Weekly Reflection: Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Reading References:
First Reading: Ezekiel 2:2-5
Psalm: Ps 122. R. v. 2
Second Reading: 2Cor.12:7-10
Gospel: Mark 6:1-6
In last weeks gospel we saw the faith of two people (the synagogue official and the woman with the hemorrhage) and how this faith brought them to life in one form or another.
This week we see God sending Ezekiel to tell the rebelling Israelites, the chosen people whom God has a Covenant relationship with, that there is a prophet amongst them.
The Psalmist (and the community) cries out for mercy as they keep their gaze fixed on God.
Paul finds the strength of God within his own “weakness” after hearing God’s words: “My grace is enough for you: my power is at its best in weakness” and then Paul’s prayer became “For it is when I am weak that I am strong.”
Then Jesus in his home town is rejected. Those in the synagogue were astonished by his teaching and the wisdom granted him and the miracles that were worked through him, but they would not accept him because he was too familiar to them. Then we hear that Jesus “was amazed at their lack of faith.”
What does all this say to us today?
Paul will help us answer this question. Who amongst us wants to feel weak, afraid, insulted, confused, persecuted etc? The right assumption would be: very, very few of us. So we spend a lot of our lives trying to ensure that this doesn’t happen. We don’t rock the boat with our thoughts because we don’t want to be rejected... We go against what we hear our heart saying so as to protect ourselves from ridicule. We tow the party line so as to feel safe. We spend much of our lives and we put a lot of time and energy into playing it safe. We do this to keep our own egos intact and well inflated.
Perhaps it is not until our egos take a bit of a hammering that we might understand what Paul is saying to us. Paul was persecuting the Christians with a passion. He wanted them destroyed. But he kept being confronted with the beauty and courage of these Christian people until he could no longer resist what his heart was saying to him. He then had the courage to LOOK AT JESUS and he had a powerful conversion experience.
This turned everything he believed upside down. His ego would have been shattered. He was then treated with suspicion by the Christian community that he had been so openly persecuting. He would have been rejected by the Pharisees of which he was one prior to this profound experience. The only person that could sustain him through this suffering was Jesus. It was here that he learned to trust Jesus and let go of his own ego.
So often when we hit a crisis in our lives, when we are struck by our own weaknesses or our own powerlessness we can be taken to new depths of faith if we have the courage to allow ourselves to be taken into this mysterious journey.
But for those in our Gospel today who rejected Jesus, they could not dare this journey. They couldn’t dare face the implications of what it meant to have “God” in their midst. This would have demanded all sorts of changes that they refused to face.
We must ask ourselves if we see and recognize Jesus in our midst. When we do recognize Jesus, our lives will change – they must change. If they do not change then we can be assured that we have not recognized Jesus in our midst – we have probably recognized something that has done little more than boost our own egos even further. We are not talking about feeling good about ourselves – this purely individualistic relationship between me and God. Many who think they have experienced Jesus speak of the “feeling” of being loved by Jesus and “feeling” so happy, and “feeling” so alive in a “me and God” sense... But unless these “feelings” have brought us to a deeper faith and a deeper communion with Jesus and with humanity and a diminishing of our own egos, then we have in all likelihood miss read the experience.
Many of the Pentecostal churches today preach what a good thing it is to acquire personal wealth - Jesus wants us to be comfortable – Jesus wants us to achieve – Jesus wants us to be happy – Jesus wants us to ambitious etc. How do we preach this Jesus to the multitudes who are dying of starvation in our world? How do we preach this Jesus to the millions who are held in refugee camps and have been there for years? How do we preach this Jesus to those living with poverty and who are oppressed by the wealthy and comfortable? How do we preach this Jesus to our indigenous communities world wide that battle with oppression and racism and all its ugly offshoots? If we believe in a theology that puts one persons well being above that of another then we too have rejected Jesus.
In the coming week we need to examine our lives to see where “we play it safe” – where we put our energies into protecting our egos – where we perhaps reject Jesus. Let us pray that when we do meet Jesus and our own blindness is revealed to us, that we will have the courage of Paul and be able to pray along with him “For it is when I am weak that I am strong.”
