Commentary to the FOURTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME – B

The Risk of Being Homeless

Introduction 

The skillful politician always manages relations with the religious structure with care: he does not fight it, but he flatters it, he tries to make it his ally because he knows that the religious subject is more reliable and also more devout if he can be convinced that supporting the established order is equivalent to promoting the kingdom of God.

Those who hold power oppose anything that subverts the balance of society or the institution; they achieve their objective when they make people understand that there is an equation between what is usually thought and the Gospel message, between the principles dictated by current morality and the values preached by Christ, between the beatitudes of the world and those of the mountain.

This is a devious strategy in which, often in good faith, many Christians are involved, which leads to the distortion of the Gospel. Sometimes the ecclesiastical hierarchies and even the people adapt to it, but never the prophet, who is not, by constitution, a restless and unsatisfied person, but one who has received and assimilated the thoughts of the Lord, for this reason, he refuses to put the seal of God on the designs of man and denounces the structures marked by sin. His words annoy, provoke irritation, and the fate that awaits him can only be incomprehension and rejection.

This happened to Jeremiah, who his fellow villagers threatened: "Stop prophesying in the name of the Lord, or you will die by our hands" (Jer 11:21) and warned by God: "Even your brothers and your father's house, even they are disloyal to you" (Jer 12:6). It happened to Muhammad when he wanted to shake his fellow citizens from religious indifference, attachment to the afterlife, and social injustice in Mecca.

In Nazareth, this also happened to Jesus.

• To internalize the message, we repeat:

"Only if I leave the house built by people can I meet the Lord."

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 First Reading: Ezekiel 2:2-5 

Ezekiel must have been about thirty years old when, in 597 B.C., he was deported to Babylon together with the last king of David's dynasty and the good men, carpenters, blacksmiths, and educated people. Having conquered Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar had left only the poor people in the country; all the others he had taken with him (2 Kings 24).

Four years later, Ezekiel was sent by God to announce a harsh and unwelcome message to these exiles. They yearned for an immediate return to the land of their fathers, and the prophet was instructed to dispel these illusions and convince them to organize their lives in a foreign land. From Jerusalem, Jeremiah also exhorted them: "Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit, marry and bear sons and daughters. Seek the welfare of the land to which you have been deported" (Jer 29:5-7).

The sending of a prophet is a sign that the Lord, as a father, continues to love and care for his people. He does not abandon them and, even when they sin and are responsible for their misfortune, he does not let them lack his word of salvation.

In today's passage, we have one of the best descriptions of the prophetic vocation and mission. While lying prostrate on the ground, Ezekiel hears a voice enjoining him: "Get up, I want to speak to you" (Ezk 3:1). Immediately he feels a spirit, a new and mysterious force penetrating him and lifting him to his feet. The voice continues, "Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites...stubborn and hard-hearted children; you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord God..." (vv. 2-4).

Son of man is a Hebrew expression that simply means man, frail being, ordinary mortal. Ezekiel was the son of Busi, a priest of the temple of Jerusalem, and he was proud to belong to a noble house; the Lord addresses him with a new name, son of man, to remind him of his humble, earthbound condition.

The prophet is not an angel; he is not a personage endowed with mysterious abilities and arcane powers, but a simple man, with all the faults, weaknesses, limitations, even psychic and mental, from which no mortal is exempt. Ezekiel had a particular sensitivity: he alternated between moments of exaltation and moments of shame; he was inclined to depression and often closed himself in prolonged muteness. After the call of the Lord, he recounts, "I was stunned for seven days among the deportees" (Ezk 3:15). He spoke well, and people flocked to hear him because his words were like a song of love: "Beautiful is his voice," they would say, "and pleasant is the musical accompaniment" (Ezk 33:32).

However, it is not extraordinary gifts that give the prophet the authority to speak in the name of God, but the fact of having been called, of having received a vocation. Chosen by the Lord, Ezekiel is entrusted with a mission. He is not asked to foretell a distant and nebulous future, to perform prodigies and extraordinary gestures, but to carry out a service: to transmit the word of God to those deported to Babylon.

All peoples have known divinatory forms and techniques; they have relied on soothsayers, astrologers, and necromancers to know the secrets and plans of the gods. Sibyls who uttered oracles were common throughout the Mediterranean, usually associated with sacred rocks and springs. Israel soon repudiated these surrogates of prophecy because it understood that the only instrument chosen by God to communicate with people was the prophet, the man capable of grasping the thoughts and will of the Lord and faithfully transmitting them to his brothers and sisters.

