My mother used to say to me, “If you don’t toot your own horn, nobody else will!” That might have been her interpretation of the saying not to put your light under a basket. Forgive me but isn’t that just like a mother? “Here is my son, the greatest son on earth
And this is a very common approach to life. We are concerned about our value and importance, because otherwise, we will be lost in the mad rush to career advancement. We will feel anonymous, worse still, unloved and uncared about. In our society self promotion is expected. We prepare extensive résumés to buttress our applications for jobs. In these we list our education, our work experience and our goals. These are our credentials. Without this, landing a job somewhere other than at Wal-Mart or MacDonald’s is impossible. We also can use credentials to support our claims of authority in discussions. In effect we are saying listen to me because I studied at a prestigious university, earned a valuable degree and worked in a well known institution or corporation so listen to me because when you listen to me you are listening to my credentials too. What I say has validity because my credentials give me credibility.
In more traditional societies going back all the way to Jesus’ time and even beyond, credentials could be important, but pedigree was still more important. Who was your father [or mother in a matrilineal society], what’s your clan, tribe, confederation? Anthropologists will give us extensive and detailed analysis of this reality. The end result is: I am important, I am somebody because I come from an important family. Connected to where you come from genealogically speaking is who you know. Take note of me because I know important people, people who will either impress you, or scare you, as the case may be. And of course the Psalms early on warned against this societal reality: “Put no trust in the powerful, or in any mortals, for they cannot help you.” (Ps 146) But we still do this.
This morning’s gospel throws this approach into question. The opening statement about the light on the table is connected to the warning that all things will come to light. When the true light of reality shines on us, credentials and pedigrees are
wiped away and we are left exposed. As the next phrase points out, those who have will get more, and those who have little, even that will be taken away. Credentials and family connections will lose their potency and we will be standing alone if that is what we relied on. Those who have something greater to rely on will find even greater strength when exposed to the light. And what is that something greater? In the next scene, Jesus’ mother and brothers came to where he was teaching and demanded special recognition because of family connections. Yet, he did not give them special recognition. Rather, he took that concept and placed it on another type of connection, namely: “People who hear God’s word and do it.” He was not saying that his mother and brothers did not hear God’s word and did not do it, but rather, to make the point for everyone to hear, he was saying that doing the word of God needs to be elevated in importance to the same level as that of family connections.
The Apostles in the boat face the same problem. They are apostles and disciples, and yet that did not save them from the fear of being lost in a storm at sea [or in the storms of life]. Jesus was asleep in the boat and seemingly unconcerned about the danger at hand, they woke him to get him involved. He acts but then says, they have little faith. In effect he is saying: I am always involved, but it is only through your faith that it is activated. I will not always be here in person to calm the storms of life, but in faith know that I am with you through the storms of life.
Jesus may well have had Ezekiel in mind when he made his comment about doing the word of God. “So my people crowd in to hear what you have to say but they don’t do what you tell them to do.” [33:31] Its not enough to hear the word of God, you have to do it too. Its all too easy to be lured away by societal pressures, or words that seem to sound better, as St. Paul discovered in dealing with the Galatians [1:6] “In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you.” So this morning we are being reminded to keep the true goal in mind and not to be fooled into thinking Mother knows best, even if her heart is in the right place. Let it be Gabriel’s horn, not our own, that we blow.
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