Being prophetic

Today's readings: Ezekiel 2, 2-5; 2 Corinthians 12, 7-10; Mark 6, 1-6.

One thing we can say for sure about Jesus and his time is that he was a misfit. There was something very structural about his rejection in his hometown, which is a foreshadow of his definite rejection on the cross. He could never be accepted in his world. He himself confirms this when he uses the imagery of the new wine and the old wineskins.

Prophetism has always clashed with the institution, even in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Jesus is presented as the one who makes a difference and the rejection at Nazareth is the key to understand the history of Christianity.

Strictly speaking, Jesus had no title to speak. What Jews in the synagogue expected was teaching coming from someone entitled to do it. For them, it was the title that gave auhtority and credibility to the teaching.

But Jesus hailed from Nazareth, a place that doesn't figure at all in their long-standing tradition of the Old Testament. This explains his perennial contrasts with the scribes and the Pharisees, and everytime he entered the synagogue.

However, Jesus never meant to found a temple religion. Prophets always speak with authority, but outside the temple and the confines of religion.

We often quote statistics that reveal an unsettling exodus from the Church by people who are spiritual but not religious. This is no passing trend we can afford to ignore. The recent study about religion on the University campus confirms that the presentation of Church doctrine and of the Church itself need a revamp. It's a make or break situation.

It's the same situation in which Jesus found himself in his hometown. His teaching was prophetic, meaning it was not just lip service to the dogma of Judaism. It was a teaching with authority, a teaching that touches the heart and speaks to the heart. We need to start addressing people, not crowds. This is the prophetism that people need and expect from the Church.

Jesus' humble and poor origins were the reason he was not accepted. It is the same old story, the singer not the song. From a doctrinal and theological standpoint, we have always been afraid to emphasise the humanity of Jesus. For our mental framework, humanity dowsizes the divinity of Jesus. But that is heretical, just as much as denying Christ's divinity.

Jesus was a prophet and could never be the founder of a new religion. That is why Christianity has been hailed by some as the exodus from religion. Of course this creates confusion in our minds and in the way we've been brought up to think. Religion and the practice of religion has always been seen as the ticket to heaven, the criterion which separates believers from unbelievers. But the borderline between belief and unbelief is not set by religious practice.

It's the hard truth, but we need to say it: Jesus continues to be expelled from our churches and from our religion. We rarely acknowledge that the way we do things suppresses the originality of Jesus. It is this originality that scandalised those who in his time were the guardians of the religious ideology.

On many occasions we continue to do the same. Jesus went to the core truth of reality, he revealed to man his true nature. But to speak the truth about man, he had to go beyond religion to reach out to the heart of man.

There is a long list of prophets in line with Jesus who throughout the history of Christianity and other religions left their mark on the history of humanity. Generally, they were all rejected in their lifetime for being 'silly' and non-conformist. In his portrait of a prophet, writer, political activist, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel says the prophet is someone who listens and who is listened to; he is alone even when addressing crowds.