Mark 6:1-6
July 5, 2015
Jesus left that place and
came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many
who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What
is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done
by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and
brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here
with us?” And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without
honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own
house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except
that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.
I don’t know what Jesus expected. He went back to his hometown and
began to preach, and they tuned him out. Of course they did. What did he
expect?
Up until now, he has been spending a lot of time on the north shore of
the Sea of Galilee, on the boundary between Jews and Gentiles. The village of
Capernaum has been his home base as he goes about his work. Jesus teaches in
the synagogues and preaches to the open-air crowds. He throws out the demons
and gives bread to the multitudes. He is a busy guy.
Back and forth, he goes across the sea. He touches down in a Gentile
graveyard and straightens out a crazy man while getting rid of a lot of unclean
pigs. Then he gets back in the boat and lands in Capernaum. A bleeding woman is
healed and a little girl is raised from the dead. Jesus is making a name for
himself. Everywhere he goes, life is restored, faith is nourished, hope comes
alive.
… everywhere except his home town. They know you in your home town.
They remember you.
Whenever I visit my hometown church in upstate New York, I am
disqualified before I even open my mouth. Everybody remembers the kid who
became a preacher. There’s the lady who had a spat with my mother at the last
Women’s Association dinner. There’s the retired usher who was there when I made
a paper airplane out of a worship bulletin and accidentally threw it out of the
balcony. There’s the Sunday School teacher who still can’t figure out what God
did to my heart.
Just last Sunday, I went to a graduation party for a classmate’s kid,
and there was my pretty prom date. We sat at a picnic table and talked, and then
she said in a low voice, “I still can’t believe you are a minister.”
Familiarity breeds dismissal. They know you; therefore they don’t have to
listen to you.
If you are a preacher, you don’t even have to go home to experience
that phenomenon. Just stay in the same church for twenty-five years. Somebody will
say, “Sorry I’m going to miss the next forty-nine Sundays, but I know you will
be here whenever I drift back.” Familiarity. Same old, some old.
When Will Willimon was the chaplain at Duke University Chapel, he says
the phone rang at lunchtime one day. Nobody else was around, so he answered it.
A voice said, “Who is preaching this week?” Will cleared this throat and said, “The
Rev. Dr. William H. Willimon, dean of the chapel.”
The woman said, “Is that the short, fat man with the high squeaky
voice?” No, he said, that’s the other guy. Nothing special. Same old thing. He’s here every week, so you don’t
have to come.
Jesus goes home to the hilltop city of Nazareth. His family is still living
in that town. He goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, as was his custom. He
opens the scroll and begins to speak. The crowd murmurs, “Ah, Jesus. We know Jesus.
We know his four younger brothers. His sisters are sitting up in the balcony
with their mom.” He’s the same woodcutter’s kid who left here a few years ago. Sure,
he’s done a lot of things. He has made a name for himself. We have low
expectations. Nothing good ever comes from Nazareth. Isn’t that what they say?
… Except that this time, he’s pretty good. No, actually he’s better than that, he’s
really good. And he doesn’t use footnotes like the rabbi. He tells it straight.
There is an uncommon depth to his message. He’s not stealing little rinky-dinky
stories out of Reader’s Digest. He certainly isn’t telling any jokes. No, there
is substance and significance to his instruction. His words are drenched in insight.
Pretty soon, they are saying, “Isn’t this Jesus, the neighbor kid who
grew up down the street? What is this wisdom given to him from heaven? Where
did he get all of this?”
And because of that, they really took offense at him. The reason
for the refusal was once described by my preaching professor Fred Craddock.
Fred said, “There are two kinds of sermons that nobody was to hear: bad sermons
and good sermons.”
What he means by that is, within each of us, there is the desire to
push God away. To keep God at arm’s length … or further. We know what God wants
to say to us, but we don’t want to hear it. We have a deep hunger that can be
satisfied only by the healing love and abundant mercy of God, but we are really
not sure we are ready for it. And we will come up with any reason to keep God
away and disqualify all God’s messengers. It is the human predicament.
