MArk 6:16a Home town boy... Who does he think he is?

 

New Zealand is resplendent with stories of pride in small town locals who make it big.

Here is an example from the Otago Daily Times in 2015 about the town of Kurow…

There is no statue of Richard Hugh McCaw in Kurow.

You won't find a street named after him.

There is no McCaw Domain, McCaw Park, McCaw Square, McCaw Hospital or McCaw School.

But you are never far away from a reminder that this is McCaw country.

In Kurow, a rural service town about 65km inland from Oamaru, and in the neighbouring Hakataramea Valley, the All Black captain - who grew up on a farm and had his formative rugby years in this district - is a constant presence, providing both a deep source of pride to the 350 or so residents and an inspiration to a generation of kids dreaming of following in his giant footsteps.

By the way I think there are moves afoot at the moment to build a statue of Ritchie in Kurow. Likewise, there were TV cameras and a media scrum and record crowds when another  All Black great Dan Carter turned out for his childhood rugby club southbridge, in rural canterbury.

And from the previous generation there is an amazing bronze statue of Sir Colin Meads in the main street of Te Kuiti.

Maybe its easier to have such affection and respect for sporting people who make it rather that religious leaders. But in first century Judaism being a rabbi and teacher would have been seen as the same sort of pinnacle for locals to aspire to, maybe we might get a glimpse of that with rugby almost having religious status in our country.

So the passage we had read out to us today kind of flips that local boy makes good narrative on its head and comes across as rather shocking. It’s quite a challenging passage as the people who are most familiar with Jesus don’t believe in him. It also brings up that uncomfortable linkage between the activity of God, like healing and miracles, and faith.

We are working our way s l o w l y through Mark’s fast paced account of the beginning of the te rongopai O Ihu Karaiti, the good news of Jesus Christ. The series is called ‘the way of the cross’ because in Mark Jesus is portrayed primarily as the suffering servant, who came to lay down his life as a ransom for many… with the passage we are looking at today we are reminded that Mark  invites us to strip away many of the cultural expectations we have of Jesus as messiah and what it means to follow him and again realise as one commentator puts it we are an army whose only weapons are service and self-sacrificial love. To be a flourish Christian community is to walk the way of the cross.

The passage we are reading marks a transition point in Jesus ministry. In mark 1-3:6 we had a record of Jesus early ministry In Galilee, that finished with his rejection by the religious leaders who plot to kill him. Then after 3that we have Jesus being rejected by his family and bringing together a new family, a new people of God, starting with the twelve, but also People who maybe we wouldn’t expect, the gentile demoniac on the far side of the lake, a women who was ritually unclean, healed welcomed back into God’s people, a dead girl restored to life. But Mark still focuses us on the fact that people will reject Jesus as well. His ministry in galilee finishes with him being rejected by his hometown. It points us forward to a greater rejection when Jesus the messiah, the chosen king comes to Jerusalem and is rejected by the people and crucified.  After this passage Jesus sends out his disciples and moves to different regions, and there is a focus on ministry to gentiles.

Let’s have a look at the passage. Jesus comes to his home town. It’s not named here in Mark, but we know from the other gospels and  other passages that we have that Nazareth in mind. In mark 1:24 the unclean spirits refer to Jesus, as Jesus of Nazareth, and in Mark’s  resurrection narrative the angel proclaims ‘ you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. he is not here he is risen.” From the narrative we get the idea that Jesus grew up in this place. His family is there, and he is known as the local carpenter, a tradie in the town. You get the feel that this is a small town where everyone knows everyone else.

Jesus has his disciples with him. Jesus comes like any religious teacher or figure with his students. His new family. He is asked to speak at the synagogue on the sabbath and it tells us many were amazed at his teaching. Gordon fee in his summary of Marks gospel comments about this passage says “Wonder and awe come easy but true faith does not.”

The challenge now comes as the people start to ask appropriate questions about what is  the source of his teaching, wisdom and the miracles he had performed. They are  the right questions to ask… all through the gospel… we are being invited to look at Jesus and what he says and does and ask who is Jesus?  How do we respond, are we like the disciples struggling to understand, like those who come and put their faith in him or will we stand with the crowd.  

For the people of Jesus hometown they cannot get past, Jesus past. Jesu grew up there. He was the carpenter, a builder or a labourer. In Jewish society there was a very regimented class system, and tradies didn’t really rate highly on the ladder, they wouldn’t be seen as being religious teachers. In our Old Testament reading this morning, we see that they had hd prophets who were from different professions, Amos in a very kiwi way was from a rural town, Tekoa who farmed using a mixed model of sheep and fig trees.  In commentary I read it  quoted  a couple of passages in the book of Sirach, which is part of the apocrypha, the books that are included in the catholic canon, but not seen as canonical by jews or the protestant church, where tradies are described as  simply eking out a living so they won’t be hungry, no one looks to them for wisdom of judgement and that they are not found amongst the rulers’ . Where as those who were scribes attain wisdom and focus of God’s word. And in their very regimented world the two did not mix. You couldn’t move from one to another. They look at Jesus through that lens.

