When Jesus goes home, he’s surprised by how he’s treated. How they’ve judged him without really knowing him. This is our contrast for what it means to love.
They take offense and we move on from there.
Proper 9B | Mark 6:1-13
When we moved down to Georgia some years ago, we knew fitting in wouldn’t be easy. We’re yankees, of course, and I grew up above the 45th Parallel which makes me a sort-of second-level yankee. Kind of like being from Atlanta is more “true south” than Nashville and Savannah more than Atlanta!
But there was this phrase my rector would use to describe the astonishment people had about us. “I actually liked them when we got to know them.”
There are certain situations when a backhanded compliment is still a compliment. And this was one of them.
But it named a view of the world I didn’t actually believe was out there: that given where I came from and what they continued to assume about me they would feel justified in disliking me before knowing me. Like judging without all the facts—just assumptions.
It’s this dynamic of judging without knowing that leads this town to its infamous position. They make it the only place Jesus goes where the love of God isn’t found.
Home Again
Jesus comes home and goes to preach in the synagogue and rather than hear what he’s sharing about the love of God, the people are distracted. It says they’re “astonished” in the NRSV, but think of it as a sort of skeptical surprise. He’s saying things which surprise them, but they don’t trust it.
Really, they dismiss it because he’s talking like he went to Harvard and we all know that Joe’s boys couldn’t get in there. Even if they had the cash, they don’t have the…gravitas.
Now, let’s take a step back and get the context of this. Jesus has been healing people and doing amazing things. And at the end of chapter 4, he’s silencing a storm which freaks out even his most devoted followers.
Then he meets a man who has a legion (think thousands!) of demons and Jesus gets those demons out of the man and over a cliff to drown in the sea. Then he heals a woman hemorrhaging for 12 years while simultaneously raising a Roman girl from the dead.
So where we’re at in the story is Jesus has taken this healing thing to the next level. He’s doing incredible things with people who are longing for God’s love, protection, and healing. He’s blowing their minds with the beauty of God’s mercy.
And then he comes home and finds his old neighbors sourpuss grumping about Jesus because they think they know him based on his brothers.
Why? Because they never believed in him. And refuse to connect with him.
And they took offense at him.
That’s what it says. “And they took offense at him” but for the life of me I can’t see why. It doesn’t seem like he said anything controversial or what he was doing in the synagogue. But it has a lot to say about them. Their skepticism and evaluation of him based on his family.
I’m really liking that phrase “take offense”. It sounds like my son taking the last cupcake. Or playing with his friends where people take turns or take someone else’s turn. Almost like competing over the opportunity, like a thief taking what’s on the table, out in the open.
They take offense, but it doesn’t sound like it was an exchange or an established competition. Jesus came as a friend and they treated him as an enemy. He was judged and ignored before he even opened his mouth.
Power — Jesus couldn’t or wouldn’t?
Then what happens?
“And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.”
Did it really just say that Jesus couldn’t do those big amazing things he’s been doing? He couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?
This distinction is a bit of a false choice—to argue about the difference strains the purpose of the story. But stick with me a minute.
Think about this difference between couldn’t and wouldn’t. It’s a lot like this familiar question. “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it create a sound?” A satisfying answer can be found, if we can agree upon the terms. Which is usually what we’re fighting over.
Now, in that question, “does it make a sound?” I am comfortable with the answer being “no.” Because sound is the process of hearing and interpreting the waves created. A tree falling creates waves, that without any ears to interpret, don’t become that thing we call sound. They just bounce around until they run out of gas.
Sound takes a creator and a hearer. And all the interpretation is in the ear’s hearing.
It takes a relationship to work.
This sounds like a foolish exercise, of course. The kind of thing we fight over for the sake of it. But just as fighting over the particular in the sound case, fighting over “couldn’t” or “wouldn’t” misses the real point Mark appears to be making by including it.
Jesus and his followers aren’t building the kin-dom here in the midst of people who won’t lift the proverbial hammer or screwdriver. The point is that Mark doesn’t pin the problem on Jesus or his disciples, but on these unwelcoming people. On this two-way street—they’re driving down the middle.
Like the sound wave needing a hearer to become a sound, Jesus’s deeds of great power are not singular in time and space, they are communal and participatory. People need to participate in them! They only count when there is a togetherness. The point then isn’t “can he” but is “why doesn’t he?”
Jesus’s miracles aren’t for winning people over or convincing the unbeliever, but awakening the curious! Those with eyes to see and ears to hear. The people who actually would participate in them.
All the Other Villages
Contrast this experience with what happens in the second half of the story. Leaving this place full of negativity and skepticism, Jesus and the disciples get back on the road. And all of these other villages are excited to experience the love of God.
The mission continues. Jesus empowers the disciples to do all the stuff Jesus can do. And soon they’ll be named apostles, to do all the stuff Jesus can do without his physical presence.
It’s like Jesus’s hometown is a black hole, sucking all the good from Jesus and creating nothing from it. While all over the countryside, people young and old, slave and free, semitic or gentile, rich or poor are being drawn into the beautiful mercy of the Christ.
This is the contrast. All that love out there. And Jesus’s hometown is where God’s work in the world goes to die. This black hole of anxiety and skepticism and fear and so much more are all things which get in the way of God’s love. The place where the people take the offense and give skepticism in place of hope, derision in place of love, disrespect in place of dignity.
How easy it is to contrast, but let us not dwell there because it is from there that Jesus instructs and empowers his disciples, his followers, to go out and find those people eager to connect. To find those people who will engage with them to build the kin-dom.
And they do.
My friends, we are not a crowd. This place is not a town. Do not let this be a place of dishonest skepticism and competitive distrust. We are followers of Jesus. Not just disciples, but apostles, empowered by the Christ. Every one of us and together, all of us.
And our mission is to share the love of God and build the kin-dom. And we do that with regular dinner parties, open to all, and inviting anyone looking, searching for God. That they might see you and recognize Jesus for who he truly is.