Sermon: What’s In Your Heart?
February 9th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: Mark 6:1-29, Psalm 139
Jesus had a hometown! We don’t usually think of him having a ‘hometown’ –we think of him as the one who had no place to lay his head. But he is called Jesus of Nazareth, because that was his hometown – Nazareth, in Galilee. It was a small town, 70 miles north of Jerusalem, 30 miles from the town of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee – an out-of-the-way hill-billy town. Archeologists guess the population of Nazareth was anywhere from 400 to perhaps 1000 people.
Everyone Amazed!
At this point in his ministry, wherever Jesus goes people seem to gather. They are captivated by his teaching, awed by his healing power. They’re taking hold of hope and coming to him in faith. They are amazed. As we have been reading in Mark’s Gospel from the beginning of the year, we have been amazed by his discernment of each person’s needs, amazed by his attention to the details of a healed man’s mat, amazed by the stories he tells that cut to the heart – stories of seeds, stories of sons – amazed by the power of his touch and by the hope that he offers. Everyone is amazed, crowds are gathering, people are pressing.
Then Jesus stops by his hometown. And people there are amazed, too. But something happens between verse 2 to 3. I like the way Eugene Peterson words it in the Message version (printed on the back of the bulletin): He [Jesus] made a real hit, impressing everyone. ‘We had no idea he was this good!’ they said. ‘How did he get so wise all of a sudden, get such ability?’ … But in the next breath they were cutting him down. And before you know it, the people of his hometown are no longer amazed, they are offended! What went wrong, what’s going on in their hearts and minds?
Who does he think he is?
The questions they ask give us a few clues. After they marvel at his wisdom and amazing abilities, they ask, “Isn’t this the carpenter?” They know who a carpenter is and how a carpenter should act. Being a carpenter wasn’t a highly educated job; it was blue-collar manual labor. There was no room for upward mobility in their society, or even lateral mobility: born a carpenter, always a carpenter. So when Jesus demonstrates wisdom beyond his upbringing, their preconceived notions are threatened.
Perhaps you can recall people in your lifetime pointing to someone and accusing them of getting too big for their britches, or of acting all high and mighty. It is one of the ways in our society continues to sideline blacks and more recent immigrants, by giving the message that they need to just stay in their place, their lowly place, regardless of the wisdom, abilities and important truths they have to offer. “Isn’t this the carpenter?”
Then they say, “Isn’t this Mary’s son?” Almost everywhere in the biblical record, people are identified by their father. Mark has introduced us to: John the son of Zechariah; James and John, sons of Zebedee; Levi, son of Alphaeus. But here the people call Jesus ‘Mary’s son’. I wonder if it’s a way of throwing shade, of hinting at the rumors that surrounded Jesus’ birth – Mary, pregnant before her wedding day. Who was his dad really? In the social circles of Nazareth the gossip followed Jesus. He would always be tainted in the eyes of his neighbors.
Again, isn’t this something that persists still today? Especially in small towns. A problem in the family is used to justify shunning and excluding them. A person never allowed to live down an old mistake. Young people who can’t wait to get-the-heck-out-of-Dodge when they turn 18 because the community still blames them or teases them about circumstances that were beyond their control. “Isn’t this Mary’s son?” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)
Then they add, “Isn’t this the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here?” In Mark 3, we’re told of an incident in which Mary and Jesus’ brothers shows up in Capernaum to take charge of Jesus because they think he has lost his mind. And don’t you know that that would have been the talk of the town in Nazareth! Splashed across the evening news.
Another undertone of mentioning Jesus’ siblings could have been that there were expectations of the eldest son. Mary seems to be a widow at this point, in which case Jesus would have been expected to be the one taking charge of his mother and of the family. Instead he has gone off. He’s traveling here and there, leaving his siblings with all the responsibilities. Jesus wasn’t meeting the expectations of how the first-born son should behave.
“Who does he think he is?” The Message version says, “They tripped over what little they knew about him and fell, sprawling. And they never got any further.” Jesus is familiar to an extent, and they can’t get beyond that. They are offended by Jesus not fitting the mold of their preconceived notions. They need to put Jesus in his place: you may be famous out there, but we know you here and you can’t fool us.
Jesus Amazed!
Now it’s Jesus’ turn to be amazed. He is amazed at their lack of faith, their unbelief! Their inability to see beyond what they think they know. As a result, Jesus could not do any miracles there. That is pretty amazing given the fact that the simple touch of his clothing healed a woman, and he has just restored life to a little girl who was dead! Mark clarifies that it was not a problem with Jesus’ ability – he still laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.
