesus as our Redeemer. We are proud and hard-hearted when we pfrefer to wallow in a sense of our unworthiness of God’s saving work in our lives, or, on the other hand, when we don’t think we need God’s saving work. We are like the people of Nazareth when we no longer have any expectation that God will show up in our lives. The lesson of Nazareth for us is that we need to step out in the faith that God is with us in our ordinariness, that our everyday lives and events carry within them sacraments of encounter with God. God is close; he is present to us. Our difficulties and sufferings are not meaningless and we are not alone. God is working for our salvation and our good, continually.
As we hear this Gospel today, we are called to conversion. A life of radical holiness is possible for us today, starting with the reading of these Scriptures. We need to believe that Jesus can do this for us. We are challenged to open ourselves to faith, to a profound encounter with Jesus. We are called to live in faith, to live in an openness to the presence and saving action of God in our lives and our world.
To have faith here and now means that we are open to entering into a love relationship with God; that we know our need for forgiveness and mercy and receive it. It means we begin to see our meaning and purpose in the bigger picture of God’s will. To have faith means that we are launched on a journey of being missionary disciples of Jesus. Take a fresh look at Jesus. See the world through God’s eyes, that is, with the eyes of faith. Acknowledge that God is present, that he has got this, that he is working for our good and our salvation.