Mark 6:1-6
Shortly after his conversion, Saint Augustine wrote these words: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things that you created. You were with me, but I was not with you.” Augustine had been searching his whole life. Born to a Christian mother and a pagan father, he became a skilled orator, which was a very valuable profession in those days. He even taught the art of rhetoric. But his profession wasn’t enough, and he studied various religions going around in those days. He eventually settled on Manicheism, a religion with secret rituals, based upon the idea that the universe was governed by a good god and a bad one, always in tension. Augustine had a mistress. In those days formal marriage took place in order to cement alliances. If all you wanted was a woman’s company, then having a mistress was acceptable. But none of this satisfied Augustine. It was only when he looked into himself that he encountered God.
The gospel today describes a village confronted by one of their own, who had left town and developed a following, and rumors of his miracles and rising fame had reached the town. And Jesus is back home in person, and is invited to comment on the scriptures. And in very short order, his hearers go from amazement at his wisdom and teaching, to rejection. And the rejection had to do with the idea that if you were looking for God, you certainly wouldn’t find him in the humdrum day to day life of the village, or among those you knew very well. And that’s Augustine’s point. The last place he looked to find what he had struggled for all his life was in himself.
Most religious people are looking for God, in a sense. If we weren’t, just a little bit at least, we would probably find something better to do with our 45 minutes on Saturday or Sunday,. But we come here because we believe God is here. But God is everywhere. One author said that God is just as present in a church as in a bar. The difference is that in a church we are looking for His presence. . The problem is not finding God, it’s our awareness of his presence.
Related to this, of course, is how we view our own lives. All of us have been given this incredible gift -- even if we are poor, sick, or in pain, it’s still a miracle that each of us exists, and the circumstances in which we find ourselves are there because Our Father is giving us the means to enter into a relationship of eternal love with him. We either believe this or we believe that everything is chance. For a Christian, nothing is left to chance. But when we look at Jesus returning to his home town, we realize that like the villagers in the gospel story, we can choose not to respond to God’s work in us. I wonder if the story that Mark tells took place over several days or all at once. When Jesus taught in the synagogue it says that many were astonished. God was breaking in to their lives and some of them saw it happening. But with time, they chose not to believe that God was present -- Is he not a carpenter? What do they know. Is he not Mary’s son, and remember the rumors back when she and Joseph got married? And look at his relatives -- none of them can even read. And they went on with their lives, having convinced themselves that God would never take an interest in their ordinary lives.
It’s interesting that Mark uses the words, “he was not able to perform any mighty deeds there… he was amazed at their lack of faith”. Matthew in describing the same scene, and probably having the gospel of Mark right in front of him, says “he did not perform any mighty deeds because of their lack of faith”. Obviously both writers see that miracles in some way require the cooperation of the person who is having the miracle worked for them. For Matthew it sounds like Jesus didn’t even try. For Mark, though, you get the feeling that Jesus really wants to work miracles for us, but we don’t have enough faith.
So I think this gospel is telling us what Augustine discovered. God is closer to you and I than our own hearts. God wants to use the lives he has given us, with their joys and sorrows, to give us the gift of himself, which we call heaven or paradise or the beatific vision. And we are always tempted to say, “I don’t believe it.” Because it’s hard to see the connection between my daily activities and God. But it’s there, and we should pray the we recognize it, like Augustine .
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