Jesus’ one-liner
response to the people of His hometown of Nazareth who were getting angry and
jeering at Him out of ignorance, jealousy, envy, or maybe even a lack of
credibility due to their familiarity with the ‘carpenter’s son and his brothers
and sisters’: “A prophet is not without honor except in
his native place and his own house.” (Matthew 13:54-58)
In other
words, Jesus was saying, “Look, I know I’m a prophet. And I know many people from all over are
extremely impressed by what I know and do. But this is what always happens in someone’s
hometown and family: lack of credibility, jealousy, ultimately lack of faith.” The
expression ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ came to my mind immediately, but His
“lack of faith” statement is what I found myself reflecting on today.
“And he did not work many mighty deeds
there because of their lack of faith.” As I see it, we can understand this line in two ways. First, Jesus was punishing them by choosing
not to perform mighty deeds because they lacked faith. I think this is the way most people usually
understand this passage. But I have a real problem envisioning Jesus to be
spiteful. Instead, a second way might
actually have merit; that Jesus could only perform mighty deeds if others
showed great faith! I don’t know for
sure which is the case, and I don’t intend to limit Jesus so much as suggest
that we have a significant role to play in doing God’s work. The “mighty deeds” of Jesus almost always
involve great faith and participation from others: for example, raising Lazarus
from the dead (John 11: 1-44), healing the woman who was bleeding and touched
Jesus’ garment (Matthew 9:20–22, Mark 5:25–34, Luke 8:43–48), healing the
paralytic lowered through the roof by his friends(Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:1-12,
Luke 5:17-26), and Peter’s walking on water (Matthew 14:32–33).
What “mighty
deeds” can we help Jesus to accomplish today? Will we be able to accept and have faith in
the ways Jesus works through a ‘prophet’ in our own family or hometown in order
to accomplish these mighty deeds? “Let
the heaven and the earth praise him, the seas and whatever moves in them!” (Psalm 69:35)
No comments:
Post a Comment