First Reading: Ezekiel 2:2-5
Psalm: Ps 122. R. v. 2
Second Reading: 2Cor.12:7-10
Gospel: Mark 6:1-6
In last weeks gospel we saw the faith of two people (the synagogue official and the woman with the hemorrhage) and how this faith brought them to life in one form or another.
This week we see God sending Ezekiel to tell the rebelling Israelites, the chosen people whom God has a Covenant relationship with, that there is a prophet amongst them.
The Psalmist (and the community) cries out for mercy as they keep their gaze fixed on God.
Paul finds the strength of God within his own “weakness” after hearing God’s words: “My grace is enough for you: my power is at its best in weakness” and then Paul’s prayer became “For it is when I am weak that I am strong.”
Then Jesus in his home town is rejected. Those in the synagogue were astonished by his teaching and the wisdom granted him and the miracles that were worked through him, but they would not accept him because he was too familiar to them. Then we hear that Jesus “was amazed at their lack of faith.”
What does all this say to us today?
Paul will help us answer this question. Who amongst us wants to feel weak, afraid, insulted, confused, persecuted etc? The right assumption would be: very, very few of us. So we spend a lot of our lives trying to ensure that this doesn’t happen. We don’t rock the boat with our thoughts because we don’t want to be rejected... We go against what we hear our heart saying so as to protect ourselves from ridicule. We tow the party line so as to feel safe. We spend much of our lives and we put a lot of time and energy into playing it safe. We do this to keep our own egos intact and well inflated.
Perhaps it is not until our egos take a bit of a hammering that we might understand what Paul is saying to us. Paul was persecuting the Christians with a passion. He wanted them destroyed. But he kept being confronted with the beauty and courage of these Christian people until he could no longer resist what his heart was saying to him. He then had the courage to LOOK AT JESUS and he had a powerful conversion experience.
This turned everything he believed upside down. His ego would have been shattered. He was then treated with suspicion by the Christian community that he had been so openly persecuting. He would have been rejected by the Pharisees of which he was one prior to this profound experience. The only person that could sustain him through this suffering was Jesus. It was here that he learned to trust Jesus and let go of his own ego.
So often when we hit a crisis in our lives, when we are struck by our own weaknesses or our own powerlessness we can be taken to new depths of faith if we have the courage to allow ourselves to be taken into this mysterious journey.
But for those in our Gospel today who rejected Jesus, they could not dare this journey. They couldn’t dare face the implications of what it meant to have “God” in their midst. This would have demanded all sorts of changes that they refused to face.
We must ask ourselves if we see and recognize Jesus in our midst. When we do recognize Jesus, our lives will change – they must change. If they do not change then we can be assured that we have not recognized Jesus in our midst – we have probably recognized something that has done little more than boost our own egos even further. We are not talking about feeling good about ourselves – this purely individualistic relationship between me and God. Many who think they have experienced Jesus speak of the “feeling” of being loved by Jesus and “feeling” so happy, and “feeling” so alive in a “me and God” sense... But unless these “feelings” have brought us to a deeper faith and a deeper communion with Jesus and with humanity and a diminishing of our own egos, then we have in all likelihood miss read the experience.
Many of the Pentecostal churches today preach what a good thing it is to acquire personal wealth - Jesus wants us to be comfortable – Jesus wants us to achieve – Jesus wants us to be happy – Jesus wants us to ambitious etc. How do we preach this Jesus to the multitudes who are dying of starvation in our world? How do we preach this Jesus to the millions who are held in refugee camps and have been there for years? How do we preach this Jesus to those living with poverty and who are oppressed by the wealthy and comfortable? How do we preach this Jesus to our indigenous communities world wide that battle with oppression and racism and all its ugly offshoots? If we believe in a theology that puts one persons well being above that of another then we too have rejected Jesus.
In the coming week we need to examine our lives to see where “we play it safe” – where we put our energies into protecting our egos – where we perhaps reject Jesus. Let us pray that when we do meet Jesus and our own blindness is revealed to us, that we will have the courage of Paul and be able to pray along with him “For it is when I am weak that I am strong.”
posted by Annemarie Reiner at 9:57 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home