July 9, 2006
(Fifth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 9)

Even Jesus Had Tough Days

By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

Ezekiel 2:1-7  •  Psalm 123  •  2 Corinthians 12:2-10  •  Mark 6:1-6
(From The Lectionary Page)

Have you ever had one of those days when all you could really say was, “The best I can do is play the cards that I’ve been dealt.” Looking at today’s lessons, that’s pretty much the way I feel. These lessons don’t provide me much, and I realize that even as I say this you must be getting pretty excited about this sermon. I’m going to do my best with these lessons, and may God have mercy on us all.

These lessons all have something to do with speaking prophetically in the name of the Lord, and it is no stretch to say that the lessons do not paint an attractive picture. Ezekiel describes his call as the Lord saying to him, I am sending you to a people who have rebelled against me, the One True God. For generations they have rebelled, they are stubborn and impudent . . . and I want you to speak to them on my behalf. It was not the most attractive invitation to a new job one might write, and since Ezekiel responded, we can only guess how bad things were in his present job that caused to accept the new role.

St. Paul writes that just when he was enjoying his ministry in the name of Jesus, he received a thorn in the flesh, an affliction of such proportions that he talked with God about it three times, and finally learned this affliction would in fact make Paul a more effective servant. Here a prospective servant might not find the benefit package all that attractive.

And then, there is the story of Jesus coming home to Nazareth which we will get to in a moment. All of these lessons speak of the fullness of what is in store for those who carry out God’s call to serve. And since that is precisely the call of the baptized, these lessons remind us all of what is before us, and what is required of us.

When I was a seminarian my field ed parish rolls listed as a parishioner W. Clement Stone, whose philosophy was synonymous with Norman Vincent Peale’s "Power of Positive Thinking." The curate in this parish was asked to pray at the Fourth of July festivities on the village green, an event that drew hundreds, in part because it was a command performance for all Girl and Boy Scouts. Following the curate’s invocation and singing The Star Spangled Banner, the day’s address was given by none other than Mr. Stone. Father Kirk tells the story this way:

I shared the stage with Clement Stone, that power of positive thinking millionaire insurance guru. I was asked to pray, and combined the Fourth of July prayer with the Prayer For Young Persons on p. 829 in the Prayer Book, reads in part: "...Help them to take failure, not as a measure of their worth, but as a chance for a new start."

Afterwards, I was set upon by the disciples of Clement Stone berating me for making failure sound okay rather than extolling the virtues of absolute success.

One gift found in these lessons is the clear indication that even Jesus failed and needed to start again. Absolute success is a fairy tale.

According to Mark’s story, Jesus returns home to Nazareth. As a lad, in the town synagogue, they had been amazed at the way he read and commented on the scriptures with authority.

Now, after teaching and preaching in the area, he comes to home where one could reasonably expect to be complimented if not paraded about. But instead, Jesus is solidly rejected. Mark says that because these people know his mother and siblings, they believe that in and of itself means that he has nothing to say to them.

And there is a chilling line here at verse 5: he could do no deed of power there. Scholar Gordon Lathrop says that the Greek uses a double negative to signal how intense was this feeling, so that the English might more accurately read: Jesus could do absolutely no deed of power there at all.

But then Mark contradicts himself adding except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. Despite the amazing disbelief, the out right obstinacy not unlike the attitude Ezekiel was first called to confront, some power does break out of Jesus and a few were healed.

In this story Mark is holding before us the essence of the Paschal Mystery: Christ has died, Christ is risen. Hidden in the rejection by his hometown is the revelation of Cross. And found in the bit of healing that did occur is the revelation of the resurrection.

Jesus the carpenter -- more accurately ‘the builder’-- gifted with wisdom, proves and perhaps learns, that building the reign of God happens less in large dramatic events, and more often amidst the intimate challenges that come almost daily, where people find it hard to believe because their lives are so hard and so rough that they simply can’t risk being hurt any more. Weariness, oppression, poverty, hunger, it all takes a toll, and any one can undercut our capacity to believe.

Another possibility for the amazing lack of unbelief is that the people in Nazareth could not hear what Jesus was saying because they had already relegated him to secure and definite pigeonholes, and they were unwilling to take him out of those secure places and allow him to stretch their boundaries of comfort.

If this is so, then Mark the evangelist is challenging us to see ourselves as the people of Nazareth, for we are inclined to prefer Jesus say familiar things and call us to do familiar acts of service. Can you and I trust each other, as the Body of Christ, to challenge our common tendency to domesticate Jesus.

Father William Countryman writes, “Christianity, after all, was not the goal of Jesus’ ministry. The goal was a humanity renewed by forgiveness and observing toward one another a generosity founded on our recognition of God’s generosity towards us. Christianity is a blessing when it conveys that message, and a curse when it obscures it. . .”

Any day, perhaps most days, we face issues that may not mean much on the grand scale of life, but which nonetheless present great challenges to us. We are not always sure how we can face illness, the loss of income, a shift in the way things have been, or an announcement that a beloved cleric will soon be leaving our worshipping community.

In response we may doubt ourselves, or the depth of our faith, or the faithfulness of God. And then lessons like these – marvelous lessons it turns out – speak to us, help us to right ourselves, and start over, and place our trust in God, whose own Son met such resistance that he could do little good work in his hometown. Jesus understands us in hard times, and stays with us through them.

Immediately after this Gospel passage, Jesus starts over and sends out his disciples and the work they do is astounding . . .but that story must wait for next week!

In the meantime, sisters and brothers, let us hold fast to the call before us: to love and serve the Lord. God is so very good. God is faithful. We are not called to any work that we cannot perform if we are willing to work with God’s Spirit. So even if the hand we are presently holding looks grim, put on your poker face, keep the cards you have, and go all in. It’s the safest of bets. For Christ is with us all.