Fifth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 9

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 9 – Year B (RCL) 2009
Ezekiel 2: 1 – 5; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12: 2 – 10; Mark 6: 1 – 13
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, July 5, 2009

HOME COMING AND HOME LEAVING

Let us pray: Jesus we look to welcome you into our lives and into our hearts. How often we neglect to invite you into the ordinary and perhaps mundane moments of our days and nights. What is there in the average day that God would want to participate in with me? We leave our prayer and adoration for you here in your house and neglect to bring it with us into our houses. You took upon you our nature and by so doing sanctified humanity and placed it into a higher realm. Help us to recognize you in all of our activities and actions – keep us mindful of your call to spread your good news not just in this place on Sunday, but also in everyplace on every day. Amen.

(SUNG) IN MY LITTLE TOWN, I GREW UP BELIEVING
GOD KEEPS HIS EYE ON US ALL
AND HE USED TO LEAN UPON ME WHEN I PLEDGED
ALLEGIANCE TO THE WALL.
LORD I RECALL
IN MY LITTLE TOWN.

How many of you here today were born and raised in this town? That probably closely represents represents what is true for the majority of of natural born American citizens. According to Census Bureau statistics only 60 percent of Americans still live in the State in which they were born – and those figures change dramatically when one looks at individual states or cities. For example, in “melting pot” places like the borough of Queens, in NY and the city of Los Angeles, in California – less than half of the residents were born in-state. For individuals living in Colorado and Arizona only one in three people were born there and in Nevada whose Los Vegas metropolitan area is the fastest growing in the nation, that number of natives still living in their hometown drops to one in five. Our world is markedly different from perhaps that of our parents, and certainly from that of our Grandparents. Those of us who grew up with the “Leave it to Beaver” image of family and home and neighborhood have had to change our perceptions of all of those social structures, and as for the realiity of that portrayal, I know that my mother never cooked dinner in high heels and pearls!

What we encounter as part of the Gospel message this morning in the continuation of the author of Mark’s account is the story of the return of the local boy made good who is, nonetheless, shunned by those who knew him best. Jesus, after performing great signs of power and witness in the regions of both the Hebrews and of the Gentiles, visits Nazareth his hometown. I think that part of the reason why this Gospel story resonates with us is because it presents a pretty universal human experience that most, if not all of us have had to deal with in our lives. “Just who does he think he is?” “I knew her back when she was a snot nosed little kid running around in diapers.” The words of Thomas Wolfe “you can’t go home again” – seem to ring loudly in this episode from Jesus’ life and ministry in Nazareth of Galilee. Jesus comes back to the hometown crowd leading the twelve disciples and begins to preach in the temple. Having had no “formal” instruction, the fact that Jesus has “disciples” marks him as a Rabbi, and so it is natural for the Rabbi to preach to the gathered community at the Sabbath gathering. We are told that “many who heard him were astounded.” Most who heard this preaching and teaching would have known that Jesus had not trained at the feet of any rabbi and so, we are told, come these remarks: “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!” Word would surely have spread about the Gerasene demoniac, the hemmoraging woman and the daughter of Jarius; incredible deeds of power done through Jesus’ hands via the faith of those who believed.

(SUNG) AND AFTER IT RAINS THERE’S A RAINBOW
AND ALL OF THE COLORS ARE BLACK,
IT’S NOT THAT THE COLORS AREN’T THERE,
IT’S JUST IMAGINATION THEY LACK
EVERYTHINGS THE SAME BACK – IN MY LITTLE TOWN

