This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 7/14/24, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: Mark 6:1-13. You can listen to the audio, or keeping scrolling to read my manuscript. (The spoken sermon differs from the written text.)
Mark 6 begins with the line, “[Jesus] left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.” The place that Jesus is coming from is the region of Capernaum, an important city in the north of Israel. Jesus had been away to the east, across the Sea of Galilee in the land of the Gerasenes.
In the last chapter he had a run in with the famous Gerasene demoniac, whom he healed of his legion of unclean spirits; Jesus cast them out of the man, but allowed them to enter into the flocks of pigs nearby, causing a stampede and resulting in the local inhabitants begging Jesus to leave their region.
At that point, he’d come back to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and he performed some impressive miracles in Capernaum. He healed a woman suffering from long-term bleeding, and he raised a 12-year-old girl from the dead! Jesus is establishing a powerful ministry in the far north of Israel, in Capernaum and beyond the Sea of Galilee.
Now, as we begin Mark 6, Jesus is changing course. He’s headed south, to his hometown of Nazareth. I’m noticing the geographical movement here, because the whole north of Israel was considered a backwater – “flyover country.” Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, was considered perhaps the most backwater place in the whole backwater. It seems that even other Galileans considered it to be an armpit.
So, strictly speaking, by returning home to Nazareth, Jesus is headed into a less-important, more socially marginal area. Yet the direction of Jesus’ movement catches my attention: because he’s headed south now. He’s still in the backwoods, but his movement is towards Jerusalem.
After this trip south, to Nazareth, Mark gives us several more chapters where Jesus and his disciples are wandering in the North – up to Caesaria Phillipi, and even beyond the borders of Israel to Tyre (modern-day Lebanon). A lot of important events are still to come, including more miraculous healing and feeding of the people, challenging encounters with Gentiles, and several revelations to the disciples about Jesus’ identity and the hard road that comes next.
But for now, here in Mark chapter six, Jesus is briefly making a move deeper into the heart of Israel. Closer to Jerusalem. He’s headed back home.
Nazareth is the place that Jesus grew up. His family is there. Nazareth is not a big place. Almost certainly fewer than a thousand people; maybe just a few hundred. Folks there knew Jesus, and they had known him since he was knee high to a grasshopper.
Jesus had been making a splash out in the world. Crowds were following him; people were being healed, lives transformed. Jesus’ actions had caused great joy, but also shockwaves of controversy. Jesus had already gotten himself into plenty of conflict with the religious leaders in the places he’d gone. The Pharisees and the Herodians were already plotting to kill him. Jesus is returning to his home village as something of a celebrity. Famous? Notorious? Mysterious? Yes.
But Jesus was not mysterious to the people he grew up with. The villagers of Nazareth were unimpressed with his fame and notoriety. To them, he’s just another kid whose snot everyone has cleaned up.
Upon his return to Nazareth, Jesus began teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and it says that “many who heard him were astounded” by the teaching that Jesus gave. It says they were “astounded,” which at first glance sounds like maybe a positive reaction. The next words out of their mouths, according to Mark, were “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 this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” Still ambiguous: Are they praising Jesus, or mocking him? Mark clarifies by writing: “They took offense at him.”
When Mark says that they’re “astounded”, I think that a fair paraphrase might be, “They were floored, absolutely blown away, that the little boy they knew as Jesus had come back as a man – and was so full of himself that he thought he could teach them a thing or two.”
“Who does this guy think he is?”
The people of Nazareth believe they know Jesus. They know where he was born. They know who he was born to, and under what conditions. (Calling him the “son of Mary” implies that they may have considered him a bastard; it’s unclear what happened to Joseph.)
The villagers of Nazareth saw Jesus get his diapers changed. Jesus ate food off of their plates. And now he’s Mister Big Shot? Now he’s going to teach everyone about God and truth and righteousness?
“Just who do you think you are, young man?”
Mark says that the audience at the synagogue was “astounded” at Jesus’ presumptuousness – the idea that he could instruct them! And Jesus has a similar response to his hometown. It says that he was “amazed at their unbelief,” and that he “could do no deed of power [in Nazareth], except that he lay his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”
I like to imagine that, by the way: Jesus being amazed. Isn’t it interesting to imagine Jesus being amazed? Here’s God’s chosen one, the one that we know is the messiah, but he’s not a demi-god; he’s a human. He’s human enough to be blown away by an unexpected situation. Who would have thought that coming home would result in such rejection? It seems like Jesus was surprised. And though it doesn’t say so here in our text, I’ll bet he was sad, too.
After this rejection at his home synagogue, Jesus went out into the surrounding villages, teaching. It sounds like he went out alone, because he also divides his twelve disciples into six groups of two; he sends them out to do the same work he is doing: To heal the sick, to cast out unclean spirits, and to issue a call to repentance.
Jesus sent the disciples out with nothing but the clothing on their backs. No food, no bag, no money – just a walking stick, a promise that God would provide for them every step of the way, and authority to cast out unclean spirits.
