On Seeing the Holy in the Familiar
Jesus has just healed not one but two women: one unnamed,
unknown, about his age, and one a twelve-year-old daughter of a leader in the
synagogue. Now he is in his hometown synagogue teaching on the Sabbath. People
are astounded by his teaching, but not necessarily in a good way. [Mark 6:1-13]
We know this fellow, they say. “…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?” Curious, but there is no mention of Joseph. How on earth,
they say, does he come by such wisdom and such deeds of power? “And they took
offense at him.” The Greek word is skandalon. They are scandalized by
the very presence of this hometown boy way way way overachieving! They they
seem unable to see the holy in the
familiar.
Unperturbed, Jesus quotes a folksy proverb so much as to
say, “Sigh, it is ever thus! Let’s move on boys. As an example of Biblical
stand-up comedy, storyteller Mark adds, “And he could do no deed of power
there, EXCEPT that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”
That’s all! No hard feelings. He just keeps healing people wherever and
whenever possible. He can’t help himself. It’s who he is and what he does, even
if those who have known him since he was a child cannot wrap their heads around
it. The holiness and mystery of God is in their midst, but they just cannot see
the holy in the familiar.
He then sends his disciples out to call people to return to
God, to heal people and to cast out demons. He sends them two-by-two. Protocol
of the day required at least two witnesses for valid testimony. And he warns
them, “As I was rejected in my hometown synagogue, you will no doubt run into
similar rejection. Just knock the dust off your sandals and move on to the next
town.” There will always be those, Jesus seems to say, who will not recognize
the holy if it were right in front of them. If it were to bite them on the
nose! Which, of course, the holy would never do.
It is ever thus. Human myopia is legendary. For over a month
we were visited by Brood X of the periodic cicadas. Their genus name is
Magicicada. This should tell us something about the magical and mystical nature
of these creatures that appear once every seventeen years, spending all that
time underground, in the darkness, sipping on the sap of tree roots – which
tree roots we now know communicate with one another. That’s right. Trees
communicate with one another underground via chemicals and pulses that can warn
of danger in the area. Or, the delight that finally some creature will arise to
the top of their canopy and properly prune them since genus homo species
sapien is much too busy with more important things, or distracted by
lots of unimportant things, to assist in this necessary activity for our sister
and brother trees to remain healthy. Enter our sisters and brothers Magicicada
to help out as they fly, dance and sing their love for one another and their
hope for the next generation of their genus! Love and Hope reigns supreme!
I say sisters and brothers as the late and noted Jesuit
priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin would remind us all, were
he still among us, that once upon a time, eons ago, all life emerged from a
single cell somewhere on this planet earth, our fragile island home in a vast
universe that stretches far out to infinity and beyond! As Woody Eddins of
Ellicott City wrote to the Baltimore Sun’s editorial page this past Monday, “Nature’s
creativity, nature’s big-bang, took that cell and created an awesome diversity
of life. Who could have imagined it?”[i]
Which means, of course, we, like Magicicada, the trees, the birds, the
manatees, tigers and toads, are all related back to that single cell. We are
surrounded by Holy Ground, as the bush that burns and is not consumed reminds
Moses that miraculous day on which a criminal on the run turned shepherd became
the catalyst for the creation of a new people leading a rag-tag bunch of slaves
out of Egypt to a wilderness adventure that resulted in what God name Israel: those
who wrestle with God.
Loud, and smelly, and flying about hither and yon,
Magicicada Brood X was yet another example of the mysteries and majesty of
God’s holiness in our midst, if we could just get over ourselves and our
tendency to let ourselves to be annoyed like those people long ago in our Lord’s
hometown synagogue who just would not let themselves be awed by the presence of
God in a human being, a homo sapiens, someone who had grown up in their
midst.
As Woody Eddins concludes, “I stand in awe before the power
that has led all species to their current place in our biosphere. And I wonder,
does the cicada on my shirt share this reverence? I think she does!”[ii]
We are truly are all in this together. The holy is all
around us and in us. If only we will let ourselves step back and see God’s
holiness for what it is: a mixture of mystery, love and hope in all things
great and small. That we all might understand this, and recognize the holy in
the familiar, and be eternally blessed by it, may the Father, and the Son, and
the Holy Spirit help us. Amen.
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