Scripture: Psalm 42; Mark 6: 1-13
I can see them now, sitting on a bench like the ones across the street, the ones that
provide a little spot of hospitality in our corner of the city, the ones where almost any
time of the day I see people sitting, drinking sodas or smoking cigarettes, watching the
people go by, sharing the latest bit of news, or reading the paper.
I can see them now, sitting on a bench like that in the town square of Nazareth,
sitting under a big old fig tree, a tree that's so old it shades the bench no matter what
time of day it is.
I can hear them too, three local gossips who have met on the bench to share the latest
bits of scandal and hearsay.
"Soldiers were at the Jacob's house last night! They hauled someone off to prison
but I couldn't see who it was."
"I hear Herod's raising taxes again. He says he needs more money to run improve
the schools."
"I wish that Stephen would either move out of town or join a different synagogue.
He disagrees with everything I think is important. We don't need people like him around
here."
"Did you hear the latest about Mary and Joseph's son? He's been breaking Sabbath
laws and bringing disgrace on his home town. He's forgotten his place. His parents must be
so embarrassed."
"I understand he told some unclean spirits to leave a man who was always howling
and hitting himself with stones. And you know what? The spirits left the man, went into a
big herd of pigs, and all 2,000 pigs ran off a cliff into the sea. I bet the Gentile who
owned those pigs was pretty upset."
"Are you talking about the same Mary and Joseph's son that I know?," says
one. "The carpenter's family who live on my street? It sure is hard to believe that
your neighbor or your neighbor's child is some kind of prophet from God.
"I remember when he was a little tyke. He was playing in the street with some
other children when a group of soldiers came around the corner on horses. As he ran to get
out of their way, he dropped a little wooden toy and the horses trampled it. I remember
how he cried and how Joseph scooped him up and dried his tears. Almost right away he was
out laughing and playing with the other children again. It sure is hard to think of that
little child growing up to be a prophet."
"Well," says another. "He's coming home next week. He's going to preach
at the synagogue on Saturday. We can check him out ourselves. After all, does it make
sense that the God who created heaven and earth would show up in some neighborhood kid? In
somebody we know? The omnipotent, all-powerful, almighty God in some neighborhood kid who
used to hit a ball through my window? No. God doesn't work like that."
"Jesus came to his own country; and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath
he began to teach in the synagogue; and many who heard him were astonished, saying,
"Where did this man get all this? What is the wisdom given to him? What mighty works
are wrought by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James
and Joseph and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took
offense at him. And Jesus said to them "A prophet is not without honor, except in his
own country, and among his own kin and in his own house." And he could do no mighty
work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he
marveled because of their unbelief."
- Mark 6: 1-6
I can imagine the gossip who lives down the street from Mary and Joseph, sitting on the
bench under the fig tree again a few days later. A salesman from out of town sits down on
the far end of the bench.
He doesn't say anything for awhile. He notices the Nazarene seems preoccupied and
distressed. The salesman is a compassionate man.
"Is something wrong?" he asks.
"I don't know," the man answers. And he says to this perfect stranger what he
would never say to his two friends. "I'm upset, sad about what happened last week in
the synagogue."
The salesman looks puzzled. "Why, what happened?"
"Haven't you heard? It's all over town! Where do you worship, anyway?"
"Oh, in a congregation far away, over by the Arroyo Seco."
"In that case, I'll tell you what happened." And the gossip tells the
salesman the whole story of the neighborhood youngster who had grown up and made a name
for himself out in the world and then came home to be rejected by his own people.
"Hmm ... Maybe you reacted that way because you watched him grow up. Familiarity
breeds contempt," reflects the salesman. "Or maybe you were jealous of what he's
accomplished. After all, he seems to have overreached the notoriety and wisdom
craftspeople are supposed to have."
"No, I thought of that. It was something deeper. There are two details you need to
remember:
"First of all, when Jesus began speaking, we all marveled at how wise he'd become.
People even talked out loud in the service: 'Where'd he get all this? He's become so wise.
He's done such marvelous deeds of power!'
"And the other detail is that Jesus did manage to heal a few people, even after
the rest of us turned against him. I know one of those he healed. I saw her face change
when he touched her. Her eyes shone with a brightness and peace I hadn't seen in years.
But we discounted what we saw, and left, grumbling and disbelieving and running him down.
"I can't shake the memory of how he moved us when he spoke. And that woman he
healed before he left town. I see her shining eyes everywhere I go.
"No it wasn't familiarity or jealousy that caused us to chew up Jesus and spit him
out. Through that woman's shining eyes I see it was something more: in this young man, God
- the Creator and Ruler of the Universe - was coming closer to us than God had ever been
before. And I don't believe we wanted God to get that close.
"As long as God is only the creator of the heavens and the earth, my friends and I
can sit on this bench and talk about people any way we want to. We can be rude, arrogant
and self-righteous, even violent and abusive. We can turn people into objects to be used
and analyzed, dissected and discarded. Then on the Sabbath, we can thank God for the stars
and the moon and the sun and the figs, and return here the next day and pick up our
conversations and our actions right where we left off.
"But if God can approach us through our neighbor or our neighbor's child, or our
friend, or wife or partner or colleague, or a niece or a nephew or one of our own
children, or the person seated beside us in a meeting or in worship, we can never again
just take them for granted. If that's how God acts, then we have to consider every single
human being a potential prophet, a vessel of God, a sign of holy love. Do you have any
idea what that would do to the conversations that take place under this fig tree?
"We did not believe in Jesus because we thought we knew him so well. It was
inconceivable that God could be at work in the commonplace. If God could be among us in
Jesus the carpenter we watched grow up, we can no longer gossip about our neighbors, for
they carry the image of God.
"We can no longer discount the word of challenge from someone encouraging us to
change for they carry the image of God.
"We can no longer discount the word of comfort given with an outstretched hand,
for it carries the image of God.
"We can no longer tell people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, for
they carry the image of God.
"We can no longer abuse wives and molest children and rape women, for they carry
the Imago Dei, the image of God.
"If God comes to us in a neighbor kid grown up, then our attitudes and theologies
and structures based on power-over-others go out the window. God was not aggressively
looming over us in Jesus in the synagogue last week. I realize now that what was so
disconcerting was that God was standing among us with us in Jesus, full of compassion for
our broken places and judgement for the ways we break others. God came close to us last
week."
The wind blows through the branches over head and the two men fall silent until the
Nazarene says to the salesman: "What about your congregation back home, near the
Arroyo Seco? Will they let God come close to them?
"Can they see when God approaches them through the adult they remember as a child
calling, 'Mommy, Mommy, Daddy, Daddy.'
"Can they see when God approaches them over a cup of coffee with a friend who is
telling them the hard, but clear truth about their life?
"Can they see when God approaches them through a child asking for help?
"Can they see when God approaches them through a neighbor seeking support for a
just but unpopular cause?
"Can great wonders happen there because they are open to God, who approaches them
through the most unlikely people?
"Or is your place like our Nazareth, where Jesus marveled because of their
disbelief'?"
A clap of thunder and the first patter of rain on the tree overhead sends the Nazarene
running for home and the salesman for the hotel. As the salesman sits in his room watching
the rain, his mind drifts to his home, and he prays:
"O God, who came to us in Jesus of Nazareth, keep us open to your presence in each
other, that our risen savior will have no reason to marvel because of our disbelief.
Amen."
