Hometown Dilemmas

In this past week’s Gospel, we are challenged by our hometowns.
Jesus began speaking in the synagogue, saying: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”  And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.  They also asked, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’” And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.  Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land.  It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.  Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”  When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury.  They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.  But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away. Lk 4:21-30

Hometown Dilemmas

What is it about our hometowns?  Are they supportive?   Do they tear us down?  Is it a place that welcomes us when we “fall” in life, or a place that pours gasoline on the fire?  I find that our hometowns are a combination of both.  On one hand, it is a place of “growing up,” a place that we find our initial identities in life.  On the other hand at times it represents the place of stagnate growth, or a place that holds us down from becoming all that we can be.  Our hometowns are a place of complex feelings and emotions.  Sports seem to be a great example of the hometown dilemmas.

Growing up in a town where you become successful in sports can be a great experience.  The support you get from family, friends, coaches, classmates, and community members is great in a youth or high school setting.  Yet that same support sometimes for some turns to jealousy and anger when and if you move on to the next level and you become the focus of another town, place, school, or organization.  Soon those cheers you heard from your peers and community in which you came, become grumblings of “I was better then,” or “I never got my chance.”  Even though that these voices are in the minority, they seem to ring the loudest and most often in our minds and hearts.  How many times do you hear athletes talk about doing things just to prove people wrong?  I have felt these feelings many times as an athlete, which usually always produced results, yet never felt comfortable or at peace in my soul.

Then there are the times when you aren’t the athlete anymore and you return to the town.  Who are you?  What do people know you as?  The identity crisis is crippling for some.  The feeling of becoming a failure and having being looked at as a “nobody” is something that is very painful for athletes returning to their hometowns after playing their final games.  This feeling was even taught in professional sports as to do what ever it takes to not “be that guy.”  I remember in spring training one year the head of the minor leagues came out and spoke to us, painting a picture to us the most threatening scenario that there was, “Don’t be that guy that has to go home to your hometown, walk into a dive bar, have a low-life from high school approach you and ask, ‘what are you doing here?’  Don’t be that guy…”  I wonder why there was a steroid issue.  It was a fear of coming home and losing your identity, your worth, your soul.

Yet here is Jesus entering into his hometown, knowing the outcome.  So what are we to make of this?  Are we supposed to avoid our hometowns?  Are we supposed to embrace our hometowns?  The only thing I can come away with is, wherever our hometown resides in our hearts, supportive or undermining, what I have found is that it isn’t our hometowns that are at war with us.  They never were and never have.  Without a context or “Someone” that is at the root of everything and everyone we meet and talk to, we will always feel the friction, the battle, the violence in our souls.

Maybe our hometowns are representing the battle within ourselves.  We want to feel loved and supported, and we want to feel worthy, important, and “successful.”  Sometimes our hometowns make us feel these things, sometimes we go away and look down on our hometowns because we think we are “better than” those in which we came from.  Yet this need to love and be loved, feel worthy in our own skin, will never be fulfilled in any town, whether we stay in our own town or move away to a different town.  Peace is never found on the outside.

“Can there be a greater evil than that of being ill at ease in our own house?  What hope can we have of finding rest outside of ourselves if we cannot be at rest within? ….Believe me, if we don’t obtain and have peace in our own house, we’ll not find it outside.  Let this war be ended. Through the blood He shed for us I ask those who have not begun to enter into themselves to do so; and those who have begun, not to let the war make them turn back.” St. Teresa of Avila

Wherever we end up, it is God’s will.  After much prayer and contemplation I have found myself today, 3 miles from where my parent’s house is.  My wife and I are starting a family in the same place I began the journey of my own life.  During my playing days coming back to my hometown gave me great anxiety and fear, all do to my insecurities and crisis of my own identity, yet peace came through tremendous grace.  God only knows where I will end up, but for now I am in great peace to be living in my hometown of Phoenixville.

This “war” of emotions and feelings, both externally and more so internally, reminds me of a great song by Tim McGraw, Drugs or Jesus.

Drugs or Jesus
Tim McGraw

In my home town
For anyone who sticks around
You’re either lost or you’re found
There’s not much in between
In my home town
Everything’s still black and white
It’s a long, long way from wrong to right
From Sunday morning to Saturday night

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We’re all looking for love and meaning in our lives
We follow the roads that lead us
To drugs or Jesus

My whole life
I’ve tried to run, I’ve tried to hide
From the stained glass windows in my mind
Refusing to let God’s light shine
Down on me
Down on me

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We’re all looking for love and meaning in our lives
There’s not much space between us
Drugs or Jesus

Everybody wants acceptance
We all just want some proof
Everyone’s just looking for the truth

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We’re all looking for love and meaning in our lives
We follow the roads that lead us
To drugs or Jesus, to drugs or Jesus

Oh, I need you Jesus
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah