Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is Sundays with Bishop Ken.
Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Today. Our guest reader is Fr. Burt Gome, a senior priest from the diocese of Saginaw in Michigan. Father Burt was a priest in the diocese when Bishop Ken was its shepherdess.
[00:00:33] Speaker C: A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark.
Jesus departed from there and came to his native place accompanied by his disciples.
When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished. They said, where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands? Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?
Are not his sisters here with us?
And they took offense at him.
Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.
So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there. Apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.
He was amazed at their lack of faith.
The gospel of the Lord.
In this gospel, you can see a mood shift among the people listening to Jesus.
At first, when Jesus began preaching in his hometown synagogue, it says that they were astounded at his teachings.
Then the shift. They start to ask, where did this man get all this? And they took offense.
It's not the first time Jesus experienced opposition, and it won't be the last time, not by a long shot.
In the end, his opponents will succeed in having him executed.
That's always been something of a puzzle.
Why was it that someone as likable and kind and good as jesus was sometimes disliked first? It's clear most people liked him. He spent much of his ministry in Galilee, speaking to crowds on the hillsides and along the shore, going from village to village, preaching and teaching. What he said made sense to them. He talked their language not like some of the religious leaders.
He cured the sick and he cared for the poor.
Some disliked him. Of course. The religious authorities disliked him because he criticized them and upset things.
Demons disliked him for obvious reasons.
Another group that had trouble with him was his own extended family and his own townspeople.
All four gospels report this, and we just heard it in Mark's gospel.
Why was it that those so close to Jesus, at least in the beginning of his ministry, had difficulty with him?
They'd watched him grow up. He led a normal life. He seemed like one of them.
Yet who was he to say and do these things they were hearing about?
That was clearly the problem with his own townspeople. In today's gospel passage, listen again to what they said.
Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands?
Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?
And are not his sisters here with us?
The same thing can happen to us.
The hardest thing about living out the call of God in our own life isn't always opposition from the enemies of the faith.
Sometimes it's being misunderstood by those closest to us. The people we rub elbows with, our friends, our relatives, they know us. They know we're one of them. They know our faults.
We're hesitant to become more involved in our church or in issues of justice and peace because we can hear them say, if only to themselves, who are you to be saying and doing such things?
Dorothy Day was a lay woman who lived in New York City and dedicated her life to the poor and to the cause of justice and peace.
In 2021, her cause for sainthood was sent to the Vatican.
Interestingly, during her lifetime, Dorothy Day resisted those who would refer to her as a saint.
She said, when people call you a saint, they no longer take you seriously.
They put you in a different category and excuse themselves from having to even think about doing the same things you do.
After all, you're a saint and they're not.
They're just regular people.
Dorothy Day once quipped, don't trivialize me by trying to make me a saint.
We think regular folks aren't holy. Regular folks don't work for the poor.
Regular folks don't pray much.
Regular folks just more or less go to church and lead a normal life.
Trouble is, a normal life for a disciple of the Lord isn't always what others might consider normal.
At baptism, we symbolically die to one way of life and rise to a new and different way of life.
That's what Christianity was called before it was ever called Christianity. It was called the way Christianity is a way of life.
The truth is, we're sometimes reluctant to follow this way of life, not because godless people might persecute us. The truth is, we're sometimes uneasy about living out our faith because we might get the same reaction Jesus got from his own townspeople.
Where did this man get all this?
Why, he's just one of us.
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[00:07:09] Speaker A: Sundays with Bishop Ken is produced by Little Books of the Diocese of Saginaw. For more about little books and great resources for the whole family, visit littlebooks.org dot.
