Gospel for Sunday, July 07: Mark 6:1-6
XIII Sunday Year B
1 He departed from there and came to his homeland, and his disciples followed him. 2 Coming on the Sabbath, he began to teach in the synagogue. And many listening were amazed and said, “Where do these things come from him? And what wisdom is that which has been given him? And such wonders as those performed by his hands? 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, of Joses, of Judas, and of Simon? And his sisters, do they not stand here with us?” And he was a cause of scandal to them. 4 But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not despised except in his own country, among his relatives and in his own house.” 5 And there he could perform no wonders, but only laid hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And he marveled at their unbelief. Jesus went through the villages around, teaching.
Mk 6:1-6
Care sorelle e fratelli della Misericordie, sono Carlo Miglietta, medico, biblista, laico, marito, padre e nonno (www.buonabibbiaatutti.it). Anche oggi condivido con voi un breve pensiero di meditazione sul Vangelo, con speciale riferimento al tema della misericordia.
Today’s Gospel text (Mk 6:1-6) is the only one, with Lk 13:33, in which Jesus calls himself a prophet, the definitive Word of God proclaiming God’s faithfulness to his people: but like all prophets (Mt 23:37), Jesus is rejected by his own. He is identified as an ordinary unassuming worker: “Is not this the carpenter (“tékton”)?”: “Without too much comfortable syncretism as some American theologians of “merciful” conservatism do…, if we stand by the most careful and well-founded documentation…, we can get that… the category of “tékton”…, was placed… with a downward trend… Jesus’ family was not… to be traced back to our small or middle commercial bourgeoisie. It was a decent but modest standard of living” (G. F. Ravasi). It is precisely the scandal of a carpenter God that his countrymen do not accept (Mk. 6:1-6), but which is problematic perhaps even for the evangelists themselves. It is curious that Matthew, taking up the passage from Mark, instead enrolls Joseph in the profession of a wage earner: “Is not he (Jesus) the carpenter’s son?” (Mt 13:55); and that Luke takes refuge in an aseptic, “Is not this man Joseph’s son?” (Lk 4:22)…
But work, even the humblest work, is an eminently Christological event: it cannot fail to amaze us, too, that the Son of God was for almost his entire life, thirty years, a modest worker of his time.
“The eloquence of Christ’s life is unmistakable: he belongs to the “world of work,” he has for human labor recognition and respect; one can say more: he looks with love at this work, its various manifestations, seeing in each a particular line of man’s likeness to God, Creator and Father… Jesus Christ in his parables about the kingdom of God constantly refers to human work: to the work of the shepherd (e.g., Jn. Jn. 10:1-16), the farmer (Mk. 12:1-12), the physician (Lk. 4:23), the sower (Mk. 4:1-9), the householder (Mt. 13:52), the servant (Mt. 24:45; Lk. 12:42-48), the steward (Lk. 16:1-8), the fisherman (Mt. 13:47-50), the merchant (Mt. 13:45f), the laborer (Mt. 20:1-16). He also speaks of the different jobs of women (Mt 13:33; Lk 15:8f). He presents apostleship in the likeness of the manual labor of reapers (Mt 9:37; Jn 4:35-38) or fishermen (Mt 4:19). It also refers to the work of scholars (Mt 13:52)” (Laborem exercens, no. 26).
Jesus took on to the end “the condition of a servant, and becoming like men” (Phil. 2:7): therefore, he could not fail to take upon himself even the dimension of work, even with its measure of toil and death. And he rejected the satanic temptation to become powerful, to step out of the logic of finitude (Mt 4:1-11). His public mission, too, was under the sign of “kénosis,” of “stripping-emptying himself” (Phil 2:7): and the works of righteousness he performed clashed against the worldly logic of power, and for this Jesus will be put to death.
But Jesus’ works also reveal the positive aspect of work: they are signs of deliverance and healing, they build up the Kingdom of God (Mt 11:4-6). Indeed, Jesus “brings to completion the work of the Father” (Jn 4:34; 9:4).
In the early Church, work is an integral part of daily life: of many apostles we know the trade: Matthew is a tax collector (Mt 9:9); Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Thomas called Didymus are fishermen (Mt 4:18-22; Jn 21:2), and it cannot fail to amaze that even after the Resurrection they continue to give themselves to fishing, and that Jesus appears to them in their working context (Jn 21:1-14).
Paul also works with his hands, being a tent maker (Acts 18:3), and boasts about it (Acts 20:34). And for Paul, work also becomes a means to live out the new command of charity, to succor “the weak” (Acts 20:35), “those in need” (Eph 4:28).
Making obedience to one’s creaturely condition, the believer will have to embrace work, like Christ, with its negative and positive aspects. Following the Crucified One, the believer must know, like Jesus, how to accept the negative dimension of work, its toil and frustrations: “In human work the Christian finds a small part of Christ’s cross and accepts it in the same spirit of redemption in which Christ accepted his cross for us” (Laborem exercens, no. 27). Thus, the great criterion of work is the cross: work will never be important for its objective results, for the honor it will have on earth: what counts is the spirit of service, of love, with which it is carried out; therefore, even the humblest jobs in the eyes of men can be the most valuable before the Lord. Thus work for the believer will not be, as per the logic of this world, a quest for self-fulfillment, career, social advancement, success: it will be “abodah,” service of God (Ex. 3:12) and of the brethren, following the example of the one who became “ebed IHWH,” the “Suffering Servant” (Isa. 42:1; 49:3; 52:13; 53:11). The work will be to take upon us our brethren, following the example of the one to whom “they brought many of the possessed, and he cast out the spirits by his word and healed all the sick, that what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.'” (Mt 8:16-17; cf. Is 53:4).
But work is for the believer also a following of him who is the Risen One: this means that our work, also redeemed by Christ, has also regained the original, heavenly meaning God intended for it. By our work we are to “cultivate and keep” the world (Gen. 2:15), sharing in the creation work of God himself, whose “image” we are (Gen. 1:27). The believer is called to extend the work of Jesus on earth by laying gestures of liberation, maturation, and Kingdom building. “The expectation of a new earth should not weaken, but rather stimulate solicitude to cultivate this earth, where that body of the new humanity grows, which already succeeds in offering a certain foreshadowing that adumbrates the new world” (Gaudium et spes, no. 39).
Work is thus a constitutive mission of man that will not become alienation or slavery only if it is lived, in the following of Christ Crucified and Risen, as a gift that makes us cooperators with God, for the realization of his Kingdom.
Buona Misericordia a tutti!
Chi volesse leggere un’esegesi più completa del testo, o qualche approfondimento, me lo chieda a migliettacarlo@gmail.com .