Commentary on the Gospel of
Outliers
Today, we have the shortest gospel reading of the entire year, but one that speaks volumes about who we are! We all long to be special and extraordinary but cannot risk our securities and step beyond ourselves; and for the same reason, we simply cannot bear someone else doing so! Thus, we love to normalize everything and everyone around us, so as to feel good about ourselves. In other words, we hate outliers and cut them to size. A line from the movie Three Idiots captures this dynamic: “When our friends fail, we feel bad; when they succeed, we feel worse.” Jesus himself reminded his people that “no prophet is honoured among his own people.” No wonder the relatives of Jesus could not bear his growing uniqueness and popularity and, hence, had to label him “out of mind.” How do we treat the outliers in our families, religious communities, our little worlds?
