Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
The Gospel of Mark 6:1-13
Ezekiel 2:1-5
Preached at St. John’s Christopher St, NYC
July 11, 2021
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator, Christ the Liberator, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Summertime, for me, is a time of nostalgia. The warm temperatures and slower pace conjure up memories of past summers, of being younger than I am now, of being with family and childhood friends. Of who I was in those moments, in the past.
And remembering that also reminds me of how much I’ve changed and grown. Think back 2 years, 10 years, 20 years – who were you? What were your dreams for the future? Where were you living? Who were you in your family system?
And who are you now? What are your dreams for the future? Where are you living? Who are you in your family system?
For some of us, the answers to these sets of questions might be very similar. Our hopes and dreams coming to fruition, settling down close to where we grew up, holding consistent beliefs and opinions that we can track from childhood.
For others of us, the answers might be very different. Living far away from where we grew up, pursuing newer hopes and dreams, holding beliefs and opinions that have changed over time as we’ve aged.
And neither of those sets of answers are bad. We are part of a diverse community, who have taken different paths, made different choices, had different life circumstances. For most of us, our answers are likely somewhere in-between those two points. Where some aspects of our identity and how we live in the world have stayed consistent from the context we grew up in, and some aspects have changed and transformed over time, in reaction and response to the context we are currently in.
As someone who falls more into the second group, going home is always a complicated experience. Because in some ways, I am a very different person than who I was growing up. Which means that spaces I used to navigate easily through are now more treacherous – drawing attention to the ways that I have changed, leaving me feeling a bit out-of-sync, leaving me asking – did I change too much to go home?
Even for those of us who fall more into the first group, the experience of aging can be its own form of change within family systems. Going home, even if home is 5 minutes away, can mean falling into outdated patterns of communication, of relationship. Reverting to the interpersonal dynamics we lived in when we were younger. Struggling to get other members of our family to acknowledge that we are at a different phase of our lives, that we are different than we were 2 or 10 or 20 years ago.
Going home, being home, being with the community that raised us, can be complicated no matter how close or far we have wandered from that home. And the same is true for Jesus.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus returns home. This passage comes after Jesus’ baptism, after he has healed multitudes, after he has taught and debated and cast out demons, after he has traveled and gathered followers. Jesus returns home to bring healing, to bring the good news of God’s reign, and to teach.
At first his home community is astounded – the word here can also be translated as surprised, or amazed, or shocked. They might be asking themselves, how can this be the same person we thought we knew? Where did he learn all of this?
And these questions could hold the possibility of wonder, of curiosity, of hospitality. They could lead to questions like, how did this community form him in a way that allowed for this transformation? What relationships were formed here that caused him to come back, to want to share these gifts with the people who raised him?
Because Mark’s Gospel starts right in with Jesus as an adult, baptized by John, we know the least about how Jesus’ identity as fully divine and fully human might work in this context. We don’t hear any childhood stories, any birth stories, any stories of his conception. And so, I think it’s safe to say, in Mark, that Jesus’ baptism and ministry really did transform him. He is coming home as someone who is different, now, than the person who left Nazareth, than the person his community thought they knew.
Just like there is always tension when someone has changed, and they return to a context that hasn’t changed in the same ways, the reaction of Jesus’ community to his new way of being in the world shifts from astonishment to offense – which can also be understood as falling away, as displeasure, as judging unfavorably and harshly. They begin asking, who does this carpenter think he is? Does he think he’s better than us? How dare he change – weren’t we good enough for him?
In this instance, the shift from astonishment to offense is in specific response to Jesus and his work. But I think the response points to a deeper insecurity in the community about change and transformation, which comes out sideways, and impacts the ministry Jesus is able to do in his hometown. His community might be scared at how quickly he’s changed, how quickly it is harder to recognize him. They might be asking what his change reflects on their own community – was Jesus nurtured in a way that allowed him to transform, or was the community less welcoming than they had thought, forcing him to leave? Individuals might be thinking about their own growth and change, and might be comparing themselves to Jesus. There might be some in the community who are jealous of Jesus and who he is now. And these insecurities show up in a way that make it so they can’t, or won’t, meet Jesus where he’s at, and instead try to define him based on his past, to hold onto who they thought he was, instead of who he is.
This snapshot of Jesus returning to his hometown invites us to reflect on change and ask ourselves: where are we like Jesus? Who are we now that we weren’t 5 years ago, 10 years ago? How do we return to our communities, to share what we’ve learned, how we’ve grown? How do we increase our personal and collective capacity for transformation and change in response to God?
And it invites us to ask ourselves: where are we like the Nazarenes? Where do we view those who have changed with suspicion, or hostility? Where has our curiosity and hospitality shifted to displeasure at ideas or attitudes that differ from our embedded beliefs of who we think people should be? And what are the consequences of being like the Nazarenes?
Because the Nazarenes experience real spiritual consequences for their unbelief in Jesus’ transformation and growth. Jesus cannot work deeds of power here. This is a strange part of the text, because it says that he can’t work deeds of power, and then immediately says that he laid his hands on a few people who were ill and cured them. And it’s Jesus’ turn to be astonished, this time at his community’s unbelief – even after they see proof of his healing work, even after they witness his power, and his transformation. I do wonder if this healing is not categorized as a deed of power because of what we explored last week with the story of the hemorrhaging woman: that Jesus’ need and capacity to heal is so great that it pours out of him, is pulled out of him, and so it is closer to a fact of his existence than a deed of power.
Regardless, his community overall is closed off to his work, to his ministry, to his prophetic witness. Their outrage, their fear, their discomfort, is stronger than their curiosity or their hospitality. It makes sense to me that this story of Jesus returning to his hometown as a prophet is paired with the sending of the twelve, who are being sent out to share the good news of God and the call for repentance.
Prophetic witness is often discomforting, since it asks those receiving to do potentially challenging, hopefully transformative, personal and community work. The burden here is not on the prophet to make their witness more palatable, the burden is on the community – they can accept what is being said or not, and that doesn’t change the truth of the prophetic witness. Jesus can’t control whether or not his community listens to him, and he doesn’t compromise his witness for their sake. And the disciples, likewise, can’t control whether or not people take seriously what they are sharing. They can’t control if they are welcomed or not, or how people live out their faith in God.
God doesn’t limit God’s work or God’s grace, but we sometimes do – we put limits, conditions, we’ll change but only this much, we’ll respond to God but only if it benefits us in certain ways. And again, that’s not a reflection on God – it’s a reflection on us, and on our relationship to God, to community, to transformation.
As we continue to re-learn how to be together, how to share space with each other, I would invite us into a space of curiosity, wonder, and amazement. How have we, individually and collectively, grown and transformed in the last year? In the last 10 years? In the last 200 years? Where have we stayed stagnant, when we might’ve needed movement? How have we responded to God, and when have we ignored God? How can we continue to let ourselves and others in our community grow and change and share their gifts and identities, even if those gifts or identities are different than what we expect, or what we’re used to?
Beloveds of God, we are in a moment for trying new things. For taking comfort in God, not in a return to the broken way-the-world-was. For building relationships, and communities, in new ways. For noticing how much we have changed already in response to God’s love and forgiveness, and for exploring where God is calling us to transform next. For staying curious, and amazed, and rapt in wonder at how God is present with and among us. For taking comfort in God, for naming the hard and grief-filled things, and for being together. Amen.
Reed Fowler 