Recently, I asked a homily question directed to the women. Well, today’s question is addressed to all of you who are at least twenty-eight years old. It’s also a two-part question? The question is this: have you ever been to a high school reunion? And secondly, did you enjoy it? Now you might be wondering why I limited my question to those over the age of twenty-eight. Sure, younger people might go back to a high school gathering, but it’s not the same as it is when you’ve been out for at least ten years. The five-year reunion is nothing. Things haven’t really changed all that much for you or for your high school friends. However, after ten years, the changes are a little more obvious. The men may still claim they wear the same size jeans, but their belt line is beginning to shift southward. The women look in the mirror and wonder: perhaps, if they hadn’t laughed so much, maybe those strange lines wouldn’t be there.
Since summer, and especially this Fourth of July weekend, is the time for picnics and reunions, I thought I might caution you: gathering with friends and relatives you haven’t seen for many years can be hazardous to your ego. As for me, I never did go to my tenth high school reunion. Nevertheless, I must admit I had a great time at the twenty-fifth and fortieth ones! By then, everyone else looked so much older than the image I saw when I look in my own mirror. I was now able to relax and remember only the good things that happened to us during those high school days.
Perhaps, it would have been different if Jesus had been able to wait longer before he went back to Nazareth, back to his hometown and the people he once knew and who thought they knew him. However, today’s gospel reading really isn’t about reunions and going home for visits. Rather, it’s about faith, about faith and miracles, about faith and change.
For the last several weeks, our readings taken from the Gospel of Mark have been about faith. There was the story about faith and the mustard seed. Then there was the one about faith and Jesus calming the storm at sea. Last week, we heard stories about how her faith cured the woman with a hemorrhage and how faith and trust were part of the return of the daughter of Jairus.
In today’s gospel, Mark tells how the residents of Nazareth treated its hometown boy when he returned to them. At first, they were amazed at what he said there in the synagogue. There is an impression, however, that they were not as amazed by what he said so much as they were amazed that he was saying it. After all, they remembered the gang of kids he ran around with when he had lived there in Nazareth. It seems his kinsmen, James, Joses, Judas and Simon, might have been into as much mischief as any other group of teenage boys. His family certainly didn’t live in the biggest house in town. Like his old man and everyone else, he had to work for a living. Where did he have the time to study the scriptures and lead you to believe he spoke with the authority of the Lord God, himself?
Surely, those tales of what he did in other towns, could not be true. If they were, why had he not done anything like that when he was growing up here in Nazareth? They thought, with what we Nazarenes know about this Jesus bar Joseph and his younger days, how can we believe anything said about him now?
And here we have the real question for today. With what we remember about our own past, how can we believe anything good about today? In the gospel reading, Jesus spoke about how a Prophet could do little among his own kindred and in his own house, among those who remember the past and its shortcomings.
For a moment, maybe we might return not to Nazareth, but to our own high school reunion or other homecomings. There at the high school reunion, folks are amazed at the physical changes. But they soon accept the outer differences. What they find more difficult to accept are the inner changes. And most difficult of all, the apparent successes of the one who has gone off and now returns.
● How can the high school dweeb now be the C.E.O. of a large company?
● How can the high school fatso now be an accomplished performer?
● How can the kid at the bottom of the class now have a successful career?
● How can the guy who was the major girl-chaser now have a wonderful marriage and such a happy family?
What has happened to us, the ones who stayed behind, the ones who remained in place, the ones who did not change?
In case you’re wondering if I’m saying you have to leave home in order to be a success in life, let me be very clear. No. You don’t have to leave your hometown to become successful. And no, success is not measured by becoming a C.E.O. or an accomplished performer. Success is not measured in terms of a accomplished career. It is not even measured in terms of a wonderful marriage and a happy family. Single people and those who have less than successful occupations can certainly possess the one element lacking in those citizens of Nazareth, and have a successful life.
And what was this lack? According to Jesus, it was a lack of faith. Without their faith, he could do little to overcome their difficulties and be successful in life, itself. Faith, it seems, is necessary for miracles to occur. And where do we need this faith? We need it within ourselves. Within me as an individual. I need faith based upon the present, not upon the past.
The past binds each one of us. Not only with respect to others, as was the case with the Nazarenes and Jesus, but also with respect to ourselves. The past can imprison me, can confine me so I believe change is not possible, miracles cannot happen within me. But with faith, small healings and cures can begin within me. I can have a successful life.
You see, faith is not limited by a geographic home town called Nazareth, or Houston, or Spring, Texas. Faith is not limited by coming from a small town in Ohio or Michigan or from any other place in the world. But faith can be limited by the small town within each one of us. It can be limited by walls we refuse to break, by gates we don’t want to pass through. Faith can be limited by what each one of us holds about past hurts and shortcomings.
Once again, we need to recall that faith is to see with more than our eyes, to hear with more than our ears, to touch with more than our fingertips. When we see, hear and touch with our hearts, it is then we have reached our reunion with the Father, Son and Spirit. It is then we have successfully returned to our true hometown, the City of God.
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time; July 3, 1994
Ezek 2:2-5; 2 Cor 12:7-10; Mk 6:1-6