Take a Closer Look
Ordinary 14
July 9, 2006

Take a Closer Look
by Tom Cox

There is that moment in things, where an occasion either goes right or it turns horribly wrong. In the case of a hometown return for Jesus, for a moment or two it would appear that a warm celebration of "hometown boy makes good" is about to erupt. But not so. What is about to happen is rejection, the same kind of rejection that would dog his trail all the way to Good Friday. "He could work no miracle there.” It always seems that miracles do not evoke faith so much as faith evokes miracles.

His fellow Nazarenes couldn’t accept his humanity. Neither could some early Christians who gave birth to the first great heresy (Docetism) in the church. It denied the full humanity of Jesus. Enter the Nicene Creed with its’ “and was made man” to counter it. We still say it every Sunday as we still struggle with divine humanity. We want a two-fisted God who comes up like thunder, and we are offended by one who puts himself/herself at our mercy and who now and then looks a lot like our Uncle John. We can be blinded by familiarity and worse - paralyse others and reduce them to impotence, by withdrawing our confidence.

How much energy have we suppressed or discouraged? How much joy stifled? All because “we knew them” or “it was tried before and didn’t work.”

(Comments to Tom at tomascox@eircom.net )