The Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (2024)
“Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!”
—Mark 6:2
If someone were to ask you who Jesus is, how would you answer?
Would you begin to think of a beloved childhood image or a statue in your parish church?
Perhaps you might recall a theological word of phrase that speaks to you of his divine and human natures, of the Incarnation, and the Paschal Mystery.
Many of us might recall stories of Jesus recounted in the Scriptures. Most likely, the majority of people seeking to answer that fundamental question have all these possibilities competing for attention because each is valid and good, in its way.
The Gospel proclaimed this Sunday seems to indicate that the people of Jesus’ hometown thought that they knew exactly who he was. After all, they had watched him grow up. His parents were their neighbors, and they knew his extended family. And so, when Jesus broke out of the “box” they had made for him, they “took offense.” Their experiences of Jesus—what they knew—limited their ability to presence of God within Jesus or to recognize God’s power at work among them. Sadly, Mark implies, the people of Nazareth were satisfied with the small, limited knowledge of Jesus because they thought they knew all there was to know about him. Pope Francis summarizes this encounter between Jesus and the citizens of his hometown in this way:
According to the people of Nazareth, God is too great to humble himself to speak through such a simple man! It is the scandal of the Incarnation: the unsettling event of a God made flesh who thinks with the mind of a man, works and acts with the hands of a man, loves with a human heart, a God who struggles, eats and sleeps like one of us. The Son of God overturns every human framework: it is not the disciples who washed the feet of the Lord, but it is the Lord who washed the feet of the disciples (cf. Jn 13:1-20).
The passages proclaimed this Sunday and next mark a turning point in Saint Mark’s Gospel.
Jesus is now ready to set out with the Twelve and begin his work of proclaiming the Reign of God. Up to this point, the Gospel of Mark has been trying to help us reflect on who this Jesus is and on what his mission will mean for the People of Israel and for the entire world. And now, we see Jesus setting out—leaving the nest, as it were—because, as Saint Mark tells us:
A prophet is not without honor except in his native place
and among his own kin and in his own house.”
So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there,
apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. (6:4-5)
The people’s certainty prevented them from seeing the gift that was being offered to them. To say it another way: their certitude eclipsed the possibility of faith.
Ordinary Time is a season of growth when the Readings of the Mass encourage us to expand our understanding of who and what Jesus is, even as they call us to conversion and to the hard of work of helping build up the Reign of God through our works of mercy and justice.
While we might know these stories from Scripture by heart, we cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of believing that we have exhausted their meaning. The Holy Spirit is always speaking to us, inviting us to a personal and communal self-examination. This is because, today, as Pope Francis has also reminded us, “the Lord asks us to adopt an attitude of humble listening and docile expectation because God’s grace often manifests itself in surprising ways that do not match our expectations… God does not conform to human prejudices.”
O God, who in the abasement of your Son
have raised up a fallen world,
fill your faithful with holy joy,
for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin
you bestow eternal gladness.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
