Knowing Jesus and Missing the New Thing

This morning we’re continuing our sermon series on the Gospel of Mark and we find ourselves here in chapter 6. And chapter 6 is kind of interesting because Mark is using a different literary devise than we see him use other places.  He uses a compare and contrast parallel structure here.   He goes to his hometown and is rejected.  We get the sense he was pretty much completely unsuccessful.  Then he sends out the disciples to preach and evangelize telling them to shake off any rejection they get.  That’s then followed by comparing and contrasting two banquets - Herod’s banquet vs. Jesus’s banquet where he feeds the 5,000.   We’re not going to dive too deeply into that one because we talked about it back in October with Matthew’s account of the events which are very very similar to Mark’s.  I do have copies of that sermon if you want to go back and refresh yourself on it.  Just let me know and I can e-mail that to you.

So, this is interesting.  In Mark’s Gospel so far, we’ve been presented with this image of Jesus showing him kind of on fire with ministry.  He’s teaching with authority, there’s a sense of urgency and purpose to what he’s doing, he’s healing people and performing miracles.  He’s creating quite a stir.  Then he goes home and he faces rejection and failure.  It’s really out of character for him.  And then you contrast that with the story right after it - the story of the disciples who up until this point in the Gospel really seem to miss the point more than they get it and who seem pretty clueless about what’s going on and yet Mark tells us that they were super effective.  Mark says, “they went out and proclaimed that people should change their hearts and lives.  They cast out many demons, and they anointed many sick people with olive oil and healed them.”

If I didn’t know the story of Jesus, if this were my first time hearing it, I’d find it a bit shocking that Jesus was rejected in his home town.  I would have thought that he would have been welcomed as a hometown hero and a celebrity.  It makes me think of when I lived in Ashtabula Ohio - which was a town that didn’t have much to celebrate.  Urban Meyer, the former head Coach of the Ohio State football team, grew up there. And the moment he became head coach at OSU, a bunch of signs went up welcoming you to Ashtabula, the hometown of Urban Meyer.  He was celebrated there.  But not Jesus.  We’re told his hometown was repulsed by him and fell into sin. No Welcome to the Hometown of Jesus signs here.

I mean, at first they were enthusiastic about him showing up, but then after he started preaching, they started basically asking, “Who does this guy think he is?”  I can almost hear the complaints from them. “Look at him thinking he’s so smart and holy now. Isn’t he the carpenter’s kids?”  “Look at mr fancy pants Jesus now… Think he’s made the big time.” It kind of reminds me of my friend’s dad when I was in high school.  We’d go out as a group - usually with the hope of finding girlfriends on a Friday or Saturday night. And we’d get all ready to go out thinking we looked cool. And every time we’d be at his house to pick him up, his dad would look out at us and say, “Look at you boys all dressed up trying to be somebody.”  He’d remind us that we weren’t nearly as cool as we thought we looked.  And considering how many weekends we went out and never found girlfriends, he was right.

Now, when we started this sermon series, I told you that I wouldn’t always have answers in these sermons but I’d come to you with the questions that the scriptures bring up for me in the hopes that we could struggle through them together.  And so far, every week I’ve been able to present a question and I think we’ve found some answers.  But this week a question keeps coming up for me about chapter 6 and especially about this first section in chapter 6 that has me scratching my head.  And what troubles me is that I think that this is the right question to be asking and that I should have some answer for by now.  But I’m not sure I do…  And that question is this:  Why is it that the people who knew Jesus the best were the ones who honor him the least here?

Why is it that the people who knew Jesus the best were the ones who honor him the least?

I feel like there’s a warning in there for us, don’t you?  I mean who are the people who know Jesus the best now?  Who would be considered his hometown crowd today?  It would be us, right? It would be the church.  We basically have signs that say, “Welcome to Church - the hometown of Jesus.”  Does it ever happen where we become like Nazareth?  Do we ever get so familiar with the Jesus we think we know that we kind of become indifferent to God’s power or blind to God’s presence in front of us?  Do we ever get so caught up in what we’re doing - thinking we’re the ones doing it - that we - consciously or subconsciously - think “phhfffth Jesus… What does he know?”  Are we, the church, sometimes the last person to call on Jesus or are we less likely to to be open to what it is he may be working among us because we think we have this church and Christianity thing all worked out for ourselves?  Are we open to when and where Jesus shows up and starts showing us a new thing?

