Pentecost 4

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

SEASON: Pentecost 4
PROPER: 9 B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: July 9,2000


TEXT: Mark 6:1-6 The Rejection of Jesus in his Homeland
“And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to the, ‘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 . . . .”

ISSUE: Jesus is rejected in his hometown. He is seen as claiming undeserved honor. While in our time we have no honor system like that of the first century, Christian people long established in the faith may well become so familiar with the life, teachings, and presence of Christ, that we fail to appreciate its power. As result we become ineffective as a Christian influence. The passage challenges us to be more prophetic in our stance, to be set back up on our feet (Ezekiel 2:1-7), and to revitalize our mission.
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The passage from Mark today tells something of how difficult it was for Jesus and his followers to sometimes provide an effective ministry, and at the same time it addresses how certain communities themselves become ineffective, if not deadly boring, as they attempt to maintain their comfortable status.
Mark’s Gospel account is the oldest canonical account of the ministry of Jesus that we have available to us. Mark tells in today’s passage about Jesus making a return to Nazareth, Jesus’ own hometown to do some teaching in the synagogue. His efforts are apparently significant, but the results of his efforts are quite minimal. He surely gets the attention of the Nazarean community but they become ultimately offended and reject his teachings. He’s able to cure only a few, and is forced to move on to more fertile ground.
At the very core of the cultural system of Jesus’ time was a system of honor. Essentially, you honor came from the family into which you were born. It came from birth. You could achieve a higher honorable status over time, but that was very hard to do. In Jesus’ time, so unlike ours, you did not attempt to change you status in life, or to get ahead. The honorable person maintained his place in the society.
Jesus we believe was a carpenter, an artisan by trade. He was an artisan by trade, because supposedly that’s what is father was. While there is some debate about the place of artisans in the 1st century world, they were largely a dispossed people with very little status or honor. Artisans became artisans to make a living because they had lost their claim to any land. In the biblical apocryphal book of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, 38:24-39:11, artisans could have no place as judges, to be on councils, or to attain any positions of great importance. They were just too busy and too uneducated to be wisemen.
What’s more, the artisan, especially the carpenters, moved from place to place looking for work, especially in a land where wood was quite scare, leaving their families behind and unprotected. Again, it was not honorable to do this kind of thing.
Jesus returns on this occasion to his hometown of Nazareth, little more than an mendicant beggar. He gets the attention of the hometown folk when he speaks and teaches in the local synagogue, or religious center. The people are amazed at his wisdom and his teaching, his insights, and hints of his curative powers. But then again, he is only an artisan without honor. They know his family and its minimal status. The fascinating remark is made, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” It was unusual for a man to be identified by his mother rather than his father. Jesus’ very legitimacy may be what is being challenged. They take offense at him. He is stepping out his assigned place, and is a confusing character that the community can no longer define. Their taking offense is insulting to him. Jesus returns the insult with the proverb: “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and in their own house.”
Without community support, faith, open acceptance of Jesus, little of any power or effect can take place. He can only heal just a few, and must move on. It is thought be some that what Mark is doing in telling this story is revealing what was behind the early church’s move away from Judaism to becoming more readily accepted by the Gentile community. Outsiders are more able to determine the honor rating of the prophet rather than the insiders who should have known him best. Without emotion filled loyalty, commitment, solidarity is missing. Jesus could perform no mighty works as he had done for others.
Today, we must be careful not to over simplify what is going on in this account of Jesus’ rejection. It is comfortable and often anti-Semitic to say that the Jews rejected Jesus, and we Gentiles are the good guys who have made him our own. No doubt there was rejection of Jesus by some of his own in his time. Yet, it was not the overall Jewish population that had anything to do with Jesus’ crucifixion and death, but the Romans, who were incidentally Gentiles. Today we do not have an honor system and code like that of the 1st century Mediterranean culture. However, we do not always honor or give credibility to that which is familiar to us. “Familiarity breeds contempt,” is the proverb common to our time. You remember when you were children, especially in our teen years and early adulthood, how dumb we often thought our parents were. We saw their wisdom as outdated. Only in our own later more mature years did we appreciate the wisdom of our forefathers and mothers.
