No Hometown Advantage
July 7, 2024
Mark 6:1–6
He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and 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?’ And they took offence at him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’ 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.
*****
Some years ago, the famed radio show host Garrison Keillor offered a newspaper reporter a rare glimpse of his personal life in St. Paul, Minnesota. Upon meeting the reporter Keillor offered her a tour around his hometown. When they reached downtown, he took her to see a sculpture of Lucy, the wonderful antagonist to Charlie Brown in the popular cartoon strip, “Peanuts” by Charles Schultz.
Lucy was the character who kept Charlie Brown rooted in reality and from becoming a victim of his own hopeless idealism. She continually provided him with a dose of life’s consistent reality. This was most evident when she would pull her hold on a football just as Charlie approached at full speed for a place kick.
Charles Schultz was the originator of Charlie Brown and was a native of St. Paul, like Keillor. When Schultz first presented the concept for the Peanuts gang, the editor of the local newspaper rejected it saying it was not imaginative, clever, or very funny. The Lucy sculpture is a reminder, Keillor said, that one’s hometown can reject you.
In the reading this week, Jesus arrives back in his hometown of Nazareth after a long stretch of fruitful ministry and he is rejected. In the prior weeks, Jesus had secured the loyalty of twelve disciples, described God’s kingdom with provocative parables, exorcised demons, healed the sick, calmed a storm, and raised a little girl from the dead. He had become, in other words, a local hero.
Or so we would think. In this week’s story, Jesus enters the synagogue of his boyhood, and begins to teach in the tradition of the rabbis. At first, things go very well; his townspeople receive his words with astonishment and curiosity. “Where did this man get all this?” they ask each other. “What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!”
But then, almost without warning, something happens. Someone in the crowd, perhaps one of Mary’s jealous neighbors or a childhood rival or the notorious village dissenter and gossip starts asking prickly questions: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary…?
To identify someone by his mother in Jesus’s day was to question his legitimacy and highlight the fact that questions surround the identity of the father. In other words, to refer to Jesus as “the son of Mary” was a calculated act on the part of his fellow villagers, a weaponized use of Jesus’s birth story to humiliate him into silence.
Raising the question of Jesus’ status highlights a reality of this time and social system. One’s status was fixed at birth. Thus, it was impossible for Jesus, of carpenter parentage, to amount to anything. The community would hold the view that Jesus had no business speaking with authority, no business becoming a leader, certainly not a Messiah. They would be thinking: “We know exactly where you come from, boy! Do not get too big for your britches! Remember your place!”
At this point, Mark tells us, the mood in the synagogue shifts. Appreciation morphs into accusation, curiosity becomes contempt, and the people “take offense.” They decide that Jesus is presuming too much. Exceeding his bounds.
The sad and astonishing thing about this story is that the townspeople’s suspicion and resentment diminish Jesus’s ability to work good on their behalf. For next Mark tells us: “He could do no deed of power there.”
In some mysterious and disturbing way, the hometown people’s small-mindedness, their lack of trust, and their inability to embrace a new facet of Jesus’s life and mission, keep them in spiritual poverty. Notice that their lack of faith is not a mere technicality; it has real and lamentable consequences. It constrains Jesus. It blocks the healing work he longs to do for the people he loves.
Pause and think about this for a minute. Do we know that our faith or lack thereof has real world consequences? That in the mysterious economy of God, we are called to participate with God’s Spirit in the transformation of the world. That our refusal to do so matters?
The hometown people were offended by Jesus, perhaps by what he said, perhaps by what they thought was his presumptuousness. Whatever the reason, their attitude was effective. “He could do no deed of power there,” Mark tells us. And so far, as we know, he never went home again.
That day in the synagogue, like he did with others in the days prior, Jesus called his hometown neighbors and friends to think anew, to follow into unfamiliar places. He implored them to do things they never did before, to care, love and be more generous than they ever imagined possible. They instead rejected him and left him diminished in calling them into his mission.
The uncomfortable fact is, Jesus offends his beloved community in this story and therein lies something for us to ponder. The call of the Gospel is not a call to stand still. It is a call to choose movement over stasis, change over security, growth over decay.
The good news is that God does not let Jesus be limited by people’s reluctance, judgement, or small and stingy notions of the Divine. God exceeds, God abounds, God transgresses, God transcends. The lowly carpenter reveals himself as Lord and while we might at times amaze him with our unbelief, he will call out to us, nevertheless, daring us always to see and experience him anew.
