July 7, 2024
Pentecost 7, Year B
Epiphany, Winnipeg
Mark 6:1-13
“He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.” Did you ever think of that? Jesus had a hometown.
He left that place and came to his hometown, where he was raised by Mary and Joseph. As he walks through town on the way to his own house, he passes the place where he grew up. He remembers, and things flash back to mind each time he walks by. He remembers what it was like growing up there, how his home had a smell that only his home had, and how he’d hear birds outside the window when he woke up in the morning. He remembers hearing his mom and dad teach him how to say those words his own ancestors had been saying each morning for as long as anyone could remember: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is God alone, is one God.” He can hear them telling him stories about people with names like Eve and and Abraham and Rebecca and Isaiah. Names like Ruth and Amos. Being Jewish was in the air he breathed, and he first breathed that air in that home in that town. He remembers as he walks through his hometown.
He can hear the sound of playing with his brothers, and he can certainly hear the sound of arguing his brothers because it’s a child’s job, or so it seems, to love their siblings and not get along now and then. He always found his sisters a mystery because their lives and everything about them seemed different, and he never really knew them because he spent so much time in his dad’s workshop.
He comes to his hometown and walks the streets, and he feels so at home but he feels so much not at home at the same time. This past while everything has changed for him, and this thing is going on where he’ll lay his hands on someone who is sick and they’ll just get better. Just like that. Someone who had been sick for years and years even just touched his coat, just a few days ago, and right away she was made well again, and he didn’t even know what had happened until he had some strange feeling he’d never had before that some kind of power had gone out of him. And there was the time when a man who just seemed so out of his mind came running up to Jesus out of a cemetery, and he called Jesus the Son of the Most High God. And Jesus asked who he was and a chorus of voices answered from that one mouth, “We’re as many as a whole army.” And Jesus told that whole army of demons to leave, and they did. Everything has changed for him lately, and sometimes it’s just so weird that he simply tells them not to tell anybody. Just don’t let them know.
And on top of all that, the word on the street is that he’s spending his time with all sorts of…questionable people with questionable reputations.
How do you walk the streets of your hometown, where people have always known you as Mary’s kid and have wondered in secret whether Joseph really was your dad….how do you walk the streets of your hometown when so much has changed and your life has taken such different turns and you can’t help but wonder whether you’re the same person you were when you left? And when you know that those same people who have known you since you were a kid are saying the same things themselves? They’ve heard what you’ve been doing, and they say the kind of thing so many people have said: “That’s Mary’s kid, right? Who does he think he is?
It just sort of struck me when I first read this again this week. Jesus had a hometown. Apart from his dying and rising - which is of course the biggest piece of the story - all we hear is a handful of stories about miracles and teaching, maybe a debate here and there. We only hear about a few things he’s done, sort of like an actor’s bio in the program at the theatre. Just a list of credits, with nothing to fill in the gaps between the accomplishments. Things like what it was like to grow up somewhere, in that house over there with those people, in that neighbourhood or that town.
When he walks through that hometown and knows what they’re thinking and saying about him, he finally says to his lifetime neighbours, “Prophets are honoured, but not in their own town, not in their own family, not in their own home.” So he turns around and leaves his home town. Rather than pressing the point, rather than trying to convince anyone that he’s really the same hometown boy or that he’s changed but still will be just fine as a neighbour, he just turns around and walks away. Walks away with a dozen or so friends, some men and a few women who are part of his circle, and they go off to the other villages to see if they’ll find a welcome there. He tells them to go into those villages and do what he does. And if they find that they’re not welcome? They can just walk away.
I guess that’s not a peppy place to wind up on a summer Sunday morning. But I think there are a few important things going on here.
The first is something like this. When Jesus sends his disciples into the neighbouring towns to do what he’s been doing, he gives them instructions and also makes it pretty clear that what they’re trying to do might not work out. In some weird way, that’s good news for us, for anyone. We get these messages all the time that say things like “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again,” or “You can do anything if you put your mind to it,” or even “God helps those who help themselves.” We get these messages that say that succeeding is the most important thing, and that success is ours if we just work hard enough for it.
But we know that’s not true. So Jesus says, right from the start, “You know, it might not work out. People might not warm up to your efforts, or the things you’re trying to do just don’t seem to be happening.” And if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed, or that you’re any less a person. I think we need to hear that and remember that. God is not looking on and waiting for you, or for me, or for us to be successful and effective. God is not even looking on us as the church and waiting for us to be successful and effective because we’ve tried hard enough and figured out just what to do. God is living with us and loving us and welcoming us. When things work out well. When nothing seems to go right. When we thrive. When we fade.
The other bit of good news here is that when what we’re trying to do isn’t working out, it’s OK to walk away. Jesus doesn’t send out his disciples to wear themselves out trying to convince the world to welcome them, or to keep on and keep on when it’s clear that persistence is futile. Sometimes it’s OK to walk away from what’s not working out. God is not watching and waiting to see if we’ve tried hard enough and kept at it enough. God is living with us and loving us and welcoming us. And God is always keeping on with it, even when we can’t.
Maybe it’s just as simple as this: We are sent into the world to do what Jesus does. Most of us will probably never heal someone just by touching them, or cast out demons…you know, like real demons. But we’re sent into the world
for the good of the world, so we care about things and act for things like justice and peace and kindness and hospitality and compassion. And it’s not up to us to save the world; God has already done that, and not by being powerful and successful and winning over all the neighbouring towns. God has already done all that in a way that we’ll never really get our heads around: by taking on flesh in Jesus; becoming weak and dying. By giving up power. Like Paul said in that reading from Second Corinthians today, God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. In our weakness, in Jesus’ weakness. In Jesus’ living, dying, and rising, God has already saved the world. It’s not up to us.
What a relief.
And one more thing: Jesus sends his followers out two by two. Never alone. That’s why there’s more than one of us here this morning – so that we never need to experience the frustrations or struggles, or the joys and the celebrations, all alone.
Go back to Jesus’ hometown for a minute now. Go to your own hometown too. Imagine Jesus walking back through that place where he grew up over all those youngest years of his. Now we can’t presume to put thoughts in Jesus’ mind, but we can guess and we can imagine that Jesus also walks through that town and sees it, and the people there, and the life there, as broken and beautiful and beloved by God. And as God’s hometown too. Like all the places we go, like all the places we live. We spend our days living and walking around in the presence of God. We spend our days living and walking around in God’s hometown, all around us.