Episode Transcript
PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Abba, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Abba, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Mark 6:1–6a (NIV)
Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.
“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.
CONSIDER THIS
In the early chapters of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus had focused his ministry in and around Capernaum in Galilee, where he healed many people and taught them through the use of parables. Now, he was around twenty-five miles to the southwest in his hometown of Nazareth, although Mark does not specifically mention the name of the town. Jesus was not alone but was accompanied by his disciples. This was much more than the loose grouping of an entourage, for his disciples were deeply committed to Jesus. He entered the town then, from all appearances, as a gifted teacher, a rabbi, and he, therefore, headed for the synagogue.
The hometown folk who gathered in their familiar place of worship had heard many rabbis before, but on that day, Jesus was someone different, set apart. In listening to him, the people were amazed at his teaching; however, they simply couldn’t put it all together. Astonished that a hometown boy could speak in such a way, and hearing reports of his miracles, the people raised six questions that expressed their puzzlement. Remarkably, these questions fall neatly into two distinct groups. The first three questions, for example, express the surprise of the local people, some of whom were perhaps Jesus’s neighbors as he was growing up, as to where he got such a teaching. In other words, what was the source of such insight? Beyond this, they marveled at both his wisdom and the miracles he had done. His reputation had apparently preceded him.
If we were to stop this account with the first three questions, then we could never understand why the local folk “took offense at him,” as our text declares in verse 3. The Greek verb for “took offense” in our passage is the root from which the English word scandalize is derived. That’s an unusually strong and negative reaction that could hardly be explained by the raising of these first three questions. Indeed, by themselves, the initial queries should have led at least some of the people from his hometown to become the followers of Jesus, if not his disciples. What then scandalized the people? It was not the first three questions but the second three.
The first question of the second set, “Isn’t this the carpenter?” actually begins to reveal some of the prejudices of the people. If Jesus was a carpenter, or more generally speaking a craftsman of sorts, then how could he enjoy the time, the leisure for study, that is normally required for the wisdom he had uttered? It takes many years of concentrated study to become a rabbi, even in the first century. Besides, Jesus as a carpenter would be associating with “the wrong sort of people” in his daily environment, in his workaday world. The bias of the people, mistaken in so many respects, is demonstrated in their judgment that, in effect, working-class people, common laborers, cannot be wise. In this very narrow and diminished world, people are immediately and flippantly judged; that is, they are limited, even imprisoned, in their social roles. Jesus, however, always baffled the prejudiced.
The second and third questions of the second set have to do with the family heritage of Jesus, a network of familial relations that would, of course, be known by the hometown folk: “Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon?” Again, “Aren’t his sisters here with us?” However, how many people, then as now, are so very different in some important respects from the members of their own households in which they grew up? Grounded in a setting of love and support (though sometimes perhaps not so much), family members can build on this and yet chart new courses as they find their own paths in life. Again, much like a chosen occupation, an early familial setting is not destiny. It doesn’t define us as people. In short, men and women cannot be adequately understood by simply referring to their family tree or their occupation. Such a prejudice, in a slightly different form, even marked Nathanael, a disciple of Jesus, who questioned on one occasion: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46).
The second set of questions has resulted in a much different response from the people than the first set would have ever done: “they took offense at him.” What was the scandal? Considerations in terms of both occupation and family gave the townsfolk a false sense that they actually knew who Jesus was. In their minds, at least, they had him all sized up; they had him in a box. They already knew him. Here, as in so many other instances, “familiarity breeds contempt.” We think we know someone if we know their occupation, their class, their likely income level, their family heritage, where they grew up—but we actually don’t. We’re only fooling ourselves. We mistake image for reality, outward appearances for what actually is. A person, a living soul created in the image and likeness of God, is far greater than such things. Accordingly, Jesus had the audacity, at least in the minds of the people at the synagogue, to speak and act in ways well beyond what limits they had already conjured up in their minds. He had transgressed their expectations. You can almost hear the additional, derisive comments and complaints, not recorded by Mark, that likely surfaced on that day: “Who do you think you are?” “What makes you so high and mighty?” Put another way, in this honor-and-shame culture, the people were likely ruminating, “He thinks he’s better than us! We’ll remind him where he came from.”
Unable to get out from under the pile of prejudices that they had stacked up, the local folk were deeply troubled, for they couldn’t make sense of the identity of Jesus—and it disturbed them. He baffled them at every turn. Mistaking familiarity for genuine knowledge, the people “didn’t know what they didn’t know,” as the saying goes. For them, Jesus was and remained a stranger.
THE PRAYER
Holy God, I trade mere familiarity with you for intimacy with you. I not only marvel at your words but receive them as the way to eternal life. Transform every recess of my heart from darkness to light, and may I radiate your goodness as you help me on my way to salvation.
