Road to Emmaus Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Jul 1, 2009

First Reading – Ez. 2:2-5

Responsorial Psalm – Ps. 123:1-2, 2, 3-4

Second Reading – 2 Cor. 12:7-10

Gospel Reading – Mk. 6:1-6

 

The Gospel reading for this Sunday stands in stark contract from what has just taken place in the reading last week. In Mark 5:21-43 Jesus healed a woman who was hemorrhaging for twelve years, and raised a twelve year old girl from the dead. The people “were overcome with amazement” (5:42b).

 

Jesus now travels back to his hometown of Nazareth, a city of no more than a few hundred people. In a real sense they would have been considered family. Their reaction to his miracle, however, is quite different than those outside of his hometown. They are not “overcome with amazement.” They are astonished in a different sense. They approach Jesus with doubt and skepticism. They consider him to be a nobody. “They took offense at him” (Mark 6:3c).

 

Whereas the people of Mark 5:21-43 are overcome with amazement at Jesus works, Jesus, in Mark 6:1-6, is “marveled because of their unbelief.”

 

Jesus places himself within a long line of prophets who have been rejected. “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house” (Mark 6:4). As Mary Healy notes in her commentary, The Gospel of Mark, “By referring to himself as a prophet Jesus links himself to that of the long line of Old Testament prophets who suffered rejection or violence because of the unpopularity of their message” (p. 113, cf. 2 Chronicles 24:19; 36:16; Nehemiah 9:26, 30; Jeremiah 35:15; Daniel 9:6, 10; Hosea 9:7).

 

The Old Testament reading for this Sunday is taken from the prophet Ezekiel. He too was rejected.

 

The days of Ezekiel

 

Ezekiel was a prophet who lived during the seventy-year Babylonian captivity of the southern Kingdom of Judah. Ezekiel was taken away into captivity by the Babylonians during the second of three waves of deportation. At the time of the third wave of deportations, the Babylonians also destroyed Jerusalem, and most importantly, the temple.

 

The reading from Ezekiel 2:2-5 for this Sunday takes place before the third wave of deportations and the destruction of the temple. Ezekiel, in chapter four, will go on to warn the people that the temple will be destroyed.

 

The people of Ezekiel’s day were “a nation of rebels…impudent and stubborn” (2:3,4). They were idolatrous to the very heart. They would go on to reject Ezekiel, like they had all of the prophets before him, thus Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed in 587 B.C.

 

Back to Jesus

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Jesus is a prophet much like Ezekiel. He prophesies to his own people and he is rejected. The people acknowledge his “wisdom” and “mighty works,” but as Mary Healy notes, “The people cannot bring themselves to draw the logical conclusion of their reasoning” (p. 112). What logical conclusion might that be? The logical conclusion based on Scripture is that Jesus is in fact God.

 

Healy says, “Wisdom and mighty deeds (dynameis) are attributes of God himself (Jer 10:12; 51:15; Dan 2:20), and Scripture often refers to the great deeds accomplished by God’s ‘hand’ (Exod 32:11; Deut 4:34; 7:19)” (p. 112).

 

The consequences of the people’s rejection of Jesus will be similar to those of Ezekiel’s day. In Mark 13, Jesus, as he makes his way out of the temple, foretells of its destruction, “There will not be one stone left upon another that will not be thrown down” (v. 2).

 

One further lesson

 

One further point that might be mentioned about this Sunday’s Gospel reading is that it gives us a glimpse into the extraordinary ordinariness of Jesus’ everyday life while growing up in Nazareth. Nothing spectacular took place during those years, no mighty deeds, not signs and wonders.

 

During these years Jesus sanctified family life and work, through his humble participation in these activities of everyday life.

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes Pope Paul VI’s words during his pilgrimage to Nazareth. He says, “The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus - the school of the Gospel. First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us…A lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character...A lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the ‘Carpenter's Son,’ in you I would choose to understand and proclaim the severe and redeeming law of human work…To conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern their brother who is God” (533).