One of the themes that bobs along under the surface of the scriptures could be summed up in the phrase, “who does he think he is?” The prophets often encountered it, so does Jesus in our Gospel this Sunday.
The late Terry Pratchett in one of his novels came up with the wonderful aphorism – “wisdom is the only thing in the universe that seems bigger the further away it is.” The temptation is always to think that revelation will come from afar off and to struggle to recognise it when it is close at hand and, apparently, ordinary.
The crowd know Jesus’s family. They know the man they believe to be his father was a local craftsman; a decent man, but not someone at all important. They can probably recite a fair bit of his genealogy themselves. And so they find it impossible to believe that here is God’s messenger among them. They expect God’s word to be accompanied by thunder and lightning, signs and portents. And they miss the fact that the Word of God is standing there.
We like to think we wouldn’t make the same mistake. But we all too often forget that the people around us, in the Church, our parish, and even our family, can be the means God uses to show us the way. If we pray asking God to show us the way, we can focus on the great events around us,looking for the message, when it may well come from someone we know and see every day.
At the heart of the problem, both for the people of Israel in Jesus’s day, and for ourselves, is misunderstanding what God’s plan is about. Jesus tells them, and us, that it is to raise them up on the last day. They were looking for the Messiah who would lead them to victory over their oppressors, and thought they found him in the one who miraculously fed them from five loaves and two fish. Jesus is trying to tell them that He is the one who will lead them into eternal life.
We may not be looking for a victorious war-leader, but we have our own temptations to forget the great goal in favour of lesser ones. While we can, and should, ask the Lord for guidance in our daily tasks, we should not forget that every day He is calling us to walk the path that leads to eternal life, to Him. That call is accompanied by great help and guidance at every step. But if we, like the people of Israel, are murmuring about the messenger, we may miss it.
Fr. Chris Denham
