Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 6, 2003 Ezekiel 2:2-5 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 Mark 6:1-6	Listen to Audio

It has been my experience that it is really more difficult for us to accept the full humanity of Jesus than it is to accept his divinity. I think a lot of us are perfectly content with adoring Jesus as God, because he is the Son of God. But many of us, I think are uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus is just as human as we are. We have this exaggerated idea of what perfection is supposed to mean. Interestingly, when Jesus says “Be perfect like your heavenly Father is perfect,” he was referring to forgiveness, not never making a mistake.

The message of the Scriptures and the tradition and teaching if the Church is that Jesus was fully human, just like we are. We know that rejection and misunderstanding HURT! And it’s obvious from the gospel, in this passage we just heard and many others, Jesus was hurt, often, and deeply, by misunderstanding and rejection. The same kinds of things that we have to deal with. The same kinds of things that hurt us, he had to deal with it, just like we do. And they hurt him as well.

We often think of Jesus as the successful Messiah, doing miracles, teaching a great following of people. Yes, crowds followed wherever he went, but so often the crowds, if they didn’t feel they got what they wanted, turned around and walked away.

Oh, yes, we might say, he was rejected and put to death, because he had to be. Those leaders – the Pharisees and the Romans – hated him, but the people loved him. And he was put to death sort of like following the script of a play, or the plan of God’s blueprint. He knew he’d be victorious, and rise from the dead. Rejection by the leaders might be painful, and of course crucifixion was not picnic – but he knew that wouldn’t be the end because, well, he knew what the grand finale would be.

Nothing could be farther from the truth! He had to walk that same road, often fraught with uncertainty in his human nature, that we do. If you read the Gospels and the New Testament carefully, he endured every emotion, every temptation to discouragement, every frustration, every feeling even of resentment and bitterness, that we do. He was a man like us in all things but sin, as Scripture says. That means ignorance, that means dealing with unruly feelings and emotions, that means being hurt in all the ways we are.

He is our savior precisely because he knows fully well what it’s like to be us! Otherwise, he’s just “God with a mask.” But he’s not “God with mask.” He’s God walk along with us, the friend who can sympathize. The human experience of Jesus is precisely why God can love us in our weakness, even our sinfulness, with a powerful love that even the hatred of Satan cannot destroy. God knows us not only as our creator, but from the inside, as one of us.

Now, St. Paul was on fire with the Holy Spirit after his conversion, and he knew what his mission was. He knew that he was called and sent to people who did not have a Jewish heritage, to start from scratch with them, to proclaim the meaning and the mission of Christ. And he did it, he did it successfully in many ways.

But, by the time he got around to writing the second letter to Corinthians, he had already been through a lot. He had experienced the power of the Holy Spirit working through him, bringing many different peoples to Christ. And that was wonderful! But he also realized, as we just heard in the second reading, that he had to be slammed down a few times. He had to run into a few brick walls. He had to suffer the pain of misunderstanding and rejection just as Jesus did. He had to experience the bitterness of his own weakness. And only then, when he was able to come to terms with his own weakness, could God really begin to work through them. Only then could his words have power – because he wasn’t speaking from his own strength and abilities. He had been reduced to nothing to let God speak through him.

The bottom line of his experience, just as Jesus’ experience, is that it’s only when our own strength is trashed in some way – always painfully – that then God can work through us. I’d like to invite you to listen again to these words of Paul that we heard in the second reading. They have power to touch our hearts, precisely because Paul knew full well whereof he was speaking:

“He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

© Thomas Welbers, 2003