As matter of fact the Christian community today needs to be regularly asking itself, if it is still honoring the presence of Christ Jesus in our world. We today may be too overly familiar with the Christian movement and penetrating power of Christ and miss our calling to handle it effectively. There is a constant struggle as to how the Christ of Christianity fits into the business activities, the politics, and the international affairs of the modern world. We often have heard people say that the church must stay out of politics. My good people, why do you think Jesus was crucified? . . . . because he was a nice guy. Hardly. Jesus’ politics, his challenging prophetic stand with the poor was very daring and threatening. Jesus’ risk taking, his challenge of the culture, his daring stance that the religion of the time was stuffy and so regulation oriented and legally stifled that it prevented access to the presence of God is what got Jesus crucified. God demands justice for all people. Justice for all is sometimes very threatening to the rich and powerful. He had a firm commitment, like the prophetic stance in the Ezekiel 2:1-7 reading today, to standing for God and speaking the words to them, whether they heard them or not, for they were a rebellious house.
We often say the church should not mix politics with religion or the church. Somehow we think of ourselves as called to stand aloft from the world. Quite the contrary of what Jesus did. What’s more, sometimes I think we fall into the trap of keeping Christianity out of the church as well! We often see church members and vestry members taking a very guarded stance. We become like, or at least very similar to all other organizations. Did you ever wonder how the church is really different from The Boy Scouts of America. (We don’t want any gay or lesbian leadership either.) How are we different from the Kiwanis, the Rotary, or The Masonic Order? All of these organizations, like the church, are committed to doing good deeds and keeping themselves morally straight. It’s no wonder that the demands of other service organizations and Recreation Council Activities with baseball and lacrosse games often take precedence over church activities. They promote good health, community spirit like all good community organizations should. When you stand the church up next to our service organizations, the church does not especially stand out. In fact it may well appear as bland, if not downright boring. Thus, little happens. Oh, a few get cured, but the unbelief, the lack of faith and dynamic commitment is amazing.
Even today Jesus is constantly challenged. You can’t just turn the other cheek, or walk the extra mile, or people will just walk all over you. You can’t just consider the lilies of the field and how they neither toil nor spin, or you’ll end up with nothing. You can’t just pay the same guy who came first the same wage you pay the man who comes last. People will just use you. You can’t give all your wealth to the poor and follow, or you’ll be broke. You have to have possessions and wealth or you become a meaningless entity in this world. You can’t eat with sinners and prostitutes, tax collectors, gays and lesbians, or you’ll become just like them. You can’t sell everything you have and give it to the poor, or you’ll end up with nothing. You can’t leave the 99 sheep and go in search of the one lost sheep; you’ll lose the whole damn flock. Just give a little here, and a little there and assuage your guilt and try to look as good and moral as the next guy or organization. We Episcopalians pride ourselves in the fact that we began ordaining women, when was it?, in the 1960’s. Jesus ordained them sometime around 30 A.D. We fuss a lot over gays and lesbians completely forgetting that the early church let them in long ago as Gentiles. (It was possible that the centurion’s slave was a sex partner, i.e. David Buttrick Lecture) Let’s keep the status quo for that’s good enough. Just keep things the way they are. It may be boring but it sure is comfortable. . . . it sure is bland but it ain’t Christian! It ain’t of Christ!
People just love all that stuff about how Jesus saves, but we’re not always sure he saves somebody else different from us. Jesus saves me and isn’t that wonderful. We perpetuate it teaching it to the kids. We love to wallow in grace, in the saving grace of God. “Jesus loves me. Yes, I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Does God in Christ love us. You bet. But my good people, we also stand under judgment as well. All those Nazareans were good people, good as you’ll find anywhere. Were they loved of God, probably so. But Christ moved and moves on to more fertile territory and they were left behind in their complacency and in their stagnant mediocrity. Poor souls. But Christ went on bearing the message and to those who heard it, they became the children of God, the new saints, the heirs of the Kingdom of God entering into a new Promised Land among those where true honor, inclusiveness, and meaning, vitality, and real meaningful life with God is found.