Mk. 6: 1-6
One of the exciting courses that we had in our theological programme was the Indian Church History. We came across the legacy of so many missionaries starting from St. Thomas in A.D. 52. We were inspired by the daring stories of various missionary expeditions. The heroic and indomitable spirit of missionaries, shedding their sweat and blood to spread the seeds of the gospel… One of the significant contributions to the Indian Church was given by a group of Baptist missionaries called Serampore Trio, namely Joshua Marshman, William Carey, William Ward.
The life witness of William Carey deeply moved me. He was brought up in Paulerpury in middle England. He was an apprentice in a cobbler shop. There, he left the Anglican Church and joined the Baptist protestant church. His income was meagre, and he struggled to meet both ends of his life. He married Dorothy Plackett, and soon she gave birth to a girl child. Lamentably, the child died at the age of two. He had to undergo the experiences of extreme poverty. Anyhow, he had a great passion for the Word of God. He mastered Greek, Hebrew and Latin languages by studying Bible more profoundly.
Finally, he became a Baptist minister, and he wanted to explore the possibilities of overseas missions. Once during a meeting of the Baptist pastors, he proposed about these overseas missions. Immediately he was interrupted by a senior minister and told: “Young man, sit down! You are an enthusiast. When God pleases to convert the heathen, he’ll do it without consulting you or me.” Anyway, Carey was not ready to give up his passion for missions to fulfil the missionary mandate of Jesus to proclaim his Good News to the end of the world. He started a missionary society in 1972 with a motto: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!”
Within a year, Carey and his family headed to India. The most challenging days of his life began in the unknown land. His early years were miserable. His missionary companion John Thomas left the mission due to varied difficulties. Even in these demanding and challenging circumstances, he was not ready to give up his mission. He tried to learn Bengali and tried to translate Bible into Bengali, and preached in small gatherings. His troublesome days were not yet over. He was contracted malaria. When he survived the danger of death, he lost his five-year-old son Peter due to dysentery. All these personal tragedies were too much for his wife Dorothy to accept. Her mental health rapidly deteriorated, and she was fully confined to the room. He wrote about these strenuous days like this: “This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me,” and he added further: “But I rejoice that I am here notwithstanding, and God is here.”
In October 1799, he was invited to Serampore near Calcutta and met other two members of the future trio, namely William Ward, a printer, and Joshua Marshman and his wife Hanna; both were teachers. There he started his career as a teacher, and later, he began teaching at Fort College in Calcutta.In 1800 he published the Bengali translation of the New Testament. In three decades, Carey and his team together translated the entire Bible into all the major languages of India, such as Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Oriya, Assamese, and Sanskrit and parts of 209 other languages and dialects…
A home is always a place of nostalgic feelings for all of us because this is the place where you can be your true self. Similarly, one’s the home town, or native village is also dear to our hearts. Who live far from their home, friends, etc., know what it means by homecoming? We long for that particular day to immerse ourselves in the circle of our dear ones, where you feel perfect acceptance. In any event, if our experience is contrary, then it could be a heart-breaking moment for all of us. Feelings of rejection from an intimate circle where we expect intimacy and acceptance can shatter our dreams and even the purpose of our lives.
In today’s gospel, we see Jesus passing through a similar experience. They were not ready to accept Jesus because they knew him as a carpenter, son of Mary, brother of James, Judas, Simon and Joses… They identified Jesus with his ordinary family background. A person from such an ordinary profession and middle-class social status, how can he perform such miracles? Hence they reject the person of Jesus and his teachings. They could not digest his teachings and the kingdom values preached by him. He could not help their unbelief. Even though he was aware of this rejection and he was not the first one to be rejected. It was the destiny of all the prophets who speaks the truth on behalf of God.
Their prejudice conditioned their faith in Jesus. They witnessed his miracles, heard about the profound wisdom contained in his teaching, yet neither they could believe in him nor appreciate and accept his teachings. Even Jesus could not help their unbelief. Lack of faith limited him from the great miracles and novel teachings he did in other villages and towns. We see in this passage how a collective bias was preventing the entire narratives of Jesus from experiencing him. None of us can be escaped from our prejudice because it acts as the basic building blocks in our act of understanding. All the same, we should have an openness towards our personal experience of the person or the event. We should not allow ourselves to coloured entirely by a group bias or individual bias.
In our life circumstances, we may arrive at conclusions or impressions on a person based on the prejudice created by someone else. As I said before, it may not be possible to escape from our first impressions. Once we establish our relationship or acquaintance, we should take a distance from our prejudice and analyse our first-hand experience with the person concerning and arrive at a conclusion.
We too might be controlled by our prejudice to accept the testimonies or the person themselves based on what they were in the past like those natives of Jesus,. We need to believe in the process of transformation a person can undergo and the act of becoming. As we continue our faith journey, let us seek God’s grace to integrate our prejudice as stepping stones in our act of understanding and the grace to accept those who dare to challenge us.
In his 41 years of service as a missionary, William Carey made an enormous contribution to the Church of India and the sector of modern education. His missionary journey was marked rejections…Yet, he was not ready to give up his mission…He expected great things from God and attempted great things for God like Christ…