Likewise, Jesus family was there as well. Joseph is not mentioned although a later reading of the passage was that Jesus was the son of the carpenter and Mary.  But it was derogatory to only refer to someone by their mother rather than their father. It maybe that while Mark does not record a birth narrative for Jesus that some of the questions about his birth were known to people. But also we have his brothers and sisters mentioned. His brothers by name. James is important as we know from acts that Jesus appeared to him after the resurrection and he became a key leader in the church in Jerusalem. Jude is also seen as the writer of the letter of Jude.  This of course is the only mention of Jesus sisters, and not by name. The town folk can’t see past this to comprehend Jesus being anything other than what they are used to, what they expect.

Their response to Jesus then is to be offended by him. They are scandalised by Jesus and stumble over him. They reject that there is anything special about Jesus. Could God do something through someone who just seems so ordinary.

The story finishes with Jesus summing up the situation in a proverb ‘that a prophet is without honour in his home town’ a truism  and he is unable to do any miracles in the town. He does lay hands on a few people and heal them, maybe this is an example of individual faith in Jesus. The passage which started with the people being amazed at Jesus finishes with Jesus being amazed at them for their lack of faith.

Ok what does that have to say to us today.

Firstly, can I say that from my own experience God has used this passage to guide me in my own life. More specifically the parallel passage in Luke, where Jesus goes on from the truism that a prophet is without honour in their own town to give two Old Testament example, Elijah and the widow of Zarephath and Elisha and Naaman the leper. God sent those prophets to people outside of Israel. I was working as the youth coordinator for Auckland presbytery, training youth leaders, coordinating activities. The conditions of my employment changed and I was asked to reapply for my job. But as that was happening  Jim Wallace the minister at St Johns in Rotorua was speaking at a camp I was running and told me they were looking for a youth pastor/assistant minister and I should apply. Which I did, as a safety net, but the people in Rotorua wanted an answer from me before the interview process was complete for my Auckland job, my first choice. So I had to make a decision. I went up into the Waitakere rangers with my bible and a panoramic view of Auckland and spent the afternoon praying. The passage that was bought to my attention was this one. I believe God used it to tell me it was time to move from my hometown, I’m an Aucklander.  Which we did and it resulted in a very fruitful six years of ministry and also six years of mentorship from Jim Wallace. So this passage means a lot to me. It’s one time when God used a passage to speak so clearly into my life…  an example of how by his spirit God can speak as we seek him and seek to do his will.  Even in a passage about Jesus rejection.

Secondly, there is that uneasy connection here between the activity of God and faith. Un easy because I’ve heard individuals accused of not being healed not being helped because they  lack faith… maybe you’ve heard that too… or experienced it… there was a period in my life when I kept getting bronchitis, it just would not go away, so at a prayer meeting these wonderful people prayed for me to get better, but of course I kept getting sick, so they started to pray against a spirit of unbelief like my faith wasn’t strong enough… I felt abused… turned out at that stage I was an undiagnosed diabetic and with my blood sugar out of kilter my whole immune system was out of wack. It was  case of that wonderful word we learned during covid comorbidity.

In scripture there is a correlation between the presence and power of God and faith “When there is a glad reception and hearty embrace of God’s commands, God dwells there in power. Where there is resistance and rejection, God’s presence is marginalized and muted.”  but that faith is in the people turning to Jesus for help… that faith turns us to Jesus, trusting that Jesus cares for us and is able to answer our prayers. Faith is a willingness to put it in Jesus hands. In Jesus hometown there wasn’t the willingness to do that. Possibly the best example I’ve heard about the link between healing and faith is John Wimber who when asked if everyone gets healed responded by saying “ this is all I know, I’ve seen more people healed since I started believing Jesus heals and so started to pray for people, that when I didn’t believe in healing and so didn’t pray’.

Lastly, there is the danger we can find ourselves like the crowd in Jesus hometown and be offended by Jesus. We sort of get used to the Jesus we see through our own lens and not really grasp the full understanding of who Jesus is.

We maybe comfortable at looking at Jesus through the lens of modernity with its focus on materialism.  We are happy to see Jesus as a good teacher and a good example, but we struggle and are almost offended by his miracles as they step outside the realm of our world view that is suspicious of anything that is not explainable by science and reason. A view that downplays the divine nature of Jesus to preserve a certain understanding of his humanity. The church in the west has been influenced by that.

Or we can find ourselves almost viewing Jesus through the lens of an over spiritualisation which disconnects Jesus from the world as it is.  We can see Jesus through a super-hero lens. We can see that in the growth and popularity of the prosperity gospel, a name it and claim it mentality, full of triumphalism that emphasises the glory of Christ over the humanity of Jesus.

Timothy Gombis sums it up by saying often “God’s own people are the ones offended by God’s upside down way of working”.

He goes on to express this in a way I want to leave you with this morning. That emphasises both the wonder of what god has done through Jesus and the very humanness of Jesus.

“It is utterly unexpected for God to save his people, to free his creation from the grip of sin and death, and to unleash his own resurrection life through a common labourer who was misunderstood by his own family-rejected by his hometown, abandoned by his followers, and ultimately put to death as a criminal. In the eyes of the world, it is completely backward.

The challenge for us in the contemporary world is being conformed to this divine wisdom in our orientation rather than being conformed to the wisdom of this world. A community of self-giving love ans service that looks out for the broken and marginalised and that is uninterested in social prestige is one that makes little sense in our world. We might say that joining such a community and making it the centre of our lives is scandalous… But this is the life that the son of God calls us.”

I want to add one thing… a word of encouragement for us

“God does the extra ordinary through ordinary people who put their trust in him.”