B Cycle – 14^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 24

Mk. 6:1-6

Growing up in Nazareth He was known as the son of Mary and Joseph the carpenter.  They knew He left but never knew why and now it is rumored He is a rabbi, a teacher and has performed miracles.  Now He is back in town and is scheduled to preach in the temple.  You can imagine the excitement as the crowd arrived to see and hear Him.  and everyone was excited to hear Him and they were not disappointed.  Where did He get such wisdom?  We do form opinions of people we grow up with and years later our image of them remains unchanged.   

Our parents form out first image of Jesus as they help us understand the concepts of God.  As we grow older, we are taught more, and our faith is solidified by educators of the church.  We know Jesus died for our sins and that He is the Messiah. We continue to learn more and grow as we grow and at some point, we must decide to embrace this faith and follow its dictates.  But do we “know” Him enough to do more than believe. We must live our faith not just practice it.  We must trust Him with our secrets, our doubts, our fears, our wounds and welcome Him into lives. 

This gospel asks us to reflect on our response to Jesus.  We cannot just listen to Him and be amazed at His words.  The issue for us is will we allow Jesus to work a miracle in our lives by our acknowledging who He is and what He offers us.  We must believe in things unseen and yet know they exist in the Kingdom of God on earth.  Do we dare go deeper and allow our faith to guide us instead of blind acceptance?  We cannot keep our faith on a surface level of believing.  Is our faith journey one of just getting by. Is our goal to do enough to feel good about ourselves instead of becoming disciples?  If we never respond to the question of who Jesus is, we will measure our “goodness” by our ability to follow the dictates of our faith.  Then we will be like those in His hometown.  We can be moved by what happens each Sunday, but does it impact us enough to discover who He is? 

That day, His teaching was amazing, powerful and it challenged them.  But their image of Him was fixed in the past and it blocked them from experiencing how He could change how they viewed God and themselves.  They believed they knew all they needed to know about their faith, and it was just enough to create doubt about who He was.   A doubt based on an impression of who Jesus was not an experience of who Jesus is. 

Expectations are a very real obstacle to a growing faith, a growing relationship, or to making progress in any task.  Expectations can motivate one to strive to go deeper or they can disappoint and discourage a person enough to quit trying.  Expectations will influence what we do with the knowledge we have learned.  It can move us forward or prevent us from any attempts to grow intimately with Jesus. 

I believe one lesson we can learn from this gospel is how God loves to surprise us and challenge us.  To catch us off guard and throw us off balance.  He shows us what is possible if we believe and trust.  Challenges us to do impossible things and to do things we are uncomfortable doing.  Think about the call of the disciples when they had fished all night, were packing up to go home. When out of the blue, Jesus tells them to go out again and cast their nets into the deep part of the lake.  They could have said, “this is not a good time Jesus, we have fished all night, and it was unproductive, and we do not have the energy to try again.”  How about the time Jesus told the disciples to go out two by two and “heal the sick” cast out demons and proclaim the kingdom of God is at hand. 

Who is Jesus?  We cannot answer that question in a general way.  That question is more narrow, and it is specific to you.  We need to respond by going beyond what we have been taught during our faith formation.  This is a heart question that challenges what you believe about God.  Can you answer how Jesus has impacted your life. No one can answer it for you.  Do we answer by repeating our taught belief that Jesus is the second person of the trinity, the Son of God.  Or is our answer more personal and as direct as Thomas – “my Lord and my God.” 

Like King David we should answer that Jesus is, “….my rock, my fortress, my deliverer (Ps. 22:2) Perhaps you should read Psalm 22 as it is David’s response to his sin with Bathsheba.   It is a response that springs from one who has felt the touch of forgiveness.

The people that day heard a powerful preacher but missed out because of their fixed image of who Jesus was to them. They missed understanding God’s answer to sin is Jesus and His willingness to take our sin upon Himself.  Why do we cling to our guilt and cover ourselves in respectability and predictability.  We need to stand before Jesus in our nakedness. With our sins on display like polluted rags which embarrass us so much we want to hide them from the world and God. 

Who is Jesus, He is the one we can trust with everything we try to hide from others and ourselves.    We must allow what God has promised us to speak to our hearts and show us the way to the Father.