Mark 6:1-13
In his final novel,
published after his death in 1940, Thomas Wolfe wrote these words:
You can't go back home to your family, back home to
your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams
of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign
land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to
aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of
'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to
places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and
conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been
looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden
for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed
everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of
Time and Memory.[1]
Wolfe
was right, you know? You can’t go home again. Anyone who has spent any
measurable amount of his or her life away from home knows this is true. You can’t
go home again, because home isn’t the same—whatever you might think home is, it
isn’t once you return. Sure, there are those obvious differences—a new
Wal-Mart, the old hardware store downtown is closed—but it’s the subtle shifts
over time that carry our ideal of home away from us. The young soldier returns
from war to find his high school sweetheart engaged to another boy she met in
college, the woman who returns home to practice law only to find that her
family keeps their distance because she’s the first one with something more
than a high school diploma, the missionary on furlough cannot get comfortable
with the rapidly increasing consumerism of online shopping and in-store
pick-up, the man who has paid his debt to society and struggles with his renewed
freedom because he’s not really sure what to do in a world where his mother is
dead and his siblings all live out of state—you just can’t go home again.
Life,
like the time we use to measure and record it, marches on. Things change, and
whenever we find our feet on the familiar ground of home, we realize we aren’t
quite where we thought we were. Because you can’t go home again. Thomas Wolfe
knew that. Did Jesus?
Jesus
tried to go back home. Mark tells us so in the very first verse of our text
this morning: “He left that place [the house of Jairus, a leader in the synagogue at
the Decapolis] and came to his hometown,” Nazareth. I wonder what
compelled Jesus to return home? What compels any of us to come back home? Maybe
Jesus missed the smell of Mary’s cornbread cooking for supper. Maybe he wanted
to check in on an old friend from school who he was worried about. Perhaps
Jesus wanted to subtly walk by that shop where that girl worked, that girl who
had turned down his prom-posal; maybe he wanted to walk by that shop with that
big crowd in tow to show her just how important he was. Or maybe he just wanted
to catch up on the latest news in town, how that big-time developer was going
to put in that golf course out by the Lake (rumor was they were going to call
it the Galilean Golf Club), or how they were going to close down the old
fishing docks because they were all rotten and hazardous now. Maybe Jesus just
wanted to come back home because home was where he had hoped to rest, to
recharge, to find some sense of acceptance and belonging without folks lining
up to have their toothaches and tumors healed and their palms read. Maybe Jesus
had hoped that it would all pause for a moment when he came home, that he’d
just be Jesus, Mary’s boy, without all the weight of the expectations that came
with being the rumored messiah.
I
don’t necessarily think that’s true myself. No, I don’t think Jesus came home
to take a break. Home is the last place you go when you want to get away from
things, when it’s all piled on, when the pressure mounts; you want to get away
from everything, maybe head down to the coast or up in the mountains. You don’t
go home for that, especially when there’s a crowd following you. No, I think
Jesus went home for the same reason so many of us who’ve had our vistas
stretched, our minds broadened, our horizons expanded do—because Jesus had a
word for those back home. Like one who left home only to find that Chili’s
isn’t the only place that has fajitas and there are other places that have way better ones, perhaps Jesus returned
to his hometown because he knew those folks, and he knew they needed to hear
what he had to say too, to hear about the in-breaking of the kingdom of God.
Unfortunately,
it can be hard to talk to folks you know, especially if what you have to say
challenges something they’ve held as sacred, unbreakable, or true for so long. Like
the time I came home one Thanksgiving, sitting next to one of my family members
who I had been relatively close to for most of my life, when I heard her say
one of the most racist things I’ve heard anyone say. It was hard, hard to tell
her how horribly wrong she was, hard to think that I was somehow related to
someone who could say something so awful, hard to realize that so many at that
table agreed with her and would brush off any rebuke from me as some terrible
influence from “all that book-learnin’.” It’s hard to talk to folks you know
when you’ve got to say something they don’t like. We don’t like to hurt
feelings, to step on toes, we’d rather leave well enough alone, and keep our
disagreements to ourselves, because, after all, we have to live with these
people, see them every Sunday at church, every third Saturday at Momma’s house,
everyday at home. I’m sure it was hard for Jesus to come back to Nazareth and “On
the sabbath…teach in the synagogue,” and I bet “many who heard him were
astounded,” because Jesus no doubt had a word that would disrupt their
expectations, a word that would go against the grain of what they had all
believed up to that point, a new word. He walked right into the synagogue on
the sabbath and began to teach, and I can imagine it was hard to talk to folks
he already knew, but there is a harder thing to do. Sure, it’s hard to talk to
folks you know, but it’s even harder to speak a word to folks who know
you.
