PENTECOST 7

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: PENTECOST 7
PROPER: 9B
ST. JOHN’S CHURCH
DATE: JULY 6,1997

TEXT: Mark 6:1-6 - 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.”

ISSUE: The church today, as well as the country which was founded upon religious principles, needs to avoid a familiarity and casual attitudes that keeps us from intimate awareness of the mighty acts of God in Christ. The passage reminds the church both then and now, that without faith, trust, a personal loyalty in Christ we cannot accomplish anything. In the passage, Jesus accomplished very little without the faithful response of the crowd.

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So far as we know and so far as it is recorded, Jesus made only one visit to his home town in Nazareth. According to the story as we have it today, the occasion gets mixed reviews. In the end, however, it we get the distinct impression from Mark’s Gospel account that the visit was something of a disaster.

Apparently in Jesus travels, he returns to make a visit in his home territory in the town of Nazareth. He was invited to participate in the worship in the local synagogue. I suppose that this is similar to our having people from the congregation participate in the reading of scripture and leading the prayers. Certain male members of the community would be asked at times to lead and do some of the teaching. Jesus was invited to lead and teach under these arrangements. The Jewish community and synogue had no ordained ministry as such, except that some men had rabbinical training which was more than likely a part of their family background.

According to Luke’s account of this story (Luke 4:16-30) Jesus reads a passage from Isaiah relating to the prophets’s call to proclaim liberty to the captives and sight to the blind. (Isa. 61:1-2) The passage read so far as we are concerned would seem harmless enough, but to the people of this period Jesus’ teaching may have seemed to presumptious. His teaching must have had a more penetrating twist to it. It had apparently a refreshing sense of deep wisdom. He may have challenged the community. While he is at first welcomed, he is somewhat threatening to his own.

In the middle eastern culture it was important that people maintain their place. For a person to “get ahead” in that culture was frowned upon. It was seen as grabbing at honorable statue to which the person was not worthy. If you were born into a certain social status. You were expected to maintain that place. Jesus was expected to be a carpenter, a craftsman. Craftsman were indeed needed, but that did not have a high standing. Wood was scarce in these days, and a carpenter would have to do some traveling leaving his family behind, which was seen as a dishonorable way of life. They were not expected to be wise or to assume teaching positions. From the book of Sirach (or Eccesiasticus, 38:24-39:5) it is written:

A scholar must have time to study if he is going to be wise; he must be relieved of other responsibilities. How can a farm hand gain knowledge, when his only ambition is to drive the oxen and make them work, when all he knows to talk about is livestock? . . . . It is the same with the artist and the craftsman, who work night and day engraving precious stones, carefully working out new designs. They take great pains to produce a lifelike image, and work far into the night to finish the work. . . . These people are not sought out to serve on the public councils, and they never attain positions of great importance. . . . They have no education and are not known for their wisdom. You never hear them quoting proverbs. But the work they do holds this world together. When they do their work, it is the same as offering prayer.

For Jesus to move into the realm of being wise and to move into a higher social standing, or even a different social standing was met with suspicion and resentment. He was scandalous. Some of the people raise the issue of “Who does he think he is?” They are extraordinarily insulting of him in the Markan account. When they say, ‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary . . . .” they are insulting him. They are calling him a bastard, and questioning his status as a legitimate person. Person in good standing were identified by their father. People of questionable status were identified by their mother. To the insults of the community, Jesus responds with his own insult. To put it in a modern idiom, “You people don’t know a good thing when you see it.” or “Prophets are not without honor except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and the own house.” What is that we also say: “Familiarity breeds contempt.” The story goes on to say that Jesus could not do any significant work there, except a few healings. The point is made that without faith and trust, the power of God is ineffective in the community.

