GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 4TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 4 FEBRUARY 2026

Mark 6:1-6.  In the first five chapters of Mark’s gospel, Jesus has begun his public ministry throughout Galilee.  He has gathered twelve close disciples, taught them and the crowds with parables, performed exorcisms and healings, and gathered a growing fame.  Crowds were now following his teachings and healings, but he has also gathered pretty fierce opposition from religious authorities, who have decided that he must be silenced.  In today’s gospel, from the beginning of Chapter 6, Jesus and the disciples arrive in  Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown, and Jesus began to teach in the Nazareth synagogue where he and his family had worshipped since his boyhood.  Nazareth at the times was only a village and one might assume he would be received well.  However, here Jesus met with another kind of opposition from the people who knew him and his family well.  They dismissed his teaching.  Their familiarity with him and his family became a stumblingblock.  ‘Where does he get all this?  He is Joseph the worker’s son.  Now he comes here as a famous rabbi with his followers.  Who does he think he is?’  One can readily hear the sort of scorn they had for his teaching.  It is a sort of familiarity that breeds contempt, or at least a  refusal to trust and have faith.  The last verse of our reading says it all – ‘Jesus was amazed at their unbelief,’ their lack of trusting faith, unlike the other Galileans who had received his ministry so well.  Overfamiliarity had become an ‘offense’ to them (v. 3)  – the Greek word also means ‘stumbling block.’  Here is a warning to all of us who may have become so familiar with Jesus over the years.  Has our faith become mere habit, or is it fully alive?