Bulatlat News
Union Theological Seminary Cavite
Ez 2:2-5
Ps 123:1-2, 2, 3-4 2
Cor 12:7-10
Mk 6:1-6
Homecomings conjure up positive images for a lot of people, especially graduation and vacation days. For many, homecoming is almost synonymous with reunion.
But Sunday’s lection on Jesus’s homecoming paints a different picture. His townmates ask, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” Mark’s ‘The carpenter from Nazareth, the son of Mary’ (read, bastard) was a hard sell. It was certainly a hard sell for the other Nazarenes; in the Lukan version of this story, they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff.
I always ask my co-learners to imagine a daughter or sister or friend–who is barely out of her teens–being pregnant and telling everyone that the father of her child is the Holy Spirit. Mark’s ‘The carpenter from Nazareth, the son of Mary’ (read, bastard) was a very hard sell. Then and now.
To this day, the bastard from Nazareth who lived his life with and for those whose only hope was God; who preached good news to the poor; who challenged the rich to sell everything they have and give the proceeds to the destitute; who defied empire and its life-negating systems; and who commanded everyone who followed him to offer one’s life for a friend; remains an extremely hard sell.
You can’t exactly sell a way of life that carries a high risk of being executed by the state, can you? 
———
*art, “Jesus as a child in Nazareth,” (JESUS MAFA) available at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital archives.
Balik-Tanaw is a group blog of Promotion of Church People’s Response. The Lectionary Gospel reflection is an invitation for meditation, contemplation, and action. As we nurture our faith by committing ourselves to journey with the people, we also wish to nourish the perspective coming from the point of view of hope and struggle of the people. It is our constant longing that even as crisis intensifies, the faithful will continue to strengthen their commitment to love God and our neighbor by being one with the people in their dreams and aspirations. The Title of the Lectionary Reflection would be Balik –Tanaw , isang PAGNINILAY . It is about looking back (balik) or revisiting the narratives and stories from the Biblical text and seeing, reading, and reflecting on these with the current context (tanaw).
