14th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s gospel about Jesus’ visit or possibly visits to his home town opens us up for meditation on at least two interesting themes, namely Jesus’ family and occupational background, and Jesus as Prophet.
It seems Jesus had four brothers and possibly three sisters,
and we even are given the names of the brothers. Also in this text in Mark,
though only in the Mark version of the story, Jesus himself is described as
‘the carpenter’, not just as elsewhere the carpenter’s son – himself a
carpenter. Also, taking account
of Matthew and especially Luke, there may have been more than one trip to
But what about these brothers and sisters? Jesus for us Catholics after all is supposed to be the only son of Mary, and so our scholars until recently have argued, against the Protestants, that they are brothers and sisters only in a loose sense, namely cousins or ‘relations’. This apparently doesn’t stack up and even some of our scholars have moved to the point of thinking that, yes, they really are his brothers and sisters, at least in the sense of being sons and daughters of St Joseph by his first marriage, that he married Mary to help look after his large family after the death of his first wife. Against the plainer, Protestant position, this would make sense of the fact that Jesus saw the necessity of providing for the future of his mother, being his mother’s only blood relation. Also, it would explain how the family might dare think they can come and rescue him from himself at one stage, kind of taking control of a younger brother.
This is all very interesting. But not important. Because it is we disciples who are Jesus’ true family in any case. When they do come and try to take control of him, and someone tells him, your mother and your brothers are outside, Jesus’ response is, of course: “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does the will of my Father is brother and sister and mother to me. Those who hear the word of God and keep it, they are mother and sister and brother.” We his disciples are his true family, and in being brother and sister and mother to him we also become sons and daughters of his Father, the Father of this My Son the Beloved; and we also become individually and collectively the Beloved. Indeed his own family shine in the kingdom only to the extent that they hear the word of God and keep it, alternatively only to the extent that they do the will of his Father who is in heaven.
Even so, if the modern scholars are correct, it would tend to change our appreciation of Jesus a little bit, and of Mary quite a lot: Mary as Super-Mum, not just one very dear but precocious son of her own, showing signs of independence already as a 12 year old, and someone Mary did right to worry about, but seven other mouths to feed and people to keep house for, probably not much younger than herself, or eight including Joseph. St Mary indeed!
The family itself seems to have had a rather ambiguous
relationship with Jesus. To start with,
they didn’t understand him, couldn’t take him seriously, thought he was mad,
not getting enough to eat, no where to lay his head, worried about him. But later on they seem to have come to the
party, even to the
And yet it is still that case that we the disciples are his
true family, his brothers and sisters and mothers, and that they shine in the
In the course of his response to his rejection at
A prophet is a person who interprets the present rather than predicts the future, a person who interprets the present, and goings on in the present, in the light of God’s concerns and God’s values, from God’s point of view, or for us Christians in the terms of the gospel and of gospel values. If he or she does predict the future, it is out of this more central role: if we keep going like this, there is where we will end up type of thing. In the Ezekiel call narrative from which our first reading is taken, his role is compared to that of a sentry or watchman on the wall, telling people what is going on, on the other side of the wall, with the responsibility or burden of warning them as required, and like other prophets and Jesus after him he is to hold the line whether received or not. But before he can proclaim God’s word to them he must first take God’s word into his heart: Ezekiel has first to eat the scroll, as the passage has it, take it into his system, make it part of himself, tasting like honey he says.
Jesus is servant and prophet of the Incoming Reign of God, what this reign is all about, how we should comport ourselves in the light of its incoming, and what the requirements for entry into it might be, and who gets to be invited.
But the continuing presence of Christ in the world, namely
us, are also called to be prophetic, to follow in the line of Jesus the
prophet. As
The precondition for being such prophets, of course, is that we take God’s word to heart, that like Ezekiel we first eat the scroll ourselves. Or, in other words, it is because we are first brothers and sisters and mothers of Jesus that we can as well be prophets like Jesus: firstly people who hear the word of God and keep it, people who make it part of our system, part of who we are, people who make it our bread and butter, or our bread and butter and honey, like Ezekiel with his scroll!