God's Power, Our Response

 

Mark 6:1-13

Pentecost 7 Lectionary 14 July 7, 2024

Epiphany Lutheran Church Richmond, Virginia

I have a friend who is fully grown. But, for years, when she visited home, she was a child again. She told me about returning home one year for Thanksgiving and, when she wanted to help with the dinner, her mother and older sisters gave her the job of chopping the celery. That’s it! That had been her job as a child, and it was all they were going to let her do!

Have you had the experience: of returning home, an accomplished adult, and being patronized by those who remember you as a child?

It looks like that’s what Jesus is experiencing, in this morning’s story in the gospel of Mark. It’s a story that immediately follows the healing stories we read last week. Here’s how it begins: [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.

In the gospel of Mark, there’s been another story of Jesus teaching in a synagogue. Do you remember that the listeners reacted with astonishment there, too? This is in chapter one, in the little fishing village of Capernaum (which is Jesus’ home base in the gospel of Mark): [Jesus] entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Then, immediately, when a man with an unclean spirit confronts Jesus, right there, in the synagogue, Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit, who convulses the man and cries out with a loud voice as he exits! What power Jesus has – even over the evil forces in the cosmos! It’s the power of God working through Jesus that is demonstrated again and again in the stories that follow in the gospel of Mark, the stories we’ve been reading over these past few weeks. Do you remember that Jesus even stills a storm at sea?

And so, this morning, after all of these stories of God’s power working through Jesus, and all healings he’s accomplished, Jesus returns to his hometown. He’s in Nazareth, among those who watched him and his siblings grow up. They all remember him as a boy! On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded.

“Astounded.” It’s the same Greek word as in the first synagogue story. But, this time, among his listeners who remember him as a snotty nosed little boy, their astonishment is not a good thing! Instead, out of their mouths come rapid fire, demeaning, disparaging, sarcastic questions! 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.” Scholars are not sure if Jesus made that saying up, or if he is repeating a phrase already in wide usage. But it’s in our vernacular, today. It’s uttered by someone who comes home and tries to do more than to cut up the celery during the preparation of Thanksgiving dinner! Have you had this experience – when you’ve returned home as a fully-grown, competent, accomplished adult? Have you even caused offense, because you’ve refused to be treated as a child?

Here’s what really grabs my attention, this time, reading this story: And [Jesus] 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.

What is going on? Somehow, their “unbelief” closes off most of those in Nazareth to Jesus’ power. It looks like, as one commentary puts it, “where there is no openness to the power of God or where that power becomes a stumbling block to preconceptions, the ‘mighty work’ as an invitation to deeper faith and discipleship cannot take place.”¹

Compare this to the power Jesus had been able to exercise in the synagogue in Capernaum several chapters earlier! Is the power of God that works through Jesus limited by human resistance?²

It is interesting to see that the gospel writer of Matthew, writing 10 years or so after Mark, re-writes this story so that Jesus chose not to do many deeds of power; not that he couldn’t exercise power!³ Because it’s troubling to think that the power of God that works through Jesus can be limited by human resistance!

But Jesus isn’t a magician who waves a wand and causes something to happen. There is something much more dynamic going on here, isn’t there? In fact, doesn’t this get us into the mystery of how God’s power works in our own lives, and in the lives of those we love, and in the lives of our enemies, foreign and domestic?

This morning’s story doesn’t give us any answers. We read, simply: And [Jesus] 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.

Undaunted, Jesus leaves his hometown. Then he went about among the villages teaching. And he sends out his apostles, two by two, on a missionary journey. Jesus tells them to depend radically on the hospitality and care of others: to take no food, no money, to only take one change of clothes and to wear Birkenstocks. And, notice this: he prepares them for the fact that their good news will be rejected by at least some that they encounter! And Jesus tells his followers to not waste time with them!

He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Did you know that Jesus sends out his missionaries with the same message that he spoke with his first words in the gospel of Mark? Only 14 verses into the first chapter, in his first public words, Jesus declares the keynote for all that will follow, including all the stories we have been reading in recent weeks. Here’s what he says: Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” All of Jesus’ healings demonstrating the kingdom’s power, all of his parables about the kingdom, have been to invite his listeners to repent – that is, to turn away from what makes for death and, instead, to turn to God; to turn to God’s love, to God’s compassion and care; and to respond by loving God back, and loving other people.

You and I respond to this same good news, day after day, over and over, in our own daily repentance. You and I experience God’s love! We respond to that experience by loving God back, and loving other people. What joy there is in that way of life – the way of Jesus! And the mystery is that you and I have not chosen to live in this way. We’ve been drawn into it, somehow. Someone has planted the seeds of the kingdom in our lives. And the Holy Spirit has moved within and among us to create our response – the fruit of those seeds.

It is all mystery – because why do most of Jesus’ listeners reject his good news when he’s back in his hometown? Why is it that many will be closed off to the good news of Jesus that his apostles will be taking out to the surrounding villages? And why is it – today – that people (including many that we love and, perhaps, raised in the church!) do not turn towards God’s love, to God’s compassion and care?

Some, for sure, have turned away because they have been hurt in the church. Some have felt stifled when they have been teenagers, when they have been asking theological questions and raising challenges which have been threatening to their teachers. Many, then, think that all churches will be communities that discourage using their brains. Others have turned away because of church leaders who have violated parishioners’ trust through abusive behavior. What a tragedy it is – when God’s love and compassion and care is not experienced in a church!

Many have turned away because they associate “Christian” with “judgmental”; or with the “evangelical Christian” political cult, or with “Christian Nationalism.” This is my primary frustration, as a pastor in the ELCA: that those justifiably hostile to that type of church lump us in with those types who call themselves “Christian.”

Here’s another way to put this. Many who have turned away are not closed off to the love and compassion and care and power of God through Jesus; they’re closed off because churches have distorted the good news of Jesus the Christ to try to increase power in the world, or who have manipulated and abused institutional power.

Our only human ability is to block what God is trying to do!

Any repentance, any turning towards God’s love and compassion and care and power in made possible as the Holy Spirit moves within and among us.

And all you and I can do is to offer the invitation, to experience the love of God, and to invite others to respond as we do on our good days: to love God back, and to love other people.

As Hans Tiefel puts it, God is “good, loving, joy-inducing, transforming.”⁴ You and I have experienced this! Worship forms us in this!

“God loves you, and all people! All love and compassion, all healing comes from God – and there is the kingdom of God! All are welcome! None are excluded! All people, of all nations, are created by God, children of God, loved by God!”

That’s our message, sent out as we are in mission. In fact, in our culture, that has become a prophetic witness of who God is and what God is like.

It makes me think of the mission statement of Epiphany Lutheran Church that I see all over the place: “Walk the Journey. Worship the Christ. Witness with Joy.”

Many will not respond.

All you and I can do is to offer the invitation.

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine

1John R. Donahue, S.J. and Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., The Gospel of Mark (Collegeville, MN, The Liturgical Press, 2002), page 186.

2Ibid., page 188.

3Matthew 13:58

4Hans Tiefel, Christian Ethics Introduced (Eugene, OR, Pickwick Publications, 2024), page 128.