Surprisingly, Jesus can work no miracles is his hometown, Nazareth. Jesus’ homefolks can’t get beyond their certainty that they know who he is.
His preaching astounds some, but the majority can’t accept him as a wise and prophetic teacher. He is a tradesman who can terrace your hillside or build a wall.
This is a story of rejection, of dismissing the gifts of a homegrown prophet. This is our story, too, every time we refuse to change or doom new possibilities to fail.
Once I joined our hired man Layton for a beer. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. He talked about visiting with my sisters and brother that week, how he enjoyed them. Then he came to me. “And you,” he said, “you’re all right, too, even if you are educated.” We mattered too much to each other for me to resent his bias or for him to resent my education. But too often differences lead to festering resentments and demonizing those who aren’t us.
A doctor commented about certainty in our small Christian community. “Certainty can kill a patient,” he says. “I teach medical students to stay curious, look further, keep probing for diagnosis and cure. It’s so easy to miss clues.”
“The opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty,” theologian Bernard Lonergan writes. Doubt implies questioning, challenging, actively engaging a person or a thought. But certainty dismisses the need for further search and for living with questions.
- What is valuable about doubt and dangerous about certainty in your experience?