Or let me take it to a more personal level.  What I worry about when reading this is do I think that I know Jesus so well, that I have an image of what he does and who he is, that when I’m shown Jesus in a different context than what I’m used to or when I encounter Jesus in a way that doesn’t fit into my expectation, can I still see it as Jesus?  Am I open to the possibility that Jesus may not always be who I expect him to be and that Jesus may not do or say what I expect him to do or say?  Or what happens when Jesus does and says things I don’t always agree with or I don’t think he should do?  Those are questions that can keep you up at night.

Now, it’s curious how Jesus responds to this rejection in his hometown.  It’s one of the many ways we can be sure that I’m not Jesus.  For some of the other ways, you can ask my wife.  But Jesus doesn’t reject them in return.  He doesn’t get mad. He doesn’t curse them.  He doesn’t say, ‘Who needs you anyways?” Or I never liked this po-dunk town anyways. He doesn’t respond in any way that Quincy would have been likely to respond to this kind of rejection - which I imagine that it would have been really hurtful for Jesus if he had even an ounce of humanity in him.  But Jesus doesn’t take any offense here.  He simply shakes his head, walks away, and finds people who may be more open to what he’s doing.

And that’s when he does something really compelling:  He sends out the disciples two by two to preach, teach and heal.  And part of me wonders if Jesus didn’t learn something or gain a valuable insight into the nature of the ministry he was trying to do.  I mean maybe Jesus looked at what happened in his hometown as a teachable moment and he realized that maybe the ministry and mission he’s trying to accomplish isn’t a one-man show.  That it’ll take more than Jesus to accomplish it?  So far, in Mark’s Gospel, it’s been Jesus doing all the heavy lifting and accomplishing most of the work. And now he’s faced his first loss, his first rejection, his first failure of sorts, and he realizes that he needs to adjust.  That it can’t be all on him.  It’s going to take the work of his community and spreading the “burden” across the discipleship.

And you’ll notice that when he sends them out to share in the work of the ministry, he doesn’t send them out alone by themselves and he tells them to travel lightly - to be nibble, to be able to adjust and move and adapt quickly.  And if something doesn’t work?  If people can’t hear the message for whatever reason?  Its ok.  Move on and try something else.  Don’t get stuck.  Don’t cling to what doesn’t work and move forward.

So, let’s recap here a little bit.  We have people who think they know Jesus so well and have him so defined by their preconceived notions that they can’t recognize him for who he really is and ultimately reject him.  And then he sends people out together - not working alone - and tells them to not be weighed down by anything that would hinder their ministry or prevent them from being so anchored that they can’t quickly change direction in order to be successful in their ministries of preaching, teaching, and healing.  And we’re told that when they do that, they become really successful.

I mean, you could almost look at it like those people who are holding onto the past, who can’t see beyond who they thought Jesus was… they can’t see who Jesus is now and no matter what Jesus does or tries, it doesn’t work.  Then you have a group of people who have nothing to weigh them down, nothing to hold them back, and work together for a common goal of spreading the Gospel. And they’re wildly successful… Do you think Mark may be trying to say something to the church today about what makes for a successful ministry?

Last week we talked about the change and challenge that our current times find us in as a church - about the struggles of being a church in a world that’s becoming less religious and less trustful on institutions. And here, I think Mark is giving us a blueprint of how to navigate these changes and challenges.  Maybe what he’s saying is that we can’t be so tied to the past, we can’t be so tied to our sometimes narrow definitions to who or what Jesus is or who or what a church is and does.

And we need to be open to who Jesus may be now and what he’s doing now and how he’s calling us now to work together in order that we may be able to reach people more effectively with the Gospel, the grace, and the healing that Jesus offers today.  Maybe what Mark is trying to remind the church today of, is that we need to let go of what we saw in the past or what we thought we knew in the past in order that we can travel lightly and become nibble navigators of the Gospel in today’s world working together to accomplish his ministry and mission.