Prophets are rightly accustomed to introducing their message with the solemn formula: "Thus says the Lord..." (v. 4), because they are the only ones who can communicate with God (v. 4) because they are aware that what they report does not belong to them, but to God.

To whom is Ezekiel sent? To his people, to "a rebellious race" (v. 5). Those deported to Babylon were no more sinful than the others; they were only seduced by those who fed vain hopes, by those who proposed easy and appealing choices, but which did not lead to life.

This is the fate of all prophets: they disturb consciences, they discomfort, suggest challenging choices, and, because of this, they are rejected. They should not be discouraged because of this. "Whether they listen or not, they will know that there is a prophet among them," God declares to Ezekiel (v. 5). Although this prophet's mission apparently failed, he nevertheless achieved one goal: he revealed God's concern for his people, showed that the Lord never forgets them and that not even the greatest sin can make him break the covenant he has made with people.

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

The passage is taken from a controversial letter in which Paul, to demonstrate that he is not inferior to those in the community of Corinth who try to defame him, lists the sacrifices he has endured for the cause of the Gospel (2 Cor 11:22-29) and the extraordinary experiences he has had. He claims to have had special revelations from the Lord and heard "ineffable words which it is not permitted for humans to utter" (2 Cor 12:4). It was certainly not a vision, but a rapture into God's world, a moment of intimacy with the Lord, an ecstasy in which he perceived sublime truths.

He could glory, in front of his adversaries, in these extraordinary experiences, but he does not. His boast is something else; it is the weaknesses, adversities, and anxieties because God is used to carrying out his saving interventions using worthless instruments.

In the present passage, he mentions a difficulty that makes him suffer and humiliates him. It is a very painful tribulation, comparable to a thorn stuck in the flesh, to an envoy of Satan entrusted to slap him so that he does not swell with pride (v. 7).

Many pages have been written to explain the meaning of this "thorn in the flesh." Most biblical scholars believe that Paul refers to an illness because, in writing to the Galatians, he mentions a serious infirmity that struck him and could have aroused revulsion in those who approached him (Gal 4:14). But this "thorn" may indicate another, more personal suffering: the hostility towards him on the part of the members of his people whom, in the Letter to the Romans, he calls "his brothers and sisters-in-law according to the flesh" (Rom 9:3). In every city where he went to proclaim the Gospel, they always put obstacles in the way of his preaching. Several times in his writings, he admitted his fatigue in bearing such opposition and was tempted to become discouraged.

He insistently prayed to the Lord to be freed from this thorn, but God did not remove it from him, did not miraculously resolve the difficulty, but gave him the strength to overcome it (v. 9). God is not used to freeing his prophets from the frailties associated with the human condition, from illness, from fatigue, from defects; he wants his power to be manifested through the weakness of the instruments.

Gospel: Mark 6:1-6

Several details of this passage are not immediately apparent. The people of Nazareth are astonished at the wonders performed by Jesus (v. 2), but immediately afterward, they are "scandalized" (v. 3). How can the two contradictory reactions be reconciled? To be scandalized does not mean to provoke trivial dissent but to be in total disagreement. The townspeople were so shocked by his words that they considered them an insurmountable obstacle, a severe hindrance to their faith. He must therefore have said or done something exceptionally provocative.

It is also unclear why he is unable to perform miracles because of their lack of faith (v. 5), and his amazement at the unbelief of the villagers is also surprising. He has just stated that "a prophet is not despised except in his own country, among his relatives, and in his own house" (v. 4), so their rejection should not seem strange to him.

Let us point out one last detail: Jesus in Capernaum was involved in dramatic conflicts with political and religious authorities, he attacked the formalism of the scribes and Pharisees, he denounced their hypocrisy, and hardness of heart, but he never had problems with simple people. Now instead, it is the people, the peasants of his country, who do not understand him and reject him; there is, in fact, no allusion to the presence of religious leaders. How do you explain this unusual reaction?

After spending a few months in Capernaum and visiting the villages of Galilee, preaching the Gospel, and healing the sick, Jesus returns to his native town (v. 1). Sometime before, his relatives had tried to convince him to return to his family and resume his dignified job as a carpenter, but he did not accede to their proposal. Turning his gaze to those who were around to hear him, he exclaimed: "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God, this is my brother, sister, and mother" (Mk 3:31-35).

Now, on his initiative, he returns to Nazareth, and he does not return alone; a group of disciples accompanies him. His visit is not a courtesy visit to his mother, brothers, sisters, and friends, but it is a gesture with an unequivocal meaning for those who, until now, have accompanied his life choices. He returns to Nazareth to present to his old family his new family, made up of those who have responded to his call: they have left their nets, their father in the boat with the servants (Mk 1:16-20), the tax booth (Mk 2:13) and have followed him along the path he has taken.

