Not What They (We) Expected

Homily for Friday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time

I don’t think I will ever forget my first class as I began to pursue my Master’s Degree at the University of Illinois. I was sitting in one of the classroom desks with quite a few other students. The professor appeared to be late. So we began conversing quietly, patiently waiting for the professor to show up. At one point, one of the students took out a bottle of bubbles, something I had not seen since childhood. He began to blow bubbles around the classroom. The rest of us just stared at him.

After a few minutes, he stood and introduced himself as our teacher. We were all astounded and just a little worried. He went on to ask us to make a list of adjectives to describe the bubbles he was creating. After we had made quite a list, he then asked us to write a poem using the adjectives in our list. After several of us had read our poems to the class, just as the bell was about to ring to signal the end of the class, he said: “I have just demonstrated a very clever way to teach the poetry of Emily Dickenson.” I had to admit, he was correct, and as this was a class in Methods in teaching Literature, the class was very apropos.

Now what does this have to do with today’s Gospel text. Well, it is obvious that the people who had gathered in the synagogue that Sabbath were not expecting to be taught by the carpenter’s son. “Where did this man get all this,” they ask. Clearly, Jesus had overstepped the boundaries of the carpenter shop. They took offense at his presumption to try to teach them, his neighbors. None of us took offense back in Urbana as we sat in that class, but we were expecting something else in a college professor, especially since it was our first graduate school experience.

Wisdom and miraculous powers are supposed to come in a more elegant packaging or at least from a person in formal dress. However, Jesus was teaching them that God was near, something as ordinary as their neighbor’s son. The mystery of the Incarnation continues on in our own day. We so easily forget the presence and availability of God in every day events and the people who are regularly in our lives. The reign of God is in the ordinary and the everyday, as near to us as the sleeve on our arm.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator