Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time: Mark 6:1-6
When we begin our lives in this world, many things are simply givens. We didn’t choose them, nor did we have even the chance to do so. They simply come with the ‘package’ that is you or me. We are born with certain physical traits thanks to our DNA – this skin tone, this height, our mother’s eyes, our father’s nose. We may be born with a weakness for chocolate or dancing or football. Then there are the circumstances of our birth and childhood: this family with these challenges, this location, this social class, these opportunities (and not those).
Besides the ‘givens’, there are the choices others made that affected us, and the choices we ourselves made. Some were good for us, and others strike us as mistaken or wrong in some way. All of these, and much more, make up what we refer to as our “past”. We carry our past with us in many ways – our memories, the people who love us (or hate us), the lingering effects of physical injuries, criminal records, credit scores, and so on. We often judge others – and ourselves – based on what we know of their (or our) past. Even though our past is a significant part of who we are, it isn’t the whole story. We tend to forget that, however. We can judge others solely by their past. We can judge ourselves in the same way.
In today’s passage from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has gone back to Nazareth, where he grew up. His old neighbors and relatives have heard that Jesus has been going about preaching and healing and doing other remarkable things. But they have put Jesus in a box and cannot fathom how someone like him could say and do such things. “Jesus is one of us”, they say to themselves, “and great things don’t come from Nazareth”. As a result, we are told, “they took offense at him”. How dare he act in such a way? How dare he not stay in his box? How dare he not be a prisoner of his past?
What they could not see or understand was this: God makes all things new. The risen Jesus says as much in the final vision in the Bible (Rev 21:5). Paul understood this, as he told the Philippians of how he forgets what lies behind and stretches himself out to what lies ahead (Phil 3:12-15). And what lies ahead? God, in whom all goodness dwells, and from whom every good gift comes. Jesus comes to be born in a certain place, at a certain time and among a certain people. All of this is part of the humanity he takes on. But since his one goal is to do the Father’s will, he presses on to what lies ahead. His human past isn’t his whole story. Jesus has a mission from the Father.
How tempting it is for us to treat others in the way Nathaniel first spoke of Jesus: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” How easy it is to judge others prematurely by what we know of their past: their ethnic origins, their social class, their relatives, or their own mistakes. How easy it is to write others off! On the other hand, how easy it is to accept others a bit too uncritically because they have the “right” past, whatever that might mean.
In the same way, we can be unforgiving of our own past – be it things we have inherited, things that have been done to us, or things we have done. We can write ourselves off as beyond change. We can even feel a certain complacency and wish that others would just leave us alone. “I’m only human!” we say. Or, we can look at our past with a certain pride, like the rich man who was born on third base and thought that he hit a triple. We can feel that we come from the privileged few. Or, we can feel that we have come a long ways by our own steam, and feel proud of our achievements and complacent about our status.
Whatever the case, the temptation is ultimately the same. We end up becoming imprisoned by our past, however it may seem to us. We think that we’ve gone as far as we can get, or as far as we want to go. We forget to “press ahead”. God wants to make us new. God has more for us. There is always more. We never “arrive” while we are still in this life. The same is true for everyone else. At any moment, someone who we wrote off may shock us by a profound change in his or her life. At any moment, we may surprise ourselves by making a similar change in our own lives, a change that is our response to God’s loving invitation to take the next step. May we have that faith in God, the God who makes all things new, and trust enough to follow God’s lead.