Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XIV per Annum B
7 July 2024

  Last weekend we had the great joy of celebrating the ordination and First Solemn Mass of Fr. Stephen Jones, a son of this parish.  He came home from seminary to his native place and gathered here with family and friends from his hometown…. And I’m just grateful that his First Mass wasn’t this weekend because this Gospel passage might have made things a bit awkward.  Jesus came to his native place.  The people took offense at him.  And he could not do many mighty works there.  We were privileged to see the signs of God’s work in a new priest, the third son of our parish ordained to the priesthood since 2017.  Thanks be to God and thank you for supporting Fr. Jones as he has prepared for this day!

 The selection of the first reading foreshadows and sets the theme of Jesus being rejected as a prophet.  In the first reading, Ezekiel is given the vocation to be a prophet.  He has the unenviable task of being sent to a people who will reject him and his message: “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, rebels who have rebelled against me”.  Ezekiel was a priest in the Jerusalem temple and it was a time of great hardness of heart and grave sin, even among the priests of the temple.  Ezekiel had to be a prophet to these rebels warning of the coming destruction of the temple.  In this, we can understand a foreshadowing of the Lord.  He will come and he will be rejected by his own native place and by the religious leaders and authorities in Jerusalem, the same place that hears the warning from Ezekiel.

In the chapters leading up to Mark 6 Jesus has been on a steady march performing mighty signs and speaking words of wisdom.  It comes to a depressing halt in Mark 6 in today’s passage.  The power that disease, demons, and death could not stop, now is stopped by what we learn is a stronger obstacle: unbelief, lack of faith.  The Gospel passage tells us that Jesus’ hometown lacked faith and therefore “he was not able to perform any mighty deed there”.  “He was amazed at their lack of faith”.

We learn that faith is a critical doorway, an entry point for Jesus’ operation, his working within souls.  We know from other Gospel episodes involving miraculous healings that it seems the person’s faith was a critical factor in the miracle.  A sick person comes to the Lord, or a person comes to the Lord because of a dead loved one, and in several episodes Jesus performs the miracle but highlights “your faith has saved you”.

We should think carefully about this lesson.  Jesus is God.  God is all powerful.  The lesson we learn in this Gospel passage tells us something about the mysterious relationship, almost like a recipe, of the power of God to give grace and the necessary part the recipient plays in whether the gift of grace is received or not, or to what degree it is received.  We clearly do not understand the passage to mean that Jesus was unable to do a miracle or to do what he wanted.  He is God and he has the capacity, the ability to do all the things he did in other places before arriving home at Nazareth.  His inability to perform mighty deeds there is a reflection on the limitations placed by the lack of faith among those who gathered around him.  It is not a reflection on any supposed lack of ability on Jesus’ part.

Our faith and receptivity to Jesus’ action in our lives is a significant factor in whether he can work among us.  The disposition of the person the Lord encounters is a critical determining factor for the outcome of Jesus’ presence and action.  Now, none of us should leave here today wracked with shame or imagining that we are to blame when some miracle we wanted didn’t take place.  God always maintains sovereignty and the wisdom to give what is needed, no matter what we might wish He would do.  However, we should leave here today aware of the important relationship we are part of when it comes to whether we let God’s action have greater influence and outcomes in our life.  We need to train ourselves in trust of Jesus such that we seek to maintain a proper disposition and receptivity to God’s action.  Our faith and openness to God sets the stage for Him to do whatever He wills to do with us and in us.  I hope it doesn’t seem trite, but I think there is a helpful image to capture this mysterious relationship between God’s almighty power and our faith.  It’s an image that perhaps helps us understand the variables that seem to be present from disciple to disciple.  I don’t have props, so you’ll have to imagine a pitcher of water being poured constantly.  The pitcher is God and the water is an image of how He constantly gives forth His grace in generosity.  Now, imagine a cup, which represents the person.  When the cup is turned upright, it is in the best position to catch all that is being poured out.  But if you gradually start to turn the cup upside down it is less and less open to catch the water.  And, when upside down, the failure of the cup to have water is not at all because the pitcher has failed to pour forth.  That can serve to help us think about what variables we present to God who we trust generously gives His grace.  Are we like a cup turned upright?  In our lukewarmness and distraction with material things, do we start to turn ourselves away from Him as we perhaps let up on our prayer routine?  When we grow cold and distant or when there is grave sin, we have turned ourselves away from that posture that permits us the greatest openness to God’s life, love, and power.

 This Gospel invites us to recognize the important two-way relationship of the Lord’s grace and our receptivity that permits his action in us and among us.  We cannot so easily and frequently go to Nazareth, but in the Church we can go regularly to Jesus’ hometown, so to speak.  We come here to Holy Mass and we can accept the invitation to commit to time in the Lord’s “hometown” in our chapel where he waits to be adored.  There we come to look upon the ordinary-appearing Host, just like those in Nazareth looked upon the ordinary-appearing man whom they knew as a carpenter and the son of Mary.  At the same time, let’s not forget to let the Lord into our “hometown” too, figuratively, that is, into all the facts and the truth of our lives.  We should open ourselves to him in honest prayer, placing before him, and exposing to him all that seems right and all that seems wrong in us.  We do not keep from him the all-too-ordinary things of our lives, because we do not want to turn our cup upside down.  Rather, we open ourselves to him to await whatever he wants to do in us.