sermon: my buddy josh

(mark 6:1)

Ok, so I gotta tell you about my friend Josh.

Josh is a great guy, don’t get me wrong, but there are times He can just grind you the wrong way. Like, there was this one time when He and some of his buddies went away, and then they came back for a visit. You know how it is when you have a relative who goes off to college and then comes back and starts telling everyone that they’re doing everything wrong? Yeah, well that is exactly what Josh was like. He and His buddies rode back into town one day and He starts talking about all this really crazy stuff and just generally annoying everyone in town.

So we’re sitting there listening to Him, and He is going on about all this weird stuff about loving each other, and sharing your stuff with poor people, and stuff about what God wants us to do – like He’s got some kind of direct pipeline to God or something – and umm… oh and he was doing some really freaky magic stuff to sick people who were all of a sudden getting better and I am not sure what THAT is about. But anyway Josh is just spilling the wildest hippie love stuff (I’ll admit Josh is a really nice guy and I know one of His brothers who used to go out with my sister’s friend) but, I mean, I was embarrassed for the guy. You should have heard Him. I really don’t know where He gets this stuff

So anyway a couple of the old guys that hang around us because they have nothing better to do all day than drink that really black coffee and play cards start talking about Josh. And one of them, I can’t remember which one goes “so who IS this guy? Where does He get this kind of smarts?” and they all start laughing at him. And then one of the other guys, the one that wears sweaters even in summer starts going on about how Josh has these magical powers and then old yeller, ok so that’s not really his name but he’s about a hundred and twenty and thinks that if he keeps dying his hair blond people won’t notice how old he is says “wait a second that’s um… whatsisname… mary’s kid.” And then one of the other guys goes “who’s mary?” and then they start going on about He’s jimmy and joe’s brother, and simon and jude, and how they knew His sisters were there because one of them just walked by in that blue shirt with the big collar and all.

But anyway they started getting really bent out of shape when they were listening to Josh, and I kinda don’t blame them – I mean Josh goes off with some buddies for a while and then He comes home and starts mouthing off to all these people that watched Him grow up telling them that God’s mad at them and that they’re doing everything all wrong and stuff.

I mean, maybe what He was saying was right and all but couldn’t He have maybe found a nicer way to say it?

they took offense at him

and why not? We would too, wouldn’t we?

Jesus, in today’s passage, did the unthinkable, though at first blush it seems fairly innocuous. Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples 2When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue

He walked into the town where just about everyone knew Him, and had known Him since His folks moved into town when He was just a baby; and on the holiest day of the week, He walked into the synagogue – the center of life, community and culture for the Jewish people and started telling them what do, like He owned the place.

What made it worse was that they knew that what He was preaching was, as scripture says “wisdom that has been given him” They knew this guy. They knew he had no education, they knew He was the son of a tradesman that made furniture for a living…. There was no WAY this was His teaching, what did THIS guy know about the Torah? Clearly, He was teaching on behalf of someone else, and thinking that thought through to its logical conclusion was more than they could deal with. Matthew Henry said “They studied to disparage him, and to raise prejudices in the minds of people against him, notwithstanding. All this wisdom, and all these mighty works, shall be of no account, because he had a home-education, had never traveled, nor been at any university, or bred up at the feet of any of their doctors”

It was easy for them to become offended. And yet, and yet they listened to what He had to say – it says many who heard him were amazed. Now as tempting as it might be to assume that Jesus’ neighbours were idiots, they weren’t. They were the learned men and the Rabbis of the town. They knew good doctrine and brilliant teaching when they heard it – and they heard Him and were amazed. The message floored them.

It was Jesus they didn’t like. They were offended at his person – this undereducated son of a tradesman - they were prejudiced against him pure and simple, and looked at him with contempt; and for that reason, they would not receive his doctrine, no matter how amazing it was. And He was offending them on multiple levels: these people knew the Torah inside and out and they certainly knew Deuteronomy 13: 1 If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, 2 and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," 3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. And yet here is this prophet, working miracles among them and pointing to Himself - it violated everything they knew of God’s teachings; this man was dangerous.

So how did Jesus deal with that? How does he teach us, in this passage, how blatant prejudice is to be borne? (and note I said borne and not managed because you can’t change other people, only yourself) ; how did Jesus cope with the kinds of offense his own neighbours took at Him?

