Sunday Sermon 7/8/12

In today's gospel, Christ returns to His home of Nazareth and a number of profound questions are raised. The first is the nature of belief. Here the people who know Christ from his youth can not accept Him as a teacher or a miracle worker. There is more to it than just "familiarity breeds contempt." Christ is presented here as a working member of the community for years before His ministry. There is no agent the locals see for His specialness. They have no context for Him. He is fresh from great success among the Gerasens and with Jairus and still they can not believe in Him. And they are "scandalized." They are more than unbelieving, they are indignant.

More, this disbelief seems to restrict Christ. His influence over Nature seems limited by the faith of the people. As on the road to Emmaus, God seems to demand an interaction, a participation by us, before all things come together.

And Christ "wondered at their disbelief." This seems like surprise, a difficult notion if Christ is God. (He reacts similarly to the faith of the Centurion, the only other place in the gospel where this response is seen.) But Christ is man as well; it makes His eventual sacrifice meaningful only if He is.

We are fascinating. The scientific community announced this week the Higgs boson had been discovered. This finding is elemental to quantum physics and the world cheered the advance.

The famed physicist Richard Feynman said in 1967, "Nobody understands quantum theory."

Yet we believe.