GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION: THE DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF BIAS

READINGS: PRESENTATION OF THE LORD

The gospel of this 4th Sunday in Ordinary Times, Year C, tells the story about the rejection of Jesus by His own people; a rejection that deprived the whole town from experiencing the healing powers of Jesus Christ. The reason for this rejection was simply because of prejudice and bias. While in town, He taught them with power, insight, and authority, using stories from everyday life to engage the heart and minds of His listeners. One would have thought that his people would have come to believe in Him. But that was not the case. Rather, they found His wisdom, power, and vision offensive, and wanted to throw Him off the cliff. 

So, what was the reason for this rejection? My friends, He was rejected because the cultural biases and beliefs of His people prevented them from seeing the truth about Him. He was “Guilty by Association”. Judging from His background, they believed He couldn’t be that good. His was not from a leading religious family, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son”, and “Isn’t his mother, Mary?”, they asked? On the other hand, they thought of His family as commoners, “Are his brothers and sisters not here with us”? Sadly, clouded by this bias, they could not appreciate the one factor that mattered most about Jesus—that he was the Son of God. They couldn’t see this side of His identity all because of their prejudice. So, they treated Him as an upstart who has risen above expectations, and to level Him off and put Him where He belongs, they despised Him and even wanted to kill him. 

What is so sad about this situation is that this same dynamic—cynicism, prejudice, and bias—is very much alive in our society, today. Many a time people judge, dismiss, and write others off because of their race, color, creed, ethnicity, or gender. We can see this in play when color, race, zip code, and gender inhibit and prohibit certain groups of people from opportunities for development, upward mobility, and growth. It can be seen when people refuse to see the wealth of treasure that others can bring to our collective survival as a nation; when systemic conditions make it possible to distort, dislodge, and even dismiss evidences in the protection of some members of the society against others; when people think that they are superior to others and that other people’s growth is, somehow, a threat to their own identity and established mechanisms of control. My friends, when confronted with situations like these, remember who you are, and do not allow others to cause you to lose sense of who God has made and called you to be. Christ did not allow his people to do that to Him, and so should we not.

The truth is that biases and prejudice blind people to the gifts, talents, and skills that others can bring to the betterment of a nation. When we despise others, even before we come to know them, just because of their race and ethnicity, our behavior speaks more about who we are rather than who they are. It tells the story of a begrudgingly small heart. Therefore, we should never let anyone make us feel less than who God has made us to be. While people may refuse to see the beauty in us, because of their biases and prejudice, we cannot satisfy this error by not seeing our own beauty. The one way to disappoint your adversary is to succeed. This is exactly what Christ did and what He is inviting us to do. As St. Paul says, “I am who I am by the grace of God”.