Mark is attempting to reveal and maintain in the early chruch that in fact Jesus was unique. That from meagre beginnings, God has taken what was lowly and was raising it up. God had come to the lowly and among them in Christ. Jesus was the prophet, teacher, and healer of God among them. Just as many of the prophets of the past were met with hostility and contempt Jesus is meeting with the same kind of rebellion. Jesus brought a new relationship with God for the outcast and the poor. He came to restore love and forgiveness as the important values in the world. Jesus is expression of God’s redeem and restoring power in the world. Without faith and trust and personal loyalty as we saw last week in the story of the woman who touch Jesus’ garment, and Jairus who comes in great faith to Jesus, they will miss out on the heaing presence and renewing presence of God in their midst. Cultural ways rules, standards, man made laws get in the way of this new hope.

This story and account of Jesus’ rejection among those in his own community is important to us as individuals and members of the church today. We live in a country whose independence we have been celebrating this week. It is a country that began with some very basic religious principles. We say our nation is “under God” and that our motto is “In God we trust.” Yet perhaps in our familiarity with the traditions of our country we are inclined to forget the important of religious faith and God . The appreciation of faith and worship as a religious right as Americans is seen as an eroding principles among many people in our culture. Church and worship are often seen a secondary. In so much of the culture, particularly that which is revealed on Television religious emphasis is often completely missing or demeaning. On so many of the sit-coms and drama few show people as going to church or involved in church membership and community. Shows that do sometimes portray “religious’ people as fools or hypocrites. Religious institutions are often portrayed and perceived in a negative sense. However, the fact of the matter is that there are many religious people attending churches in our culture. There are many creative things going on in churches. People do have spiritual needs and are spiritual. We must all be cautious that we don’t become attracted to forms of spirituality that go so far astray from the orthodox faith that they are harmful and destructive. As unpopular as the institutional church may sometimes seem, it does maintain and have a close relationship to the authentic Christian faith.

Our familiarity with the church sometimes gives us a sense of knowing all there is to know. Religious education becomes something limited to Sunday School for children and confirmation class. There is, I think, a familiarity or boredom that sets-in that keeps us from being seekers, of renewing our relationships with Christ, with our understandings of the mighty works of God as something buried in the past.

There is too an infatuation with materialism in our culture that keeps us busy achieveing more things and stuff. We have to be busy maintaining our importance, our status, and our social standing in the community. As a result the faith, the foundations, the core of our being, the spirituality of our lives may become neglected to the point that the importance of being a loving and forgiving human being of God’s get lost. People describe a feeling of emptiness and loneliness.

I am asking all of our various groups here in the parish, and all the various committees to open each meeting with prayer and scripture reading. It is important for us to know who we are and what we are about. It is important that we keep rooted in the faith with all of its rich teaching and vitality. It is important that we do not become so secularized that we forget what we are about. I ask each and everyone of us to re-examine our own personal spiritual lives of prayer and scripture. I hope that as we begin a new acadamic year together in the fall we will continue a commitment to being a church that has a theological foundation rooted in study and open to new re-vitalizing understandings of the importance of the church and the faith in the world today.

The passage reveals to all of us that there is the temptation to become familiar with religious things that we miss their ongoing importance of them to keep our lives alive and vital with the presence of God. We may miss opportunities to be channels of grace through which God’s love may flow. Good old Jesus becomes merely a figure in the Bible. One of the good old guys of the past and not the living Lord of our lives who died and rose again that he might be with us always. The Church and Christ may well be the prophet without honor in our homeland. Yet as Ezekiel in the Hebrew Scriptures was called and told to persevere in a rebellious generation, Jesus did the same in his own rebellious and hostile generation. He carried on even to the cross. Out of that experience his glory was revealed.

Our prayer must be that we remain faithful, trusting, and loyal. Without that faithfulness, God will not intrude, and we become unable to allow hope and healing to work through us. God is at work around us. Many churches and people are allowing some very creative things to be born in the church that bring hope and healing to the world. The kingdom was stifled in Nazareth. But to those of faith healing and hope prevailed.