The Challenges of Truth (Mark 6: 1-6)

Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 24 of Season 7 for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time  - July 7, 2024. Our Gospel reading is from Mark Chapter 6: verses 1-6.

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? And 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 

“The Challenges of Truth,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

Prophets are often seen as most unwelcome guests. Good and holy prophets doing the work of God will not tell us what we want to hear but they will tell us what we need to hear, and that message most assuredly will be unsettling. This is especially true if the one who is being prophetic is someone close to us, someone we know. It's even easier when the relationship is familiar to find ourselves offended by what they may have to say. We don't take criticism easily, and we certainly don't like our wounds to be touched. And so the voice of a prophet cries out but often doesn't land on ears willing to listen.  

Jesus was the prophet of prophets. If we look at what Jesus taught and what Jesus did and try to get a clearer picture of what the Kingdom of God may look like, which was the focus of his preaching and prophecy,  it's important to first consider not so much what Jesus said, but what he did not say; what he did not say. Let's consider this for a moment:  when Jesus gathered his disciples around him and prepared to send them out two by two to preach the Good News, a heralding of repentance, calling people to the reign of God, he did not tell them to take that message and preach it in a way that people will accept it. He did not say to take that message, make nuances to it, and make it more palpable. 

He did not say, win as many people over as you can, even if you must compromise what I am telling you to do. Those things he did not say. What he did say was that when you go to someone's house, and you're greeted at the door, if you find somebody peaceable, in other words, somebody who is willing to listen, willing to absorb what you have to say, then that's great. If, when you go to that door, and you find somebody who rejects you, who closes that door in your face, then you simply shake the dust from your sandals, and you move along. So the takeaway here is that the announcement of God's kingdom, the call to repentance, which is at the core of the Gospel, and the Gospel itself, is not meant to be immediately absorbed by everyone. Some will be able to accept it. Others will not. And that's okay in God's eyes. And so this Gospel message has a cutting edge to it because it's intended to challenge, to rattle and to change up how we view life in ourselves and how we see God. 

So can we imagine for a bit, as Jesus stood in front of the people he grew up with, as the disciples went to the streets, and went door-to-door and brought the Good News to folks, what kinds of conversations do you suppose they may have had in that context? I mean, we know what the Gospel message basically is: repent and believe in the Good News. The kingdom of God is at hand. We know the core idea, but it's had to be more than that when conversing with folks. When they got into the gritty day-to-day stuff of their lives, what kinds of conversations may have been had? 

Well, if you look at what Jesus taught, the basic bottom line is love, right? Love of God, love of neighbor, love of self. That's the basic commandment, the core of the Gospel message. Now, when we hear that at first, love God, love neighbor, and love self, that all sounds very nice, doesn't it? A world based on love, who doesn't like that? Until we start putting that into practice and translating that into the everyday business of our lives. Then, those very easy words to say become very challenging to do because they have to be put into the context of Jesus' broader teaching. So I can easily see Jesus going up to an individual and announcing that core commandment to love God and love neighbor and yourself, and then saying to them, well, you know, that also means your enemy. And that person who hurt you the other day? You have to love them, too. And that person who hurt someone you love, you have to love them as well.  

Now, that message changes up because as we put it into that wider context and put it to its implications, the hairs on the back of our neck begin to raise a little bit, and we start becoming a little bit uncomfortable. And we may even find ourselves saying, "I don't like that. I'm not going to do that." But it's part of the teaching. So I can imagine these very challenging conversations happening along the way, and how some, when they hear that message would say, yes, I understand that in the context. I'm willing to give that a shot. And others that would just simply say, I don't want anything to do with it.  There's no way I'm going to love somebody who hurts me. There's no way I'm going to love my enemy. And then, when we put it into the context of the Beatitudes, it gets even more challenging because Jesus outlines, in that very beautiful sermon, with some particulars. Blessed are the poor in spirit. The Beatitudes call us to a preferential option for the poor. To see them as the first hearers of this Good News, the first in the kingdom of God, and those who have more are going to be last. Those are hard words for somebody who's clinging to wealth to hear.  

Somebody who likes to take up the sword and strike back in vengeance is going to have a very hard time when the conversation gets to the nonviolent approach that Jesus advocates. You don't solve your problems by taking up the sword. Violence has no place in God's kingdom. We hear those words  and now we start to feel a bit uneasy.  

I can imagine conversations involving the virtue of love. What gives love a greater shot and develops it in a person, and what reduces it?  Well, in our midst, the Church is a prophetic voice. The Church calls us by its teachings to the Good News, to the Gospel message of Good News, and helps us translate that into our lives. What the Church has is a body of its teaching these seven serious sins, the capital sins they're called, and they're put high on that list because of their power to reduce our ability to love, first of all. They can pull us away from loving in a true and humble, and honest way, but they can also reduce our faith and lessen our grasp on hope. 

So these seven serious sins, if they take root in our lives, can really rattle our whole connection with God, and others really move us away from the Gospel. That's why they're called serious sins. But often, we make friends with them, and we don't want people coming along and challenging us to look at them.  And so if we are in a place where we find ourselves somewhat apathetic, not caring about ourselves, not caring about others, and just kind of mumbling through the motions of life and somebody comes up to us and challenges what we're doing. We don't like that if we find ourselves falling victim to anger and intense rage, and someone comes up to us and they said, your anger and your rage is destructive. Your anger and your rage are hurting me. Your anger and your rage are destroying you. We don't like that. If we find ourselves becoming a bit greedy, of taking too much for ourselves, accumulating too many possessions, wanting more and more of taking for ourselves, and not offering to give to anyone else, and someone comes up to us and says, you're being too greedy. The Gospel calls us to share.  We don't like being told what to do.  

If we find ourselves becoming gluttonous and hoarding more and more things, of focusing too much of our energies on how much we have and getting more, of being concerned about protecting our own turf and not really worrying about what's happening in my neighbor's backyard, and somebody comes up to us and challenges our gluttony,  we can easily take offense. If someone finds that we are falling into the trap of jealousy of looking at what our friends have more than what we have, of being envious of what others around me have versus what I have. And if I find that jealousy is entering into my relationships and someone calls us out on that, often we push them aside and say, leave me alone. If we find ourselves falling victim to lust, of paying way too much time and energy on our sexual selves, of moving out of a healthy embracive sexuality to something that is more self-serving, and somebody calls us out, we can easily find ourselves angered and move away. And lastly, if we find ourselves tripping up with pride of building our egos and making everything about us: what I want, what I’m entitled to, what I think I need to have, what I'm due, what I'm owed, then we can easily find ourselves angered once again, and dismissing the call to charity. 

And so yes, prophets, if they're true to their name, are often unwelcome guests. None of us wants to look at our most incomplete selves. We want to somehow pretend that nobody can see it and nobody needs to know it. But yet, Jesus stands before us as the prophet of prophets. He may not tell us what we want to hear. The Gospel message isn't always about warm fuzzies. But he is going to tell us what we need to hear to take our sights off of our own self-built kingdoms and put them on to the kingdom of God. Once we can learn how to receive a prophet into our lives and to do so with a certain amount of acceptance and grace, then we ourselves can take up that challenge and be prophets to others, regardless of the cost. 

Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.