This coming Sunday is the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time. As Mark’s readers would expect, Jesus responds to what people are thinking about him. The proverbial saying “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown” (v. 4) has been expanded with two clauses: “among their kin” and “in their own house.” The original proverb spoke about the “homeland” (patris). The qualifying clauses narrow the region down to the prophet’s household and relatives. If this retort is understood as an insult, then Jesus has responded to his critics in kind. Since the miracles in the previous chapter emphasize the importance of faith in those who approach Jesus for healing, the conclusion that Jesus is unable to work many miracles in Nazareth is hardly surprising. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time. While many of Mark’s readers are interested in this passage because of its reference to Jesus’ “brothers and sisters” (v. 3), Mark’s own interest lay elsewhere. Mark passes on the account of the hometown folks’ rejection of Jesus for a special reason: to provide an important transition and surprising contrasts at this point of his drama. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time. What do the hometown people know about Jesus that would lead them to reject him? While there is much that I disagree with in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, by John Dominic Crossan, his social status of tekton  is enlightening:

Ramsay MacMullen has noted that one’s social pedigree would easily be known in the Greco-Roman world and that a description such as “carpenter” indicated lower class status [Roman Social Relations: 50 B.C. to A.D. 384]. At the back of his book he gives a “Lexicon of Snobbery” filled with terms used by literate and therefore upper-class Greco-Roman authors to indicate their prejudice against illiterate and therefore lower-class individuals. Among those terms is tekton, or “carpenter,” the same term used for Jesus in Mark 6:3 and for Joseph in Matthew 13:55. One should not, of course, ever presume that upper-class sneers dictated how the lower classes actually felt about themselves. But, in general, the great divide in the Greco-Roman world was between those who had to work with their hands and those who did not. [p. 24]

Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The stories and accounts of Jesus’ Galilean ministry have undoubtedly reached his hometown of Nazareth. We know from the gospel account that his reception and return is not exactly exuberant. While the text says that they were “astonished” in reference to his teaching in the synagogue, it is ambiguous in meaning. What kind of astonishment is amplified with the following verse: “They said, ‘Where did this man get all this?’”  Is the tone of the statement one of wonder at the marvelous exposition and wisdom just offered or is it amazement as in “who does he think he is coming here and trying to teach us – how presumptuous!” Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle B. During the two previous Sunday gospels we have heard accounts of Jesus’ miracles. First we encountered Jesus calming the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35-41) with his spoken command (literally: be muzzled).  The watery transit brought them into Gentile lands where Jesus casted out a legion of demons from a man – an encounter not used in a Sunday gospel. As the narrative continues into Mark chapter 5 Jesus and the disciples returned to Jewish land as they again crossed the Sea of Galilee, the literal and figurative boundary between Gentiles and Jews. Continue reading →