This coming Sunday is the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Without faith in Jesus, the people did nothing. It may be that the people’s lack of faith revealed itself in the fact that they didn’t seek Jesus’ help. They didn’t bring their sick for healing. They didn’t bring their children for his blessing. They didn’t come to listen to his teaching. What differences should it make if parishioners believe Jesus is present at Mass or in ministry? Or in one’s own life? A secular criticism of many Christians is that they are “functional atheists” — they live and function as though there were no God. Could that lack of faith keep one from reaping as many benefits as God would give? Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time. There is a common thread in Christian thinking that inextricably links the “degree” of faith with how/if prayers are answered or miracles delivered. In the Markan gospel the problem is not a matter of whether they have enough faith but that they have no faith. Continue reading →

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]

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