In Sunday's gospel, after the crowd becomes enraged at the words Jesus speaks proclaiming himself as savior to them, they chase Jesus to a cliff in an effort to kill him. But the gospel ends saying that Jesus just walked right through them. When I was younger that part always confused me. If there were so many people around, how could Jesus just walk away with no one reacting? Surely somebody would have tried to stop or delay him. But the people are so wrapped up in themselves. They refuse to believe that the carpenter's son can be the Savior thinking, 'after all he is no better than we are.' They are upset that they have seen no healings, miracles or any proof like they have heard others have seen. Pride reared its ugly head. They put themselves before God and God's word. And in doing this, the chance to experience Jesus passed right through their lives unnoticed.
There is the message! We can get so hung up with our own life, our own needs, our own wants and desires. We can focus so much on the me in everything, and what I get out of it and how does it make me feel better and more satisfied that Jesus might pass right though our lives and we will never know it. The world is full of noise. Evil creates lots of it to make sure it is hard for us to hear God's voice or realize he is present. And society makes sure to tell us to concentrate always on ourselves because we deserve it. But God asks differently of us. God asks us to concentrate on others and in so doing, return the same to our selves. So we need to put the world, our pride, our ego, our self, the noise behind us, and always keep faith and God's ideals before us. Because if we do not,how will we ever know when Jesus passes by?
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