Jesus’ power is manifest in the hearts and minds and bodies of those who believe. Is it that Jesus cannot work signs of power in those who do not believe – or just that Jesus does not wish to expend valuable time and energy with those who are unable or unwilling to take the leap of faith necessary to accept the kindom of God which is at hand in the life, death and resurrection of the radical rabbi from Nazareth? I’m sure that greater theological minds than mine have probed this question and posited answers, and I invite you to search them out if you truly need to have answers laid out for you. As with most of the questions which the ministry and mystery of Jesus raises for us – the spiritual benefit lies not in someone else’s answer, however learned it might be. The thoughts and ruminations of our spiritual ancestors in matters theological and Christological are of value only in as much as we are able to incoporate them into our own understanding of the ministry of the local Nazareth rabbi who changed the face of the known world by incarnating the power of the God who created it. When Jesus visits the old hometown and is rejected by those who in their smugness are unable to vision anything other than the carpenter son of Mary – the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon; Jesus allows them their disbelief and continues on with the ministry which will witness to the coming of the kindom of God among them. This was not a Gospel story which was read very often in the Church of my youth. Part of the reason for that is the Roman Church’s belief in the perpetual viginity of the mother of Jesus. I always found it interesting that Good Sisters of St. John the Baptist could take this pericope from the Gospel of Mark and explain that the author was referring to the “figurative” rather than the “literal” wording around Jesus’ brothers and sisters; and that they also could be translated as “cousins”. I said I found it interesting, I didn’t say that I found it plausible, and my limited knowledge of classical Greek does not allow that word to be translated as “cousin”.

Jesus’ response to those who cannot afford him consideration past their knowledge of his questionable parentage from the un-wed teenaged Mary and his early trade as the carpenter’s apprentice of Joseph is, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and their own house.” The author goes on to tell us that Jesus was unable do deeds of any power there – except to lay hands on a few sick people and cure them. Jesus is amazed at their unbelief, we are told. I think we all can share in that experience of being discounted based solely on circumstances of our births, rather than celebrated for the aptitudes and talents with which we have been gifted by the God who loves us all as children. Many of us share in the pain of being told that we aren’t enough, based on our gender, race, nationality, economic status, class or orientation. Jesus’ response to that pain is to move on and carry the message to those who will be willing to hear it and work toward the coming of the Kindom of God among them.

(SUNG) IN MY LITTLE TOWN, I NEVER MEANT NOTHING,
I WAS JUST MY FATHER’S SON.
SAVING MY MONEY, DREAMING OF GLORY
TWITCHING LIKE THE FINGER ON THE TRIGGER OF
A GUN.

Where do we suppose might be the hometown for Jesus were we gifted by the presence of the Word made flesh among us in mortal body today? I would like to think and believe that the Church would be Jesus’ hometown today. Certainly in the Church Jesus would feel comfortable and not be limited by perceptions of external circumstances limiting the power of God among us. However, if we are honest with ourselves would Jesus be welcomed in the Church of the 21st Century? Would Jesus recognize that the work we were called to do as apostles and disciples of the Christ is being lived out in the ministry of the Church? I think that the report card on that would be mixed. Yes, in some places in the Church good and right work is being done in the name of the One we claim as our leader – as the head of our Church and the author of our salvation. In many other places Jesus would be challenged to recognize the work of God in our religious institutions. “See how they love each other” was a comment often spoken about the believers in the early years of the Church. I wonder how many non Christians would look at the Church today an utter that comment? As we bicker and blame each other, as we question each other’s orthodoxy and judge each others beliefs, I think that Jesus would find it hard to settle in our Church and make it hometown base. We are called to make the Church the example of love and welcome which Jesus failed to find in the hometown synagogue in Nazareth. We need to be a place where Jesus can work mighty deeds of power because of our faith in God and in each other. We will always be challenged in the Church to live out the Gospel message that we proclaim with integrity and faithfilled witness. The Church is the Body of Christ in our own age giving witness to the ministry of God among us – and we are human and will fall short of the mark of perfection which is our aim. Sin is a reality in our lives and in our Church. God has continued to raise up prophets for the Church just as God has done in ages past from our religious roots with the people of Israel as we heard in the calling of the prophet Ezekiel, to the gift of the prophetic ministry of the Christ, to the present day. Who those prophets are may be different for each of us in our own vision of the Church – and who they are for me are such stirring and challenging voices as Barbara Brown Taylor, Desmond Tutu, Oscar Romero, William Sloan Coffin, John O’Donohue, John Shelby Spong and Bono. Each of us needs to take prophetic responsibility for our piece of the Church to do all in our power to live out the call to discipleship and make God’s Church a place where all are able to see the hand of God guiding the hands of all of God’s children in working toward making in reality the kindom come among us.

Amen.