The incomprehension towards him does not manifest itself immediately upon his arrival. From Mark's account, it appears that he spends a few days with his family, without incident; the disagreement explodes only when "the Sabbath came, and he began to teach in the synagogue" (v. 2).

This fact should be emphasized because it is significant. As long as he remains quiet in the house in which he grew up, that is, as long as he remains within the traditional patterns of his people, as long as he shows his appreciation for the religious convictions transmitted by the rabbis and shared by all, no one has anything to say about him. Problems arise as soon as he leaves home and makes public his choice to establish a new home, a new family.

The townspeople's reaction is twofold: on the one hand, they are amazed by his words and admire the works he does; on the other, they are tormented by multiple questions. Educated in the faith of their fathers, they believe in the Lord who has made a covenant with his people and reserves his blessings for the children of Abraham, for those who belong to the house of Israel and sit at the feet of the rabbis to listen to the Torah.

For the inhabitants of Nazareth, Jesus represents an insoluble enigma: he grew up, like them, in a family of solid religious principles, he belongs to the chosen people, to that which, 119 times in the Bible, is called the House of Israel. Now he gives the impression that he is no longer at ease in this house; it seems that he considers it too narrow and wants to open it to everyone.

They know that, in Capernaum, he expressed his admiration for the gesture of four men who broke down the roof of a house to introduce a paralytic (Mk 2:4); he approved their gesture because it was a sign that the House of Israel should be accessible even to the excluded. He invited sinners into his house and wanted them to participate with him in the banquet, a symbol of the kingdom of God (Mk 2:15-17). He caressed the lepers and made them pure, fit to belong to his new family (Mk 1:41), on the condition that they sit around him, listen to his word, and put it into practice. The door of the House of Israel was thus thrown wide open to all. This is the scandal of the countrymen.

With his message and gestures, he has broken the balance; he is demolishing the house where they had placed all their hopes. They feel challenged; they perceive in his words and his choices an invitation to abandon the security offered by their fathers' religion, embrace the risks of the Kingdom, and enter his home, his new family, made up of the disciples who have believed in him.

The series of questions they ask are justified (vv. 2-3). What guarantees can be offered by "the carpenter, the son of Mary" who, for more than thirty years, has done nothing but fix doors and windows, make hoes and plows, and whose brothers and sisters they know? Where does he get the message he expounds? Who gives him the strength to perform prodigies?

However, the problem that intrigues them most does not concern the content of his teaching but the origin of this new doctrine. They do not question the goodness of his works but their origin. They ask themselves: are they done in the name of God or, as the scribes who came down from Jerusalem implied (Mk 3:22), do they come from the evil one? They conclude: better not to trust this man who proposes dangerous novelties.

Notice that they do not name him; they identify him with his profession and, strangely enough, concerning his mother, perhaps to emphasize more their negative judgment. They do not link him with his father, who, in Israel, represents the link with the tradition from which he broke away. They prefer not to risk it; they cling to their old customs and habits; they do not want to give up the old house and the security offered by the old family.

Thus, the excruciating but inevitable separation of Jesus from his family, neighbors, and friends takes place. It is the destiny of all prophets, who are only despised in their homeland, among their relatives, and in their home (v. 4).

The attitude taken by the people of Nazareth is repeated today. Jesus comes again to those who are convinced that they know him, belong to his family, and forward his proposal. He asks them, as God did to Abraham, to leave all that their home, family, and country represent; he invites them to reconsider their religious convictions, assimilated during their childhood and never further developed; he demands that they distance themselves from the principles of current morality, from the ideals and values proposed by the society in which they live. The response he receives is, in most cases, the same: first incomprehension, then rejection.

This mistrust, however, always has dramatic consequences. Jesus is reduced to impotence; he becomes incapable of performing those wonders that his word and the contact with his person produce everywhere. He offers his salvation, but he cannot impose it because he loves and love to respect freedom.

If miraculous events do not happen in today's world, if living conditions do not undergo radical transformations, if peace, justice, and reconciliation among peoples are not established, the reason is always the same: people do not dare to place their complete trust in Christ and his word. Yes, there are some minor changes, as in Nazareth some not seriously ill people were cured: a little more alms and a few less offensive words, but the great wonders, the surprising signs of the presence of the kingdom of God in the world cannot happen where faith is lacking or completely absent.

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