Well, let me share something remarkable with you. In the passage this week, if you read over it quickly, you might notice a set of parallel sentences: They were amazed at His teaching; He was amazed at their lack of faith. Now as you know, the bible never uses words casually, but sometimes English can’t quite capture the essence of the original meaning. The word “amazed” is used in both places in English, but in the original Greek, the words are quite different.

They were amazed at His teaching. The word amazed here means “to be amazed, to strike with astonishment.” Ok, what’s going on with them seems to be pretty clear in the text. They are amazed. What’s NOT evident from the English is what’s going on with Jesus:

He was amazed at their lack of faith. The word for amazed here is very different. It means “astounded” and more than that: it implies admiration, being in awe of something totally amazing.

We all know what’s going here, because at some point we have all in our lives stood back to survey a situation that we know couldn’t possibly get worse, to take a long look at an absolutely unmitigated disaster and utter the timeless words: “oh that’s just perfect”. Jesus looks at their unbelief and says in essence “brilliant, that’s just perfect.” The passage seems to imply that was so thoroughly disgusted with the perfection of their prejudice that only resorting to sarcasm could fully capture the situation, and he utters those famous words: Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor, or as the Greek implies, “despised”.

But it almost gets even sadder than that – in a good measure they shot themselves in the proverbial foot, because as it says He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them: everywhere else Jesus went He was best by people begging to be healed. In His hometown?

Nada . No one even shows up except a few, faithful souls.

Can you picture that? Their own prejudice - their own dislike of the this scruffy guy from the west bank – was a chasm between healing, God’s love and His miraculous blessings and them – and no matter how “amazed” they were to hear His message, they still would not avail themselves of Jesus healing ministry because they didn’t like him. And why? Let’s take a step back:

When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue. Throughout the bible, every time Jesus shows up at a temple, there’s trouble. You ever notice that? Every time Jesus enters a temple on the Sabbath, people get all up in arms and stop listening to Him.

Look around you. What day is it? Where are we? Where is Jesus? Shouldn’t there be trouble brewing?

I’ll admit that in speaking to you I feel like I am "preaching to the choir" – you are in church already. Whatever struggles you are having with Christ's teaching likely do not center around a dislike of Jesus personally." Yet the heart of what being a Christian is, is not so much the embracing of his teaching as being in a relationship with him and that can only happen personally….

One of the difficult things traps that Christianity has fallen into over the centuries is that we have become very comfortable with Jesus – and that’s not a bad thing until you realize that that comfort leads to complacency leads to apathy leads to why is Jesus telling me to give my money to the poor and go out and spread the word and forgive my neighbour and can’t He just leave me alone to enjoy my Sunday mornings, please????

Jesus is STILL stirring the pot. But for reasons of our own, we sometimes forget to listen. None of us was in Nazareth, or knew the incarnate Christ personally. Perhaps you are like me. I cannot fathom, within myself, how anyone today could reject Christ's teaching because they had something against Him personally, because I have come to love him so much. But people I have spent time with think they know him well and do reject him. Some see Mark 6 as emblematic of the whole of Jesus ministry. He came to his own but his own would not receive him. He came to Jews and most did not receive him. He came to the world and the world turned on him and still do. And yet they think they know well enough to be bored with him – to invent stories about him being married and such. But they do not know him at all.

And Jesus was AMAZED.

So what did Jesus ultimately end up doing? Did He punish them? Rebuke them? Consign them to eternal damnation? No.

He just got on with the job at hand: Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. Gave them instructions – keep going, don’t look back, we have a job to do – get out there and do what you’re commanded to do, because sometimes when you are the victim of prejudice that’s all you can do. You can’t change them… so just get on with whatever it is you have to do.

And my buddy Josh? Well, I gotta tell you – there are STILL loads of people that don’t like Him – that talk trash about Him and say things like “oh I think Christianity has a really good message but I don’t think that Jesus was God or anything”. You might even know one or two of them personally. Tell them to give Josh a chance, ok? Because I have a feeling that Josh is still shaking His head, saying “oh that’s just perfect”, but as long as even a few people can step out of the chains of their own prejudice, if even a few people can be liberated and hear the message no matter what they think of the messenger, well, my buddy Josh will be just fine.