Matthew 13:53
When Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there. Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him.
But Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor.”
I am consistently struck by the biblical record of the population in general and their responses to God’s anointed ones. Could we really be so blind even today?
Prophet blindness is a common ailment in the human gene pool. We focus on the wrong things. We meet someone and we begin to calculate their value. Sense of humor, +3… pleasantness of speech… -1, garlic breath -4, crazy eyes, -1.
We saw a funny episode of some show where the characters were discussing the “crazy” eyes of a girl one of them was interested in. The punchline was that they were right and the girl was crazy. The fact is though, probably more often our superficial litmus tests fall far short of “judging rightly” (see John 5:30, 8:16, and Galatians 2:6). Imagine Peter coming off the boat, smelling of fish and body odor. Probably dirty, and somewhat ogreish in appearance, as so many dramas often portray him. Maybe he was even missing a few teeth? Maybe they were rotting? Maybe he had a big scar on his face, or a cleft lip? Maybe he spoke like an uneducated know nothing, or maybe he sounded very intelligent… either way I don’t think it mattered much to Jesus. In fact, I’m not sure it mattered at all.
In one of their more obscure pieces I believe one way to interpret the poetic Jars of Clay song “Art In Me” is that it describes the story that unfolds as any two people get to know each other. Our history, their history, our quirks, their quirks, their book, our book…:
“Art In Me”
Images on the sidewalk speak of dream’s decent
Washed away by storms to graves of cynical lament
Dirty canvases to call my own
Protest limericks carved by the old pay phone
In your picture book I’m trying hard to see
Turning endless pages of this tragedy
Sculpting every move you compose a symphony
You plead to everyone, “see the art in me”
Broken stained-glass windows, the fragments ramble on
Tales of broken souls, an eternity’s been won
As critics scorn the thoughts and works of mortal man
My eyes are drawn to you in awe once again
In your picture book I’m trying hard to see
Turning endless pages of this tragedy
Sculpting every move you compose a symphony
You plead to everyone, “see the art in me”
I pray that we all would learn to “see the art” in others. I think when we do, we see what God sees, and if we see what God sees we are looking with the eyes of Christ Himself. We may not do this perfectly, we may not do it often, but let’s do it more. We all see the world through our own perspectives but only God’s is perfect. Please Lord help us do this more.
Hi! Thanks for your answer… We’ve talked about judging before. The funny thing about that word is it goes two ways. For instance, my post was specifically pointing out that we need to look closely enough to “see the art” in people. That requires judging, but not looking for bad, looking for the good. So I think we’re saying the same thing, but I don’t tend to assume that all judging is bad. We need to judge, we do it all the time, we just should not condemn people. That’s clearly not our job.
I think only when we resist the temptation to judge another, and can give them the benefit of the doubt that they are working for good do we really give them the chance to show who they are. When we jump to conclusions we define who they are from our own experiences, instead of theirs. We need to see that God created people differently, and that will not be how we think they should all be, so appreciating what they have to offer verses what we do enables us to work together and support each other.