There
is nothing more blinding than prejudice. One of the most common prejudices
is against what is local and familiar. There is a story told of a
Filipino Senator who was in a Five-Star London Hotel. He asked for
a bottle of "the best rum you have got." The waiter came
back with a bottle of Filipino Rum. The Senator shouted at him and
said, "I told you to get me the best - not just local stuff that
you buy at any store!" The waiter held his ground. "Sir,
you asked for the best rum and this IS the best we can get!"
Prejudice is a great block to truth.
There
is another story about a traveling circus that was on the outskirts
of a village. One evening a fire broke out and there was a danger
that the fire would spread across the fields of dry stubble to burn
the village itself. The circus manager looked for someone to send
to warn the villagers. The only person he could find was the circus
clown who was already made-up for his act.
The
clown hurried to the village and begged the people to come to help
put out the fire at the circus and also to save themselves from the
holocaust. The people only laughed at him. They thought this was a
brilliant piece of advertising on the part of the management. The
more the clown tried to look serious and beg them to take him seriously
the more that they applauded and rolled around in laughter. The harder
he tried to tell them that it was no trick the more they laughed at
him. Finally the fire did reach the village and burnt it to the ground.
Basically, the reason they could not hear the message was that they
looked at the man as a clown and this made it impossible for them
to hear the truth of what he was saying.
In
the story we read in today's Gospel we encounter Jesus probably feeling
very like the waiter trying to convince the Senator or the clown tying
to con vince the villagers. He has come to Nazareth, his own town,
to bring them the good news and the healing that he had brought to
the other towns of Galilee. But the message never got a chance. The
people rejected the messenger. He was telling them what he told others:
the need to change, to be converted, if they wanted to enjoy the fruits
of the Kingdom of God. But they did not want to hear that kind of
message. So they diverted from it by focusing on his person. They
knew all about him! Who did he think he was anyway? After all, was
he not just one of themselves? They knew the carpenter shop that he
had worked in, they knew his mother and his relatives. There was nothing
that he could teach them. They were frozen in prejudice and there
was no way in which his message could melt the ice in their hearts.
One
thing that prayer should be doing in our lives is opening our hearts
to reality, to truth. To do this it must be unmasking our illusions
and melting our prejudices. Unfortunately much of our word-y prayer
is directed to reinforcing our make believe world. Once we believe
that we know what we want from God, we try to phrase it nicely for
him and to keep on demanding it. This process becomes a way of blocking
us from hearing what God might like to say. We might be like the man
who prayed for a yellow flower. He got a thorny cactus which he threw
out the window. While he ranted about God's failure to answer him
the cactus was blooming into a yellow flower outside. If we are afraid
of what he may have to say - as the people of Nazareth were afraid
of the challenge to change their attitudes that Jesus was making to
them - we keep him and his demands at a distance.
On
the other hand, the wisdom of the East has always held that one cannot
continue in silence and continue also in prejudice, untruth and in
anything that is inauthentic. If one is willing to meditate, to sit
for 20 to 30 minutes morning and evening in silence, reciting a prayer
word and in this way take the focus of attention off oneself, and
let down one's defenses, the spirit of truth will speak from the depths
of our hearts and will slowly but surely melt the ice of prejudice
that freezes us against truth on all levels.
