My heart is all over the place on this one!
So now, (this week)- we have another kind of “two-for” only this time, “two consecutive stories in a row”…this is Mark at his … LITERARY FINEST! They are stories in contrast!
The first is a story of “FAILURE.”
After “initial enthusiasm,” the people of Jesus’ hometown – turn “against him.”
“He was” – (Mark tells us in verse 5,) “unable to do any miracles there.”
But the second – is a story of “GREAT SUCCESS.”
“The disciples,” (again Mark tells us) “cast out many demons, and they anointed many sick people and they healed them.”
IN’T THAT STRANGE?
Jesus, who up to this point in Mark, had been teaching with “GREAT POWER,” with “HUGE” crowds surrounding him, healing, and casting out many demons, could do NOTHING… while his disciples who are so often missing the point…and are lacking in simple understanding, are very “POWERFUL AND EFFCTIVE.” “THEY” are rocking it!
The two stories are “SO DIFFERENT” and their differences so “totally and completely UNEXPECTED”…and yet they stand together . . . perhaps there is a reason for that?
Maybe “old Mark” is up to something here?
TOGETHER these two stories have something to tell us, about God and God’s power, and about “OUR PART” in God’s power.
Together they tell us about the “power of faith” and also something about the “power of sin.”
TOGETHER they tell us something about what happens when OUR “ego and our pride” get in the way–when “WE” get in the way–and what happens when “hope, faith and expectation” clear the way, and God takes “CENTRAL PLACE.”
Two stories… two distinct contrasting stories, in one we find “acceptance” and in the other- out right “refusal.”
But why? Why did they “reject Jesus?”
We might “IMAGINE” that things would continue to go well for Jesus.
We might “ASSUME” that here Jesus would be received with “great joy” and lots of “affirmation” and be surrounded by love – by those who knew him best.
And initially he was.
But, the people of Nazareth, those who had known Jesus as a boy and as a young man were “SURPRISED AND ASTONISHED”-by HIS “wisdom and HIS power…”
All too quickly their “surprise” turned to “offense.”
“Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son? And they took OFFENSE at him.”
Why? What happened? Was it because:
He had only RECENTLY been ONE of them—and then, he took off (and seemingly abandoned ALL OF THEM.)
Perhaps the problem was: that HE – who had “just been one of them” should suddenly seemingly, be “so far – ABOVE THEM.”
What’s with his “whole entourage, thingy?” 12 men, 12 disciples hanging onto his every word and following him???
Did that “feel” like the whole thing was “A SLIGHT?” Who does he think he is? Why him and not me?
But perhaps the matter at hand goes even deeper than this all-too-human tendency to “ENVY ANOTHER” or to “feel SLIGHTED by the SUCCESS” of someone whom “we knew, (or thought they knew,”) back in the day.
Often – TODAY, we in the church, seem more focused on “ourselves”- whether it be our “proud accomplishments,” or our “current projects,” or our “persistent problems”- rather than focusing — on God’s POWER AND TRUTH.
It is not, all about US!
When Jesus was rejected in Nazareth, he did not—(though it must have been painful for him)–reject them in turn.
He did not take offense at them.
He only sadly shook his head and then MOVED ON.
He moved on, sending his disciples out, two by two, to PREACH, to HEAL and to TEACH…and to SPREAD God’s word.
He said something interesting to them: they were to travel LIGHT to “take nothing for the journey” but the clothes on their backs.
God maybe is telling US to “lighten our load. God is calling us to LET GO of some our “weighty assumptions” about how “we have always done things before.
Maybe God is asking us to “SURRENDER” some truly “heavy stuff”—like our “OLD CONFLICTS” that we have been BEARING or the “GRUDGES” we have been nursing?
God is using “this time” of CHALLENGE and CHANGE “to strip these things from us” so that we might travel lightly relying on “God’s power ALONE” to “guide us” and “trusting God’s grace” to “uphold us.”
Jesus is here now—in our hometown, in our church, in our community, in our life.
Will we receive him? Will we greet him warmly?
Or we meet him – bearing grudges and resentment and carrying all kinds of other unnecessary baggage…?
Will we be making assumptions and having expectations? Will our ego’s and our pride be playing a larger than normal role…and perhaps GET IN THE WAY?
Or should we “just” receive him GLADLY? And with OPEN ARMS?
Amen.