SERMON FOR JULY 4, 2020        TEXT: MARK 6:1-13
     Two Sundays ago we heard about Jesus stilling the storm and leaving the disciples full of wonder, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” they ask one another. Last week the Gospel recounted two intertwined stories. The despairing father Jairus implores Jesus to lay hands upon his dying daughter so that she might live. On his way to her sickbed, Jesus, unbeknownst to him at first, encounters a woman who has suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years. She sneaks up behind him, confident that she need only touch his cloak to find relief. And she’s right. The time spent with her delays Jesus, and when he finally reaches the young girl, she has died. Having healed the woman, he then raises Jairus’ daughter from the dead. Mark tells us that those who witnessed this “were overcome with amazement” (Mark 5:42b). 
     Jesus has been touring Galilee, proclaiming in word and deed that “the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). He has encountered opposition from the religious authorities but certainly not all of them. Jairus, we are told, is one of the leaders of the synagogue (5:22), and he clearly trusts Jesus, in sharp contrast to the scribes who earlier in Mark’s account denounce him saying, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of demons he casts out demons” (3:22). Indeed, among the people who experience his ministry the response is overwhelmingly positive. When Jesus comes to the synagogue at Capernaum, his hearers are “astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:22). One can imagine that critique did not sit well with the religious establishment. “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee” (1:27-8).
    Then Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth. The encounter begins like the ones that have preceded it; his hearers are “astounded” by his teaching. As before, the people are left wondering about his identity. Who is this guy? “Where did this man get all this?” they ask. “What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!” Then suddenly the identity question resolves itself. What they have heard, what they have experienced, collapses in the face of what they know. 
     The awestruck “Who is this man of such extraordinary wisdom and power?” becomes an offended “Who does this guy think he is?” They recognize a hometown boy pretending to be a big shot — a carpenter from an undistinguished family that still lives there — and they quickly cut him down to small-town size. The fact that Jesus is called “the son of Mary” alone, that there is no mention of Joseph, leads some scholars to conclude that by this time Jospeh had died. Others suggest that the members of his community are taking a dig at his honor. Naming the mother but not the father may hint at lingering questions about the circumstances of his birth — why not rub that in while they’re at it? Or it could be a way of reproaching the first-born son for having gone off to do his thing while leaving a widowed mother behind, although apparently there were  plenty of siblings to take up the slack. Now it is Jesus’ turn to be awed and confounded; he is “amazed at their unbelief.” Mark tells us that as a consequence “he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”
     This is a hard one to figure. Remember that scene in Peter Pan when Tinkerbell’s light is fading? Peter pleads with the audience to believe in fairies with all their heart, and as a consequence Tink recovers all her fairy power and brilliance. Surely Jesus does not require us to overcome our unbelief in order for his power to be effective. After all, creating and sustaining faith, that is, overcoming unbelief, is his specialty. Moreover, laying hands on a few sick people and curing them is not negligible, certainly not for the persons he made well. Elsewhere in Mark’s Gospel we are told that Jesus “cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons” (1:34), but there is no quota to be met before an act of healing can qualify as a powerful deed. So what are we to take away from this story?
     Perhaps the problem is one of perception. I think of Luther’s explanation in the Small Catechism of the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “May your will be done on earth as in heaven. What is this? Answer: God’s good and gracious will come about without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come about in and among us.” God’s will did not come about in and among the people of Nazareth that day, but nonetheless it got done.
Jesus is amazed at his neighbors’ unbelief. At the same time he doesn’t express surprise. Rather than undermining his standing, their rejection reinforces it: “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin and in their own house.”  He may speak truthful words accompanied by compelling signs, but they will not recognize them for what they are. They know what they know, and their cramped assumptions prevent their seeing through the familiar to the kingdom of God come near. We’ve all been in that place, thinking ‘Who, that guy? What can I learn from him?!” We’ve also been the ones despised and dismissed as unlikely or unappealing sources of grace and truth.
     In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells his followers, “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.” It was neither the time nor the place for a deed of power that day in Nazareth. While taken aback by their unbelief, Jesus is not deterred. He simply moves on, going about the neighboring villages teaching. Moreover, he sends the disciples out to do the same and equips them to perform deeds of power on their own. In the face of indifference or rejection Jesus instructs them to cut their losses. He prepares them for the kind of amazing disappointment he experienced in Nazareth. This may not be the time or the place; you may not be the person to make God’s grace known. But there will be other opportunities, other people. Jesus sends out his disciples, plural. Don’t beat your head bloody; don’t wallow in a sense of failure or get trapped by a grudge. Let that situation go, shake the dust off your feet. Then move on down the road to welcome the kingdom of God in another time, a different destination. Amen.