Sermon Text

July 5, 2009
The 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

A LOOK AT BLINDNESS
Mark 6:1-6

There’s an old saying that goes, “familiarity breeds contempt.” Mark’s description of what happened on Jesus’ return to Nazareth, his old home town, illustrates the truth of this proverb.

Let’s look at the story again as Mark tells it. Jesus returns to the town of his childhood, and, we suppose, of his early adulthood as well. Probably, though, by this time he was living in Capernaum. He was returning from a journey which had taken him all over Galilee, and people were speaking of the wonderful works he had performed. His fame was spreading. Some people thought that he must be a reincarnation of one of the prophets of old. Others thought that he was just another traveling magician, or perhaps a very good and kind teacher. A few – only a few – thought that he might be God’s promised Messiah, but they weren’t certain.

Jesus makes no special effort, performs no mighty works, simply because he is back in his home town. We are not even told if he stayed at his family’s house while he was there. All we know is that he came, and “his disciples followed him.” He came as a traveling preacher, as a prophet with his “school,” his followers.

We also read that, perhaps very soon after his arrival, Jesus “began to teach in the synagogue.” He was assuming the role of Rabbi, or teacher, in the local church. But this was a very difficult matter for his old friends and acquaintances. They knew what education he had had. Most of them had shared in it, in one way or another. They couldn’t understand where Jesus had picked up all this knowledge and wisdom. And so, “They took offense at him.”

These people were blind to the fact that the person who was teaching in their synagogue, the one who had grown up and lived and worked in their midst for most of his life, was God’s promised Deliverer. He had come to show people God’s way of life, a new way of love, and to save all humankind from the power of sin. But they just couldn’t see it. There were too many things in the way – memories, relationships, even prejudices. They just couldn’t see it.

Here in this story are many reliable directions on how to be blind to great people, great events, great opportunities. We can find ourselves in the crowd at the synagogue in Nazareth, if we look closely enough.

First, there are the “factfinders.” They are the ones who believe that they already have all the facts. Listen to them in the story as they talk among themselves: “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses, and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” These are the people who believe that they know all there is to know about a person or a situation or an issue when they have gathered all the physical, objective facts.

Others in the crowd felt that, if they knew a person’s origins, then they understood all they needed to understand about him or her. But the meaning of a person or thing is not to be found in its origin, but in what it becomes at its best. These people who thought they knew all about Jesus had the facts, they knew where he had come from, but they missed him -- they missed the Christ.

Another blindness in this story is caused by intellectual and social snobbery. Here was no scholar, no revered Rabbi. Here was one who was brought up as a carpenter’s apprentice, who had worked as a carpenter for years. How could he know anything, outside of his trade? Why, he wasn’t even a member of a leading family. He was from the working side of town. He had no priestly background. “So what if he is of the line of David and Solomon?” they said. “They are long gone, and so is their kingdom. Where does he get off trying to interpret the Scriptures to us? Where does he get the authority to tell us how to live our lives?” You see how easy it is to get into this mind-set? They couldn’t listen to someone who didn’t measure up to their standards, even if he were the Messiah!

How do we receive truth that comes to us from a different economic, academic, or social situation than our own? Do we even hear it as truth, or are we blinded by things such as a person’s station in life, skin color, accent, sexual orientation, or political views? Jesus was not listened to in his own hometown, for just some of these reasons! How do we listen, how do we look, for truth?

And certainly, the greatest obstacle for these people was the obstacle of the familiar – once again, “familiarity breeds contempt.” Familiarity puts a kind of glaze over our eyes. We see something so many times that we cease to see it. Think about the incredible gift we have been given in this nation, and in our form of government. It is designed to care fairly and comprehensively for all its citizens, to enable those who have to care for those who have not, to ensure the participation of the weak as well as the strong, to grant to all the fullest opportunity possible. And yet so much of our national conversation centers more on rights than on responsibilities, on what we have come to demand for ourselves, rather than on what we might give for the sake of others. We have become so accustomed to our freedoms that we have a hard time seeing them for what they were originally intended to be: a means towards the end of living peacefully and prosperously with each other. If the need in our nation is for us to “get back to basics,” then let those be the basics we get back to!

And there are many ways in which we citizens of the Church can blind ourselves to the Christ. We can bury ourselves in objective information about him, skirting the issue of his person; we can turn off what he said, because it doesn’t coincide with our definition of what life is all about; we can be blind to his values, because they are not what we want to hear, because they threaten us in one way or another; we can be blind to the picture of God he gives to us, a picture that leaves too much unanswered, and too much responsibility on our shoulders, more than we want to bear. We can let him become so familiar to us that we box him in, so that he no longer excites us, surprises us, challenges us.

It is up to us, as citizens of this nation, to see and truly value the freedom which has been entrusted to us, and to make of this country all that it has the potential to be. And it is up to us, as believers, individually and together, to respond to Christ’s person, words, and deeds; to take from before our eyes those attitudes and preconceived notions that keep us from seeing him as he really is; to live in faith as God’s people who see with eyes of faith, and who care with hearts of love, so that God’s saving grace might be made known to all, so that all might see.