July 5, 2009 Cycle B
Ezekiel 2:2-5 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 Mark 6:1-6
They knew Jesus growing up. They knew Jesus’ family. They had Jesus figured out. So where did He get off teaching them in their Synagogue? Who did He think He was? Jesus was someone in a box. That’s where He was in their eyes. He was in a familiar place. I say “familiar” because being in a box and putting others in a box is a human inclination, a human impulse, and a human habit.
Think of yourself. We all conform to what others have decided who we are. Have you ever noticed how we talk differently with different groups who have different boxes for us? We may use some salty or off color language with friends that we would never use at home, or talking to me. We may do something totally out of character with one group with one group, but totally in character with another.
The fact is that we are always more than people think. People are always more than we think. You may never know that I struggle with doubts about my faith. I may never know that you struggle with depression, or addictions. You may never know what I give quietly to charity. And I may never know that everyday you take care of an elderly parent and clean their house and get their groceries. You may never know my secret fantasies and desires, weaknesses and strengths, nor I yours.
The point is that we are indeed more than people think and sometimes, you know, it breaks out. Sometimes some strikingly wicked or heroic deed pops out to challenge others assessments and they exclaim about us “We never knew that you had it in you.” And likewise is a similar situation we say of them “We never knew they had it in them.”
That was what was happening to Jesus. In a way, the truth is, that people are always more than we think and therefore we must always grant them transcendence, that extra dimension of being. You must never lock them in the box, nor shall they lock us in.
Popular fiction is full of box breaking precisely because it caters to our secret desire to be more than what people think of us. It caters to our fantasies of moving away and getting a new start, a new identity where we can be our true selves. Some examples:
Clark Kent, boxed by everyone as the mild mannered reporter, breaks free and literally soars. No one in the world thinks Wart, the pint sized squire, has it in him to become King Arthur. Nor, did Cinderella, a shiny princess, nor the ugly duckling an elegant swan. No one ever dreamed that a kid down on the Kansas farm named Dorothy Gale would get to visit Oz.
We love these stories because the people in them have done what we find ourselves powerless to do: break out of the box and show people that there really is more to us than they think.
Yet, this is precisely the belief of our Gospel today. We are more than we show. This is precisely the call of the Gospel. To be more than people think, to be in fact exactly as God thinks, as God sees. Real life offers us examples. Womanizing, Thomas Becket was the carousing and drinking companion of King Henry. But when Thomas became Archbishop of Canterbury he wound up defending the Church against Henry and gave his life for it. Stunned, Henry never thought he had it in him.
Who would have thought that a rich popular spoiled dissolute kid baptized Giovanni di Bernardone, running with his rat pack, would break Frank, as it were; that he would heed a dream in which a voice told him to “serve the Master, not the man.” A dream that slowly got to him and made his old life of partying less and less attractive, until one day, breaking out of his playboy image he got off his horse and embraced the leper.
He then went home, rejected his inheritance and walked away forever from his riches to become Francis of Assisi. And his shocked friends thought they knew him!
Of Jesus they said, “Where did He get all this?” We thought we knew Him? We had Him in His proper box. But like all of us He was more than they thought. And so we must liberate this deep truth in ourselves and in others.
What I am saying is that there is in each one of us an authentic call to holiness, to quiet heroism. We have it in us. Every one of us. One of these days we have to walk away from the routine sins, the worship of consumerism and celebrity. The indifferent life and our gray lackluster spiritual existence. We have to answer that call to embrace in a very public way the truism that we really do not live by Bread alone; that we are called to live beyond the box, do the unexpected, the heroic deed, take the unpopular stance, express the transcendence within us, and allow others to do the same.
Today’s Gospel message reminds us that we are always more than people think. We are, in fact, exactly as God thinks. We must take the step to let God’s assessment show. And if it causes our friends to wonder, so much the better.
Amen. Amen. Msgr. Tom, Pastor Christ the King