Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Mark 6:3 states:

Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 

We should be EXTREMELY familiar with this kind of reaction, since we all do it so often we lose track. We take for granted the blessings given us and begin to belittle or demean them. Sometimes we do it out of boredom or routine (such as when the people in the desert bemoaned the quail and manna in the desert as described in Numbers 11:4-6). Sometimes we do it out of jealousy or envy, and sometimes, like in today's reading, we just don't give credit to those around us.

More often than not, we do this out of ignorance or a lack of comparison.Christ had already been rejected once in Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30, p1316), and even his family wasn't so sure about him (Mark 3:20-21, pp1334-35). When you think about it, what would you do when a person purports to be the answer to thousands of years of prophecy? Our natural impulses run toward a healthy dose of skepticism, so we should probably expect the same to a people that didn't have the benefit of hindsight like we do.

This message is far more important to us today, because we have absolutely no reason to take God for granted. In this day and time in America, the only true impediment between us and the worship of God are barriers of our own choosing--we're too lazy, busy, stupid, etc. to take the time to worship. We can't be bothered to go to church on Sunday, the Bible is too hard to read and not relevant for a 21st Century world and every other poor and pathetic excuse that can be uttered. 

The easiest thing to do with anything is take it for granted. We do it with our spouses and families quite often (at least I do), we look at our blessings as being due to us and not enough to boot and we view worship as something to be done on our schedule and not the Lord's. This is what happens when we become so spoiled that not only do we have no true reasons keeping us from worship, we actively erect barriers where none exist. More than anything else in the modern world, we've become so jaded with our blessings that we've convinced ourselves that we did it without God, which is one reason why we begin each of our services with Confession and Absolution--to confess the sin of pride.

That's the real meaning behind "familiarity breeds contempt" (which, by the way, is attributed to Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor")--we've become so accustomed to God that at some point we resent him. The people of Nazareth didn't have the benefit of 2,000 years of knowledge, so they could be excused for simply not knowing about Jesus, but we don't have that excuse. Our job is to NEVER take God or his blessings for granted, and to attempt to spread this message as far and wide as we can.

Scott