So what was the problem? In some instances of healing Jesus points to a person’s faith as being involved. “Your faith has healed you,” he said to the woman who touched him. The paralyzed man on that mat is forgiven and healed when Jesus sees the faith of the friends. Yet in other instances faith isn’t mentioned at all. Jesus restores sight to a blind man and faith doesn’t come up. Another man, who doesn’t even ask, is set free of a legion of evil spirits. When the disciples struggle to heal a young boy, Jesus tells them that it only takes faith as small as a mustard seed. So the problem in Nazareth might not be the amount of faith, but it could be their resistance to faith, their rejection of Jesus himself.
If you refuse to be open to the miraculous, you are unlikely to experience it. If you are not looking for God-signs, you probably won’t see them, even if they are there. In a commentary I read this week it said, “Those who expect nothing from Jesus are not disappointed.” (Clifton Black, workingpreacher.org)
A Nazareth World
It has made we think that perhaps we are living in a Nazareth world – a nation that is characterized by increasing unbelief. In some places there is actual resistance, but more broadly there just seems to be a general disinterest in Jesus. For many centuries, the center of Christian faith was in Europe, with the addition of North America in the 19th century. One hundred years ago 80% of all Christians lived in Europe or North America. However, in those 100 years since, there has been a dramatic shift so that the center of gravity of the Christian faith has now moved to the global south, to Africa and Asia, while the global north has become increasingly secular and non-religious. Today, 1 in every 4 Christians is in Africa, and more Christians are in church on any given Sunday in China than in the US. (Wes Granberg-Michaelson, Future Faith, quoted in Christ in Crisis by Jim Wallis)
The organizations of Voice of the Martyrs and Open Doors regularly share stories of miracles taking place in those Asian and African nations – miracles of healing, miracles of protection. Yet we rarely hear about miracles among Western believers anymore. I wonder, is it that we, too, lack the faith for God to work powerfully among us? Are our communities so familiar with who we think Jesus is, that we too resist his new work among us? Are we so distracted, with short attention spans, a demanding pace of life and upside-down priorities, that we don’t stop long enough to truly listen? In what ways do we reject or resist Jesus? How are we encouraging or inhibiting God’s work in our lives, our homes, our community, our world? Are we stumbling over the real, true, Jesus?
As we start a series of Sunday scripture readings in which Jesus is highlighting problems with the heart and warning the people around him, I would encourage that our first response to this story should be to stop and seriously ask ourselves those questions.
Sent Out
Then, having examined our hearts and apologized to Jesus for any ways in which we might be resisting him and his radical message of love and of faith, I want to suggest that our next step is found in the next portion of our reading for this morning. Jesus calls to him the ones who have chosen to trust him, who have put their faith in him, who have committed to following him. Jesus sends them out with the message of good news and the authority and power to deal with evil opposition. Verses 12-13 in the Message tell us: Then they were on the road. They preached with joyful urgency that life can be radically different; right and left they sent the demons packing; they brought wellness to the sick, anointing their bodies, healing their spirits.
On Rick Steve’s travel show he often quotes Mark Twain, saying, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” Jesus prescribes some travel for his disciples. He sends them out in pairs to take new paths, to meet strangers, to accept the hospitality of others, to be vulnerable and dependent. For some of us Jesus’ commission may send us out to new places – new nations, new cities and towns. For others of us it may not require as dramatic an uprooting, but may simply be a call to step off your beaten path – to take a different way to work, to try out a new place to eat or shop, to look up, alert for those around you, those who might be traveling through your community.
When Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, there were three people who were traveling along the road – a road that was probably familiar to each of them. Yet only one, the one that Jesus commends, took the time to step off the beaten track to engage with the person in need. The neighbor was not the one in his path, but the one who stepped aside to make the other his neighbor.
The world around us is in need of healing. The world around us is in need of people who will stand up against evil. The world around us is in need of Jesus’ love and acceptance. But be warned, the world doesn’t greet its prophets or pilgrims warmly or welcome them with wonder. More often there is criticism, resistance and rejection. Jesus gives guidance for those times: If you’re not welcomed, not listened to, quietly withdraw. Don’t make a scene. Shrug your shoulders and be on your way.
When the gospel is rejected in one place, we are to shake off the dust and move on. However, this does not mean we have failed or that there is no hope, for there is no stopping the Good News, and there is no telling how it will break through. There in that offended, rejecting Nazareth town was Jesus’ brother James. We know that James will go on to have a powerful encounter with the risen Christ. James will believe and will become the leader of the church in Jerusalem.
So our task is three-fold. First, to take the time to honestly and humbly examine ourselves and ask Jesus to reveal to us the ways in which we might be rejecting and resisting God’s activity in our lives. Second, to go when Jesus sends us out – whether it is to something new or just a step or two off your usual path. And lastly, to believe; to trust in Jesus; to trust that God’s power and God’s grace is greater than our failures and shortcomings. Truly believe that Jesus came to save you, that he has triumphed over evil, and will, one day, set all things right.
Closing Song: “Grace Greater Than Our Sins” # 472
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