A man I knew was listening to a graduate student pour out his broken
heart. The tough story was told in tears and confession. He had gotten to the
end of his tale of woe, and the older man said, “Tony, I hold all this weight
that you have unburdened. Why don’t we pray? Let’s give it to God.” Tony
nodded, they both bowed their heads. My friend put his hands on Tony’s
shoulders and began to pray. Suddenly Tony sprang up and said, “I’m not ready
for this yet,” and ran away.
Imagine if that was Jesus, and not merely one of his messengers. Imagine
if he came to you, spoke with you, asked you, “What is the deepest desire of
your heart?” And he invited you to this communion table and said, “I’m going to
break my own body and put it in your hands. I’m offering you the cup so you can
take my life into your life.” Would you do it? Or would you push him away?
In this brief story, Mark repeats what other New Testament writers have
said about God’s mission in Jesus Christ. The gospel of John says it most
directly: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (1:11). John
doesn’t specify if he means the hometown congregation in Nazareth or the
church full of Gentiles in his own time.
There is no need to specify, for there is something profoundly within
us that pushes away the presence and power of God. We can gather any Sunday to
draw near to the very thing that could heal us and fill us with peace and
holiness, but in every person there is the all-too-human tendency to skip out and
go for brunch, or go for a boat ride, or do anything we possibly can to avoid
the presence and power that can make us well.
Mark says, “Jesus couldn’t do any deeds of power in Nazareth.” It wasn’t
merely because he was the home town boy back for a visit. It wasn’t merely
because he stunned them by speaking with the clarity and precision of grace. He
couldn’t do any deeds of power because they were humanly anxious about him
getting too close. And they didn’t have the courage to trust him, to listen to
him, because that would mean they would be changed.
Anybody
here want to be changed? Or are you content to stay the way you are? That’s a
good question to ask of synagogue dwellers like the likes of us. We show up at
the same time every week. We sit in the same pews, we talk to the same people.
We like to sing the same songs and grumble if one of them is new. We expect to
have our opinions confirmed and our habits reinforced. We hear the same old preacher,
say the same greeting at the back door. Faith goes on autopilot. Hearts are
slowly coated with Teflon, ready to deflect any act of God.
But
what if it happened? What if Jesus got through to any of us? What if we were
awakened or interrupted? What if we were shaken or disrupted? What if the
living word of Christ cracked through our defenses, and we suddenly perceived
the immensity of God’s grace? Could we stay the way we are – or would God do something
astounding within us, among us, and beyond us?
Tell me: does
God-in-Christ have the power to change us – or are we going to squelch it? I guess it depends on what we do with what we hear.
Did you hear what happened in Charleston, South
Carolina, after Dylann Roof shot up the A.M.E. church and killed nine people?
After he was arrested and arraigned on charges, the authorities brought him
before the families of the victims. They were invited to say whatever they
wanted to say.
The daughter of Ethel Lance looked him in the
eye and said, “I just want everybody to know I forgive you. You took something
very precious away from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never be
able to hold her again but I forgive you. You hurt me, you hurt a lot of
people, but God forgive(s) you, and I forgive you.”
The husband of Myra Thompson spoke. “I forgive
you, and my family forgives you, but we would like you to take this opportunity
to repent. Give your life to the one who matters the most, Christ, so he can
change it.”
The granddaughter of the Rev. Daniel Simmons
said, “Although my grandfather died at the hands of hate, this is proof … that
hate won’t win.” Hate won’t win.
The
sister of the Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor said, “I’m very angry… but one
thing my sister taught me is that we are the family that love built. We have no
room for hate so we have to forgive. I pray God on your soul… May God bless
you.”[1]
It was astounding. The
world was stunned. Where these people get all of this?
They must have been
listening to Jesus.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1]
“Charleston Church Shootings: What victims of church shooting said to Dylann
Roof,” 19 June 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33185848
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment