JUST A BOY FROM NAZARETH
Ezekiel 2: 2-5; 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10; Mark 6: 1-6
He'd grown up there. And now he goes back home again. He goes back to Nazareth . . . and it is just as important an event for him as it would be for you and me. We see it at homecomings every year. And we see it at family reunions - the folks who come back to share . . . not just in the food . . . and not just to sit in the shade and catch up, though that might be part of the sharing . . . but the ones who come back to share a portion of their hearts . . . a part of their lives with the people they love. This is why he goes back home. To give back something to those people in Nazareth who had given him so very much.
There’s the rabbi who first taught him the Torah. There are the boys - the friends of his childhood - the ones he had run with through the streets, dust splaying between their toes, laughing and playing. There are the older men and women who remember how he had started at age 12 to learn his father's trade, and how there was hardly a home in Nazareth that didn't have baskets, chests, or some kind of furniture that Joseph or Jesus had made, or maybe ceiling beams that they had installed. And there too, his mother and his family. They’re all here in Nazareth. These are the people who shaped him. These are the people who taught him. These are the people who made his ministry possible. They are the people he loves most in the world. And he comes back to give them the gift closest to his heart - the only gift of real value he can give. He comes back home to share the Word of God with them. He comes back to bring them salvation and eternal life.
Oh, they listen politely enough. No one gets up and walks out. There isn't even very much shifting around on the benches . . . or coughing . . . or nodding off while he's speaking. They hear the beauty of his words, but that's all they hear - and words that in Cana or Capernaum would have brought folks to their knees and changed lives on the spot . . . well, here those words just seemed to fall flat. Where was this coming from? This kind of wisdom couldn't come from a man they were acquainted with, a boy who had grown up right here and whose family they all knew. It just wasn't possible! When all was said and done, he was just a boy from Nazareth.
That day in the synagogue, the people of Nazareth had quite an opportunity. They could open their minds and hearts. They could accept that God was at work, right there in Nazareth, in the person of this man, Jesus, whom they knew so well. But they “took offense at him." Who did he think he was? After all, when all was said and done, he was just a boy from Nazareth? . . . But “a prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.”
Most of us think of prophets as sort of religious soothsayers. But prophesy isn’t about predicting the future. It more has to do with the here and now. . . and then maybe how the here and now might affect the future. Prophets are messengers of God, sent to announce God’s will for a particular person or community at a particular time. More simply, a prophet is one who speaks on behalf of God.
We often assume God ‘speaking’ means hearing an audible voice thundering down from heaven in a boisterous, “Thus sayeth the Lord!” kind of way. Though a few people have claimed to have heard God audibly, he usually speaks through other ‘modes’ of communication. Just like learning a new language, when one has to train their ear to hear certain sounds and syllables of the foreign words, so it is with hearing God’s voice. We have to train ourselves to know and discern the distinct sounds and syllables of God’s voice in order to hear him clearly. Don’t forget, God is a mystery and so the way he communicates with us is going to be mysterious. Don’t forget too, that God is a pure Spirit. And so, we have to learn how and to accept how a spirit communicates. And that’s necessarily going to be different than human to human, face to face communication. So, if God physically appears to you and speaks to you, either call the pope or call Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, because normally that’s not the way it works. And if that’s what you’re waiting for, you’re going to have a long and disappointing wait.
So who or what are the prophets in your life? How does God visit you, inspire you, motivate you, challenge you, change you, speak to you? Here are five ways, some of which may surprise you. And probably none of which you ever thought of as prophetic:
- Through the Bible: The Bible is the living Word of God. Everything in it, though written by humans, is inspired by him in some way. If we rely on God’s Word and believe the words we read are directly from God’s mouth, we will hear him speaking directly to us through them.
- Through the ‘Still Small Voice’: When we accept Christ into our hearts, we are immediately given a gift from God in the form of the Holy Spirit. While Jesus was still living among the disciples, he told them, “…when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.” ( John 16:13). Indeed, the Spirit of the Lord that resides within us, will tell us the truth. The question is, are we listening?
- Through Life Circumstances: Never take life’s circumstances at face value. No matter how bad or confusing or hopeless they may look, God often uses the ordinary to communicate the extraordinary. Lose a job? Flight get delayed? A project fail to get the results you hoped for? Don’t fret. God is at work through every circumstance in our lives, even when we don’t fully understand. We need to try to discern what He might be saying through it all.
- Through Dreams: If God spoke through to King Abimelech, Jacob, Laban, Joseph, Pharaoh, King Solomon, King Nebuchadnezzar, and the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament and St. Joseph in the New Testament through dreams, why not also us? Pay attention to your dreams; they might mean more than you realize.
- Through Other People: Have you ever been talking to someone and they suddenly say the exact thing you needed to hear? Or you’re sitting in church and the sermon tackles an exact struggle you have been facing? It’s likely that God was speaking to you through other people–even without them even knowing it. It can come through books, songs on the radio, TV programs, or complete strangers on the street, but when it comes, with its uncanny precision and accuracy, you know when you hear it, it's not coincidence, it's a "God-instance."
The problem is, often times we dismiss all of these as fantasy, wishful thinking, coincidence or reading into something the way we want it to be and not the way it actually is. And we, like the people of Nazareth, take offense: “This isn’t the way God acts! This isn’t the way I want God to act! For me, God is complex and dramatic, and this is all too simple!” But in reality, if you’re listening for the voice of God in your life, this is where you’re going to find it.
How can we know when we’ve received the prophetic word of God? Five ways, all of which must be present. We need to ask ourselves:
- Is it Important? Is it meaningful to my life? Remember, God doesn’t deal in trivia.
- Is it Good? Is what is revealed good in itself and good in what it asks of me?
- Is it Loving? Does it make me a better person? Does it respect and promote what is good, holy, true and beneficial for myself and for others?
- Does it work? Does what is revealed answer my question or lead to a resolution of my situation? Remember, God is perfect. He doesn’t make mistakes. Therefore, he doesn’t offer bad advice. But be prepared, God reveals to us what is true, not necessarily what we want.
- Does it Conform to Other Traditional Forms of Revelation? In other words, is it in sync with Scripture and the teaching of the Church? God NEVER contradicts himself!
That day, in Nazareth, the hometown crowd couldn’t accept that God’s prophetic voice could come through one of their own. Can we accept the voice of God when it comes through one of our own: inspirations, intuitions, circumstances, dreams, family members and friends? The people of Nazareth lost a great opportunity by not listening more carefully to their neighbor and relative -- who they knew only as Jesus, the boy from Nazareth. But we know differently. We know him as Jesus the Christ, our Lord and Savior. Let’s pray that we know not to reject the God that might often seem all too familiar to us.
