Today’s readings are about the “weakness of God’s word” in the face of human stubbornness. The priest Ezekiel was called to prophesy at a crucial time in the history of Israel, charged with interpreting the collapse of traditional religious and political practice as the Babylonian army closed in on Judah and Jerusalem, and a bit later, guiding the return and difficult rebuilding of institutions and buildings. Yet, at his very commission to these tasks, the Lord speaks frankly of the opposition he will face, “hard of face and obstinate of heart are they to whom I am sending you.” And “whether they heed or resist . . . they shall know that a prophet has been among them.” What a dispiriting first day on the job! If this were not enough, the second reading from Paul is about the thorn in the flesh that encumbered his ministry. Finally, and most surprisingly, the Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus’s home town folk were offended by their fellow resident putting on airs. “So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there.”
Interestingly, our biblical texts offer no explanation for the intransigence of the people who heard Ezekiel and Jesus. The readings apparently leave it to us to figure out the reasons for their resistance. Ezekiel tells us that those who were deaf to his preaching were similar to their ancestors who rebuffed earlier prophets. Ezekiel’s prophetic predecessors had preached that Israelites needed to change their ways, especially worshiping the Lord alone and acting justly toward their fellow Israelites. Anything less than obeying these “two tablets” of the Ten Commandments would cause the Lord to leave the people without the protection and prosperity that came with his presence.
What St. Paul meant by the thorn in the flesh and an angel of Satan, to beat me and to keep me from being elated” has been pondered by readers from the first century with no satisfactory answer. But, important to note, Paul sees this limit, whatever it was, as a gift reminding him of God’s gifts.
As for the disbelieving fellow residents of Jesus’s town, it’s easy to guess why they were unreceptive – they remembered him as a child growing up and then as a young carpenter working with his father. They knew him as ordinary, and “ordinary” for them was equivalent to God’s absence. God was only in extraordinary events, they thought, not in the everyday. And so they missed the ordinary man who seemed ordinary but was truly unique.