Note: On Saturdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Many of you probably did the same things I did during the summer between sixth and seventh grade: took part in the library’s summer reading program; went swimming; did some neighborhood babysitting.
However, I doubt you spent a chunk of every day worrying
about what would happen at your new school. Axtell Park, the junior high I was entering, was said to be the worst of the four in my hometown. Kids put LSD into unsuspecting classmates’ oranges. Kids beat up teachers. The stories seemed all too believable when there was a break-in at the school office that summer, strewing papers and office furniture everywhere.
But Axtell Park it would be. There wasn’t the money or inclination to send me to Catholic school, and the public school boundaries were set in stone.
In my three years at Axtell Park, I never saw a teacher beat up, and no one ever put LSD or any other drug, not even an aspirin, into my lunch. Some of my classmates dropped out the second they could, after eighth grade, but most of us went on to do all right in life as moms, dads, nurses, truck drivers, musicians, fire fighters, ministers, engineers, you name it. At least one currently serves in the State Legislature.
It turned out a lot of good things came out of Axtell Park. I did all that worrying for nothing. I just had to set aside the rumors and gossip.
In the same way, the people of Jesus’s time found themselves better served if they could set aside that belief that no prophet arises from Galilee and that no good thing could come out of Nazareth. Good and God, Jesus taught us, can be found anywhere.