I
remember the first time I ran into someone from high school after coming home
from college, after answering God’s call to ministry. I was in the Wal-Mart in
Enterprise when I ran into Kanye and Terrance: I had gone to school with these
guys since elementary school, even lived in the same neighborhood right up
until the ninth grade. When they asked what I had been up to, why they hadn’t
seen me around town, I told them I was going to college in Birmingham, studying
religion, there was a momentary pause, then they both laughed, assuming I was
joking. When I assured them I wasn’t, our conversation got a whole lot more
awkward and was a lot shorter than it would have been otherwise.
It’s hard to speak to
folks who know you when you have something new to say, something
transformative, something prophetic and provocative. That’s why it doesn’t
surprise me in the slightest that Mark tells us “many who heard him were
astounded. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom
that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is
not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and
Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’” Then Mark
says,
“And they took offense at him.” Of course they did! This is
“Mary’s boy,” a back-handed way of pointing out his illegitimacy; otherwise,
they’d have just called him Joseph’s son. This is the carpenter who fixed that
rotted deck post, who built their bookshelves. Where does he get off telling
these fine folks about the kingdom of God? They raised him!
I mean, can’t you just
hear some old woman in the back of the synagogue standing up after Jesus said
something about giving their money to the poor or welcoming the stranger or
forgiving their enemies—can’t you just hear her saying, “Now who do you think you
are, Jesus? I changed your diapers while your momma was raising James and
Joses! You got no business telling ME about
what’s right and what’s wrong!” Can’t you just hear one of the men there, about
three or four pews back mumbling something to the man next to him like, “You
know his momma raised him better than this, but I bet if his daddy was alive he
wouldn’t be saying all this nonsense.” I can hear it. Oh yeah, it’s hard to say
a word to folks who know you, because they’ve got too much dirt on you, too
much leverage against you; they think they’ve got you figured out before your
words leave your lips. I have no doubt that’s why Jesus says to them,
"Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their
own kin, and in their own house." Because who can talk to their
kinfolks about hard things and not come away at least a little hurt or ignored?
Of course, for Jesus, the
stakes were higher than just disagreements about politics or parental
philosophies over dinner. For Jesus, this was about the Kingdom of God and its
in-breaking power for the time at hand, and the response from those who knew
him only left a void. Mark says, “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.” I don’t think it was Jesus lack of power
that resulted in his inability to do deeds of power. No, I think it had more to
do with their blind assurance that they had him figured out and that nothing he
could say or do would be able to penetrate the thick shell of their
preconceived notions of who Jesus was. I can’t say I’m too surprised that Jesus
“Then…went
about among the villages teaching,” sending the disciples out with
instructions about shaking the dust from their feet whenever they were refused.
No, I can’t say I’m too surprised that Jesus’ reaction to his hometown’s
rejection would be to carry on, to take the good news on out in the places
where they didn’t know him, where they hadn’t heard all his childhood stories, places
where his name wasn’t in the trophy case at the high school, places where they
hadn’t printed his name in the paper, places where folks would have to ask,
“Now, just where is Nazareth? Is that close to Montgomery?” No, I’m not
surprised a bit that Jesus carried on and shook the dust of his hometown from
his own sandals, because it’s hard to talk to folks you know—even harder to
talk to folks who know you. But friends, it’s necessary!
It’s necessary because
some folks never leave home. Some folks never leave the quiet comfort of their
own made-up minds. Some folks never stray too far from the driveway, because
out there—out there the world might be different, and those folks out there might not think the way we think, and those folks out there might not believe
the things we believe, and we might get awful uncomfortable around those kinds
of folks out there, so there are some people who never leave their physical or
spiritual home, who never allow the Spirit of God to stretch their horizons and
allow them to see beyond the blinders they’ve constructed. There are some
people who need us—those of us who have allowed the calling of God to lead us
into strange places, into new relationships, into unexpected spaces and new
realities—to call the ones we know and the ones who know us into the deeper
realities of God’s love and into the harder work of God’s in-breaking kingdom.
God needs us to go home and tell our friends and family there that the kingdom
of God is so much bigger than we ever imagined.
But it will be hard,
because the work of proclaiming God’s kingdom is hard. It’ll be hard all the
more because proclaiming God’s kingdom to the ones we know and the ones who
know and the ones who think they already know it all is a great challenge. It
was for Jesus. Why wouldn’t it be for us too? Just outside those doors (maybe
even inside those doors too) are folks who need to hear about the Good News of
God’s kingdom. They need to hear about God’s love for them, and they need to
hear about God’s love for everybody else too. Yours may not be the voice they
want to hear when it comes to the truths of God’s kingdom, but yours is the
voice, the life, the heart, hands, and feet that God just might use to change
their world. Amen.
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