Jesus left his hometown of Nazareth, driven out by the rejection and unbelief of his family members. Jesus left and scattered his disciples to continue the ministry in more favorable locations.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this scattering action that Jesus did here. There are so many metaphors that could be applied to it. Maybe it’s like a seed pod. It has to “die” and be broken up, so that all the seeds can fly and find the soil where they can take root. In this metaphor, Jesus and the disciples had to be dislodged from Nazareth, so that they could take the gospel farther and wider than they ever thought possible. They moved like water, flowing wherever there was an opening for the good news.
Jesus gave the disciples instructions on what to do if they met resistance in their travels: Don’t waste your time with those who reject the message. Don’t try to argue with people, and don’t get upset. Dust off your feet and move on. There are those who will receive you, there are those who are ready to hear and believe. Get to them as quickly as you can; don’t get bogged down by arguments with hardened hearts.
These instructions seem directly related to Jesus’ experience in his hometown of Nazareth, his experience of rejection and loss of spiritual power. It says that Jesus “could do no deed of power [in Nazareth],” because of the unbelief of the people there. It doesn’t say, “Jesus didn’t want to.” Mark didn’t write that, “Jesus decided the good news was better preached elsewhere.” It wasn’t, “there was no one to heal in Nazareth, so Jesus moved on.” No: There was a need in Nazareth, there were sick who needed healing and repentance to be proclaimed. But Nazareth wasn’t good soil. The word of God wouldn’t grow there. So rather than trying to turn bad soil into good, Jesus scattered the seed abroad. He sent the disciples out and took the good news to anyone who would hear it.
This is a very challenging passage to me, because it raises the question: At what point do I give up on the things that aren’t working? At what point do I say, “this community just doesn’t get it, and they’re never going to get it?” At what point do I despair of my family, my city, my church, and say, “in order to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus, I have to move on. The word of God can’t grow here”?
At what point do we give up on the people we love? At what point do we step away from the relationships, the communities, the places that formed us? How do we know that we’re being faithful to God, and not just being narcissists?
This is a hard passage for me, because in this time and place, in this moment in history, everything seems to be spiraling towards dissolution. Everything feels like it’s being ripped apart. The culture we live in encourages us to drop any bond, any relationship, any situation that doesn’t completely and unconditionally affirm me, my identity, my perspective, my voice, my comfort.
So on the one hand, it seems undeniable that Jesus’ mission at this point in Mark required a scattering. It required letting go of the familiar and comfortable. It demanded a stripping down and an adventure into unknown territory, beyond family, hometown, and even the synagogue.
On the other hand, we here in urban 21st-century North America live in what is possibly the most stripped down, isolated, lonely society to have ever existed. Is the Holy Spirit really calling us to perpetuate this cultural pattern of breaking down virtually everything – family, friends, churches?
It’s genuinely not an easy question. It’s not a simple “yes, always” or “no, never.” We have faith that God is calling us to build something beautiful; to participate in a new creation. But in Jesus’ day, a big part of that creative process was brutal deconstruction. What could be more explosive than Jesus’ fights with the religious authorities and his death on the cross? Jesus had to get very low before he could be raised up, and his separation from all those earthly institutions that tried to define and contain him – family, synagogue, national identity, popular piety – was a part of that process.
Even now, with the dislocation we’re experiencing in our culture, it must be true that sometimes the only way to be faithful is to step away from unfaithful situations. Sometimes it’s healthy to “marvel at the unbelief” of the people around us, and choose to step out in faith – to sow the seed elsewhere, where it can find good soil.
But how do we make that determination? How do we know when we’re stepping away from the right reasons, and not just because our society encourages us to cut ties whenever things get uncomfortable or inconvenient?
I don’t have an easy answer. This is a question I struggle with a lot. But my hunch is that, in our cultural context, we would do well to be suspicious of the instinct to cut and run. In a society that is spinning apart, where are the opportunities to gather rather than to scatter? Where are the openings for us to live and share the good news within the relationships and communities where we already find ourselves?
And sure – sometimes it won’t work. Sometimes the best answer is to keep on trucking and find a better friend, a better church, a more loving family. But is it always? Is it usually? Is that the default? In times such as ours, might there be joy and opportunity in sticking it out in difficult situations, where it might be tempting to flee?
Then there’s the flip side of the question. How often have we made ourselves a difficult situation that others are tempted to flee from? Have we ourselves been stumbling blocks to others?
Mark invites us to ask ourselves some tough questions as Berkeley Friends Church: Are we the best soil we can be? Are we a community where Jesus is welcomed in every person who walks through the door? Are we a community that can receive good news, even if it is uncomfortable, unexpected, or even disruptive? Do we welcome the young, the marginal, the socially awkward, the infirm? Do we welcome people who challenge us? Are we a place where new life can grow?
I hope so. I pray so.
As we enter into a time of open worship, I invite you to pray with me, that the Lord would teach us to be good soil. That God would show us how to be a community where the presence of Christ in every person is welcome. A community where we love one another, as God first loved us.