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| Nazareth, photographed in 1870. |
Something happened in Nazareth that
day. We don't get the whole story in today's Gospel, which is the
conclusion of a very rich passage in Luke that begins with Jesus,
fresh from his victory over temptation in the desert, and filled with
the Holy Spirit, proclaiming in his hometown synagogue that “today,
in your hearing, the Scriptures are fulfilled.”
At first, his hearers were filled with
excitement. Jesus gave a marvelous homily; they were starstruck,
except for the fact that this was their own neighbor, someone who had
never outshone them before. But then there were reports of miracles
in other parts of Galilee... Surely, then, Nazareth would be home to
even greater wonders! Expectations were high. Nazareth was
practically beside itself with images of its own future glory,
outshining that of prosperous Capernaum (scene of so many cures). And
then Jesus drops this bombshell: “There were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was
cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” An uproar ensues, and then
mob action.
After a lifetime studying cultural
narratives, Rene Girard noticed something. Until the time of Christ,
in the historic narratives and myths, the self-defining stories that
people told about their tribe or culture, the mob was always right.
When a unanimous crowd rose up against a single offender, or a single
group of outcasts, nothing was more self-evident than the rightness
of their cause, and the enormous guilt of the nonconforming “other.”
It is only through the unfolding of the Gospel, and especially the
events that we will commemorate three weeks from now that the world
was introduced to the very peculiar notion that a mob action points
to the guilt, not of the object of their common wrath, but of the
unthinking, unanimous crowd.
There were already more than a few
hints of this in the various books of the Old Testament that give
voice to the victims of mob violence with protests of innocence that
are absent from the ancient myths. And in today's Gospel, Jesus is
guilty of nothing more than laying bare the self-aggrandizing
expectations of his fellow townsfolk.
And yet Jesus was not lynched that day
at Nazareth. Something happened to break the unanimity of the crowd,
without which the process of self-confirming victimization cannot
happen. I wondered today, in my meditation, just what it was that
allowed Jesus to “pass through the midst of them” and walk away
(for good). Then I saw it. He looked at the person nearest him, an
old neighbor who was almost choking with resentment at what he
considered Jesus' betrayal of his kin. Jesus looked at that neighbor.
He saw him. He “looked at him with love” and that look
managed to break down, in the one person, the hypnotic power of the
mob. The neighbor looked and suddenly saw Jesus, the Jesus he had
known for years, the Jesus he had watched growing up next to his own
children. He saw not a traitorous ingrate, but the boy and man he had
known. The blind, insane anger melted, and he slipped away. And Jesus
looked at the next person, and saw not the sputtering puppet of the
anonymous crowd, but the local potter. And the old potter found
himself being looked on and known deep down. And he shrugged off the
vise-grip of the mania and went back to his wheel.
Jesus “passed through the midst of
them” that day. One day, though, the anonymity and unanimity of the
mob would be complete, and there would be no simply way though. There
would be the death of a final victim of human rage, and it would be
he himself, taking away the sins of the world. From then on, Girard noted, wherever
the Gospel would penetrate, the victim mechanism would begin to lurch
out of alignment until it ceased functioning entirely.
- - - -
Reflect: What factors leave me open to "possession" by a mob mentality, allowing some other person, group or ideology to define values or judge persons and events for me? During Lent, how can I "be transformed by the renewal of the mind" to "have the mind of Christ" in those areas of life that cause me the most anxiety?
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